The New Republic Knows Me Far Too Well

Sigh. So true. I am stubbornly resisting the TNR bookshelf, since I just had to prune my reading list for the fifth time in four months. April's reading:

Apollo's Fire - Michael Sims
Walking on Water - Madeleine L'Engle
Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin (primarily because she has my sister's first name)
A Year without Made in China - Sara Bongiorni
Chasing the Flame - Sam Powers

plus whatever IR/econ pdfs I've accumulated over the past few months.

Reading List Additions

I need more time in the day.

Hat tip: Chris Blattman

No Regrets Necessary

YOUNG PROFESSIONALS IN FOREIGN POLICY

Global Development Series

How do we know what works?
The Promise and Progress of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE)

Ruth Levine
Vice President, Center for Global Development

Thursday, March 27 6:30-8:00 pm
1776 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 301
Washington, DC

RSVP Required

I'm unable to attend this YPFP event tonight, since I'll be at the UNA-NCA Global Public Health Career Panel Event from 7-830 (see IR Events for details), but luckily the Center for Global Development has both the final report and the policy brief available online. I know you're excited.

Two Book Reviews

Not by me, although hopefully I'll get back to my reading soon.

First, Dani Rodrik's book One Economics, Many Recipes, reviewed by Prospect Magazine's John Kay. The review requires a subscription to view, but Rodrik kindly provides excerpts.

The second is Tyler Cowen's take on Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, by every singer's favorite economist, Jeff Sachs. I, personally, can't stand to read Sachs, and feel that William Easterly rightly took him to task in his book, White Man's Burden, but it sounds as if Tyler cautiously recommends it.

The AIDS Political Crisis

In my continuing quest to completely eliminate any free time, I stumbled across AIDS and Power: Why There is No Political Crisis - Yet by Alex de Waal on the Social Science Research Council's website.

I haven't bought the book yet, but the Table of Contents and the first chapter, A Manageable Catastrophe, are available online.De Waal's premise is interesting: while we're doing a decent (but not good) job of managing AIDS - getting antiretrovirals to where they are needed, at affordable prices, we haven't focused on eliminating AIDS - changing behavioral patterns to limit incidences of HIV infections. This has two important ramifications:

1. Teenagers in developing countries have a shockingly high likelihood of developing AIDS
2. 'Today's generation faces a greater inequity in global life chances than its predecessors, and this is increasingly due to adult mortality and not child deaths.'

However,

demographic modelling suggests that even at very high prevalence levels - up to 40% or so - can be sustained indefinitely without a fall in the absolute numbers of a population. At that prevalence, the great majority of adults will end their lives early to AIDS. Today's crash in life expectancy will not be quickly reversed... (de Waal 6)

It is this final point - that current population levels will be maintained, but the demographic makeup will shift downward, to a population primarily of children, teenagers, and young adults, that leads de Waal to consider this a 'perpetuated calamity'. As this New York Times article discusses, very young populations contribute to strife and instability:

In poor countries with rapidly growing populations, intense competition for education, jobs and land among the young contributes to discontent and makes it easier for rebel groups to recruit, said Elizabeth Leahy, the primary author of a new report for Population Action, a nonprofit group in Washington.

Hence, the concern, at least from the West.

But it is not a simple matter of government officials ignoring the news. African rulers are canny, with a 'sound appreciation of how power functions.' They know that 'they won't be removed from office or even face political threats on account of AIDS.' (de Waal 2) If the opposite were true, believe that Mbeki and others would not have bothered with the AIDS denial that has so shocked and outraged Westerners. They might privately admit it, but they wouldn't base policy on it.

Sadly, AIDS does not head the population's list of priorities. Concerns such as unemployment, poverty, crime, education and general health improvements regularly outrank AIDS. (7) De Waal ends the chapter:

We should not mistake managing the political and social threats emanating from the AIDS epidemic for an effective response to the immense human tragedy of HIV/AIDS itself... [W]e still lack the kind of evidence we need if we are to be able to design effective policies and programmes to overcome HIV/AIDS. We are not seriously demanding that our leaders prevent HIV infections, and we should not be surprised that they are failing to do so. (10)

I'm intrigued.

Picking on the Economist

What is going on?

First Dani Rodrik confesses he doesn't read it, then Chris Blattman follows suit. Now Henry at Crooked Timber wonders if 'the Economist may be too sophisticated for its own good.' YouNotSneaky offers advice on how to read the Economist.

Yglesias suggests just thinking of it as your 'well-traveled, reasonably witty cousin who voyage[s] around the world with a good eye for detail and a personality marred by a strange obsession with labor market deregulation and pension privatization'.

Development Reading

Chris Blattman and his readers on what to read in development. He kindly links to Dani Rodrik's 'Economic Development: Theory, Policy and Evidence' syllabus. It seems the syllabus contains live links, and most of the works are journal articles, not books, which means I might actually have a chance of fitting them into my schedule.

Books on Trade

Recommended by Marginal Revolution readers.

Pursuing the Global Common Good

I wrote this review for We Are Publius, but feel it's better suited for the EI (and I want to eventually create a series of book reviews, and want it to show up in the search).