Quote of the day

“Many charities, like most varieties of feed-the-hungry charities, have compounded negative interest, in that the momentary utility of saving some lives quickly begins compounding negative utility as there are now more mouths to feed in an area that was already beyond its sustainable capacity to begin with.”

…

Phil Goetz, in a comment here.

Late to the party, but…

I recently started reading the Aid Watch blog. If you’re interested in development economics and stuff about foreign aid you’ll find some good stuff there from time to time (but if you are, you probably already know about it).

The blog is primarily written by William Easterly, (among other things…) author of The elusive Quest for Growth… and The White Man’s Burden, neither of which I’ve read, both of which I intend at some point to read.

Foreign aid

Start here.

Foreign Aid

The graphs are from a new working paper by Martin Paldam, avaialable here. The top one displays the development in real growth pr capita. The lower one displays the development in foreign aid payments in pct. of GNI during the same period. We’re of course talking about Africa south of Sahara.

The paper is in Danish, but I guess foreigners get the picture as well.

A lot of money down the drain. Depressing.