The book attempts to cut a middle path between two poles of the public debate about global development: on one side, the argument that current approaches to poverty reduction could be successful if simply given more funding; on the other, the argument that present efforts are fundamentally flawed.[2] It also discusses current and emerging development programs and their impacts.[3] Karlan and Appel present their own work and draw on the research of many others in a variety of fields including economics, health, agriculture, and education. The authors argue that small changes in banking, insurance, health care, and other development initiatives that take into account human irrationality can drastically improve the well-being of the poor. Concluding, they present a takeaway consisting of seven ideas proven to be effective in development: Microsavings, reminders to save, prepaid fertilizer sales, deworming, remedial education in small groups, chlorine dispensers for clean water, and the use of commitment devices.[4]
more than good intentions book
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Despite various reform efforts, Mexico has experienced economic stability but little growth. Today more than half of all Mexican workers are employed informally, and one out of every four is poor. Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes argues that incoherent social programs significantly contribute to this state of affairs and it suggests reforms to improve the situation. Over the past decade, Mexico has channeled an increasing number of resources into subsidizing the creation of low-productivity, informal jobs. These social programs have hampered growth, fostered illegality, and provided erratic protection to workers, trapping many in poverty. Informality has boxed Mexico into a dilemma: provide benefits to informal workers at the expense of lower growth and reduced productivity or leave millions of workers without benefits. Former finance official Santiago Levy proposes how to convert the existing system of social security for formal workers into universal social entitlements. He advocates eliminating wage-based social security contributions and raising consumption taxes on higher-income households to simultaneously increase the rate of growth of GDP, reduce inequality, and improve benefits for workers. Go od Intentions, Bad Outcomes considers whether Mexico can build on the success of Progresa-Oportunidades, a targeted poverty alleviation program that originated in Mexico and has been replicated in over 25 countries as well as in New York City. It sets forth a plan to reform social and economic policy, an essential element of a more equitable and sustainable development strategy for Mexico.
In a set of clever studies, philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel and his collaborators have investigated whether ethicists (i.e., moral philosophers, people who spend a whole lot of time thinking about morality and how people ought to behave) in fact do behave any more morally than other people. At issue is the relationship between explicit thought and everyday actions: do expertise and reflection translate into better behavior?
Schwitzgebel first found that ethics books were more likely to go missing from academic libraries when compared to other philosophy books matched in age and popularity, suggesting that students of ethics might not be so ethical when it comes to library return policies. He also found that political scientists vote more often than other kinds of academics, while ethicists and political philosophers do not. If you take voting as a sign of civic engagement, with some moral value, this doesn't look good for ethicists.
In another study, even philosophers didn't think that their ethicist colleagues behaved any more ethically than their non-ethicist colleagues, such as the epistemologists and metaphysicians in their departments. And in studies measuring philosophers' actual behavior rather than their judgments about each other, Schwitzgebel found that ethicists were no more courteous than non-ethicists at a philosophy conference. (A more heartening finding was that people attending talks in environmental ethics did leave less trash behind in their meeting rooms.)
Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show significantly better behavior than the two comparison groups.
In other words, ethicists did tend to think that people should avoid meat and give to charities more strongly than did the non-ethicists, but they weren't successfully putting their perspectives into practice.
There's also evidence that people keep tabs on their moral behavior, with some actions earning moral "credit" that can later be expended. "I gave money to charity, so it's okay to cut in line." Spending all day thinking about ethics could create a feeling of moral entitlement, the sense that one is licensed to make exceptions. For sophisticated moral reasoners who are used to arguing with opponents who are more aggressive than their own conscience, it may be easy to rationalize acting on temptation.
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When it comes to global poverty, people are passionate and polarized. At one extreme: We just need to invest more resources. At the other: We've thrown billions down a sinkhole over the last fifty years and accomplished almost nothing. Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel present an entirely new approach that blazes an optimistic and realistic trail between these two extremes. In this pioneering book Karlan and Appel combine behavioral economics with worldwide field research. They take readers with them into villages across Africa, India, South America, and the Philippines, where economic theory collides with real life. They show how small changes in banking, insurance, health care, and other development initiatives that take into account human irrationality can drastically improve the well-being of poor people everywhere. We in the developed world have found ways to make our own lives profoundly better. We use new tools to spend smarter, save more, eat better, and lead lives more like the ones we imagine. These tools can do the same for the impoverished. Karlan and Appel's research, and those of some close colleagues, show exactly how. In America alone, individual donors contribute over two hundred billion to charity annually, three times as much as corporations, foundations, and bequests combined. This book provides a new way to understand what really works to reduce poverty; in so doing, it reveals how to better invest those billions and begin transforming the well-being of the world. When it comes to global poverty, people are passionate and polarized. At one extreme: We just need to invest more resources. At the other: We've thrown billions down a sinkhole over the last fifty years and accomplished almost nothing. Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel present an entirely new approach that blazes an optimistic and realistic trail between these two extremes. In this pioneering book Karlan and Appel combine behavioral economics with worldwide field research. They take readers with them into villages across Africa, India, South America, and the Philippines, where economic theory collides with real life. They show how small changes in banking, insurance, health care, and other development initiatives that take into account human irrationality can drastically improve the well-being of poor people everywhere. We in the developed world have found ways to make our own lives profoundly better. We use new tools to spend smarter, save more, eat better, and lead lives more like the ones we imagine. These tools can do the same for the impoverished. Karlan and Appel's research, and those of some close colleagues, show exactly how. In America alone, individual donors contribute over two hundred billion to charity annually, three times as much as corporations, foundations, and bequests combined. This book provides a new way to understand what really works to reduce poverty; in so doing, it reveals how to better invest those billions and begin transforming the well-being of the world.
Many people equate recycling with a fundamentally civic and moral duty. This is an area where markets fail, and government mandates and regulation combined with the good intentions of individuals are the primary drivers. While the government can in some ways help the industry run better, and the civic mindedness of individuals is in some places a component, the extent to which profits are what drive the industry is not well appreciated. But it is a lesson you see throughout Adam Minter's excellent recent book Junkyard Planet. Minter is a journalist who travels the globe taking a deep look at how the scrapping, junkyard, recycling, and related industries operate. He has long been one of my favorite journalists, and this book was easily one of my favorite books of 2013, so much so that I am rereading it now. It's an engrossing look at the global scrap industry, and one that truly gives you an insightful and nuanced look at how markets and sustainability are related.
It was not government actions or good intentions that managed to clean up this problem, but the invention of the car shredded. These giant machines finally made scrapping cars economical again, and throughout the 1960s more and more of them came on board across the country. But the stockpile of cars was so large it took until the 1990s to start really whittling them down. And in fact it was the large demand for steel in fast growing developing countries in the late 2000s that finally drove commodity prices up high enough that the "end of the automobile backlog" came as the last abandoned cars were finally dragged out of the woods. 2ff7e9595c
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