How can the World Bank bid for becoming the big climate change financing agency when it continues to subsidise dirty coal? Update: a vehement response to the article from the World Bank The amount of rain that fell during your first year of life...

Trust the military to give it to me straight. Population comes up at virtually every talk I give – on climate change, development or just about anything else. But usually my questioners are a bit more circumspect than the man from the armed forces...

OK, the Copenhagen climate summit is warming up nicely (even faster than the rest of the world), and I am trying to sift through the information overload. What on earth to read for those of us with limited time and not at the summit? I’ve been asking...

After decades of decline, aid to agriculture has started to rise in the last few years in response to a renewed understanding of the role of agriculture in triggering growth and reducing poverty (see previous blog). But some recent research from 3...

The Protestant Work Ethic is back, this time supported by econometrics….. A recent article in the Boston Globe summed up research showing that a belief in hell is good for growth, and other linkages between religion and development. Highlights: ‘A...