Search Results for: ethiopia
This is a guest post from CGD’s and IIE’s Arvind Subramanian. Chris drew attention yesterday to Ethiopia’s currency devaluation. What was surprising and interesting about this move is that the devaluation was not undertaken under the usual duress of “macroeconomic adjustment.” Typically, in Africa, macroeconomic and foreign exchange crises have been the trigger for devaluation. A [...]
By Chris Blattman
– September 3, 2010
Yesterday Ethiopians received a September surprise when the central bank devalued the currency by 20 percent. Even if you don’t work on anything Ethiopia-related, you should be interested. Why? Here’s the reaction from a leading bank and investment firm in the country: Given the apparently little justification for a large devaluation from a short-term macroeconomic [...]
By Chris Blattman
– September 2, 2010
Todd Johnson asks his Ethiopian friend, an IT entrepreneur, his greatest business challenge. His answer? NGOs. “Africans don’t see a reward system in place for being entrepreneurial. In fact, they view it as a matter of survival, not an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. Rather, what they learn at a very early age, [...]
By Chris Blattman
– July 28, 2010
Without much notice,agriculture recently ceased to be the largest sector in the economy for the first time in Ethiopia’s history. This heralds a major structural transformation of the economy and we forecast that the services sector—which covers real estate, hotels, transportation, communication, banking, health and education—will make up more than half of Ethiopia’s GDP in [...]
By Chris Blattman
– July 19, 2010
This week is 25 years since a bunch of bouffant-haired pop stars staged the most ambitious concerts of all time to help millions of starving people who had never heard of them. Thus begins a superb Reuters piece on all the wonderful things Bob Geldof never told you about Ethiopia. Hat tip to @owenbarder. Yesterday, [...]
By Chris Blattman
– July 18, 2010
As I board the plane for Ethiopia, miscellaneous notes from Liberia. Our search for an adult-sized marshmallow experiment continues to frustrate. A soda can be claimed by respondents any time during our 90 minute survey, or the 90 minute behavioral games and cognitive tests that follow. It sits in front of them, beckoning in the [...]
By Chris Blattman
– July 15, 2010
I am presently looking for a Project Coordinator in Ethiopia–someone to run the day-to-day operations of a randomized evaluation of factory labor. The job description and application instructions are here. The typical profile is someone with an MA, prior experience working in the field (preferably research-related), and sophisticated stats and STATA experience. A two-year commitment is [...]
By Chris Blattman
– July 9, 2010
I’ve been in Ethiopia nine days now, pushing along our study of factory labor and attending an International Growth Centre workshop on industrial policy. Nine days and I’ve managed to write nothing about Ethiopia at all. I blame survey madness, information overload, and cable TV in my hotel room. (I’m one of those obnoxious people [...]
By Chris Blattman
– June 10, 2010
STEP THREE: Shoes go in first. Ms. Pools packs them along the edges of the bag, then begins putting in jeans and pants to form the bottom layer of clothing. The New York Times gives us a slide show on how to pack a carry on bag efficiently. I concur. In the first five minutes [...]
By Chris Blattman
– May 8, 2010
1000 or more factories are producing leather shoes in Addis Ababa. Most of them employ only 10 workers or fewer, but several factories have hundreds of workers. In the early 2000s, China-made leather shoes flooded into the Ethiopian market plunging the local industry into a slump. Remarkably, however, the industry soon resumed vigorous growth, not [...]
By Chris Blattman
– April 4, 2010
Chris Blattman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University, where he teaches on African development, applied econometrics, and the political economy of warfare. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy [...]
By Chris Blattman
– March 29, 2010
I’m using Uganda, Liberia and Ethiopia travels to reread state building books on my shelf: Seeing Like A State and Strong Societies and Weak States. Both are subjects for longer posts, when project demands recede. Some people are struck by the similarity of African states to early states in Europe and Asia: weak centers struggling [...]
By Chris Blattman
– March 25, 2010
During the 1980s, I had regular contact with guerrilla groups in the Horn of Africa, such as the TPLF (including its humanitarian wing, Rest), the EPLF and ELF. I also reported from the government side out of Addis. All did their best to dupe both aid workers and journalists. Rest, for example, was extremely well organised. It [...]
By Chris Blattman
– March 18, 2010
1. IKEA in the subway 2. Your source for Ethiopian news online 3. The latest in biometrics? Nose scanning 4. Does assassination promote democracy?
By Chris Blattman
– March 15, 2010
Can it be true? Questions about the reliability of Kapuściński’s reportage begin with The Emperor. His informants here are mainly former Ethiopian court servants labouring under anonymising initials, making them sound curiously like characters in an eighteenth-century English novel. Only one of those who assisted him is given a full name (that, we are told, [...]
By Chris Blattman
– February 18, 2010
The last walk we took around that park was on January 23, 1977, less than six months before he was killed. We had just entered the park grounds when we saw the first of seven bodies neatly lined up in the center of the grass. They were lined up in a row, their feet bare, [...]
By Chris Blattman
– January 21, 2010
At a seminar at Cornell University in 2002, a graduate student from Ethiopia approached Borlaug and asked how he and the other engineers of the green revolution in Asia, where preexisting infrastructure had helped bring increased yields to consumers, intended to handle the situation in Africa, where booming production was depressing local prices. “He just [...]
By Chris Blattman
– January 20, 2010
What is the impact of a factory job on a worker’s welfare? Employment and anti-poverty programs typically emphasize entrepreneurship in the informal sector and productivity in smallholder agriculture. Both are crucial sectors. We hypothesize, however, that current development strategies underplay the importance of large firms to development and the welfare gains that come from factory [...]
By Chris Blattman
– January 8, 2010
What happens to your discarded water bottles in Ethiopia? Crunched up into shards, as it turns out, and shipped to China to be melted into common plastics. This is a photo from a water bottling plant: I suddenly feel a shred better about my trail of discarded bottles. Here is a photo of the factory [...]
By Chris Blattman
– December 15, 2009
My Marx vs. Smith post generated a hitherto unprecedented flurry of emails and comments from political theorists. I’ve been getting lessons in Marx from left and right (pun intended) all week. What is abundantly clear: I’m going to have to read my classics more closely these holidays. I’ll take cover in the fact that the Marx [...]
By Chris Blattman
– December 12, 2009
As I’ve said to all within earshot the past few days: who knew I could work in an African country with a temperate clime and great food? I may not get on the plane to Liberia Sunday… Don’t get me wrong: I love Liberia. Sure, I may get heat rash within fifteen minutes of landing. [...]
By Chris Blattman
– December 10, 2009
It took me a day to figure out how to put up that last post (Marx vs. Smith). Ethiopia uses the same monitoring software as does China, and half my post would not save or upload. Likewise, I can’t access any blogs on a server that rhymes with hogspot. Ironically, I was writing a post [...]
By Chris Blattman
– December 9, 2009
The laborer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labor-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labor, the productive activity of the laborer, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labor a greater value than it previously possessed. [...]
By Chris Blattman
– December 8, 2009
I’ve concluded day one in Addis Abeba which, oddly but enjoyably, involved drinking a lot of schnapps with caroling Danes. Fortunately I did, and will, get to see more of Ethiopia in the coming days. Meanwhile, buzzing about Addis in taxis, I usefully applied my psychology and economics training. Taxis here are not metered, and [...]
By Chris Blattman
– December 6, 2009
Many of Corker’s anecdotes dealt with the fabulous Wenlock Jakes. “…syndicated all over America.” …”Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn’t know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a [...]
By Chris Blattman
– December 1, 2009
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