Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. South Africans, trying to come to grips with the astonishing scale of the crisis, have adopted a once-obscure political science term, “state capture,” as a staple of even casual conversation … Yet previous examples of state capture have almost always involved a broad cast of protagonists: an entire industry, for example, or wealthy businessmen as a group. In South Africa, it may have been pulled off by a single family....
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. South Africans, trying to come to grips with the astonishing scale of the crisis, have adopted a once-obscure political science term, “state capture,” as a staple of even casual conversation … Yet previous examples of state capture have almost always involved a broad cast of protagonists: an entire industry, for example, or wealthy businessmen as a group. In South Africa, it may have been pulled off by a single family....
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. In The New Yorker, John Cassidy reviews a new free online open-source economics textbook, The Economy. From an international collaboration of economists, it focuses on newer, post-financial crisis ways of thinking about and teaching economics. Case Western economist Justin Gallagher documents the bizarre fight he went through to get one research group at the University of Texas to turn over the public state data set it...
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. In The New Yorker, John Cassidy reviews a new free online open-source economics textbook, The Economy. From an international collaboration of economists, it focuses on newer, post-financial crisis ways of thinking about and teaching economics. Case Western economist Justin Gallagher documents the bizarre fight he went through to get one research group at the University of Texas to turn over the public state data set it was...
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. In The New Yorker, John Cassidy reviews a new free online open-source economics textbook, The Economy. From an international collaboration of economists, it focuses on newer, post-financial crisis ways of thinking about and teaching economics. Case Western economist Justin Gallagher documents the bizarre fight he went through to get one research group at the University of Texas to turn over the public state data set it was...
Read More »Final lecture: Order & Violence
There were supposed to be 10 weeks to the quarter but turns out UChicago doesn’t do a makeup day for Memorial Day! So some major surgery later, my last two lectures fit into one. This is just as well because I don’t know that much about democratization. Thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions over the quarter. One of these days, maybe soon, I would like to write this up into a book. So critical comments are valuable. My syllabus is here and the slides are here: Week 9 –...
Read More »Week 8 of my Order & Violence course: State building without war making
This week’s lecture draws heavily on one of the most important books on development I’ve ever read: Building State Capability by Harvard’s Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woodcock. It is open access and you can download it for free. If you hate trees but love the authors, buy a print copy. My syllabus is here and the slides are here: Week 8 – State building without war making Week 7 – Armed interventions Week 6 – Legacies of Imperialism and post-colonial politics Week 5 – The...
Read More »Review Copies of Economism
By James Kwak If you teach introductory economics or introductory micro, at either the high school or university level, and you’re interested in possibly using Economism in your class, let me know and I’ll send you a (free) review copy. Just email me at [email protected] from your school account, tell me what class you are thinking of assigning the book to, and let me know your shipping address, and I’ll order a copy for you.* Quick summary: The central theme of Economism is that some...
Read More »Review Copies of Economism
By James Kwak If you teach introductory economics or introductory micro, at either the high school or university level, and you’re interested in possibly using Economism in your class, let me know and I’ll send you a (free) review copy. Just email me at [email protected] from your school account, tell me what class you are thinking of assigning the book to, and let me know your shipping address, and I’ll order a copy for you.* Quick summary: The central theme of Economism is that some...
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