Development Research

Strictly in mainstream economics, I think i am not sure about the distinction as most of the literature you find is since 1990s. However, Sala-i-MArtin, Helpman, Birdsall, Jones, Plumper and Graff among others might interest you on this topic.

Thank you very much!

The middle class is a relative concept, as research you can define the concept. In my view the best form to define is the income, in many countries there are databases with that information. I hope I have been helpful..

Most effective? Teaching entrepreneurial skills, not just entrepreneurship, to high school students. This plants the seeds of entrepreneurial thinking early. As for programs, NFTE in Chicago; Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities (CEO) in Effingham County (IL); and various examples of business plan competitions.

Poverty occurs for different reasons in different parts of the world. The culture of impoverished makeshift villages lining the roads for 300 kilometers in the sweatshop zone of southern Cambodia is drastically different from poverty in the slums of Harlem, N.Y. Might I suggest that you narrow your scope to maybe a comparison on two or three cultures of poverty, or even an ethnography on one?

A forgotton classic is R.H. Tawney - The Acquisitive Society. Now available free and legal via http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33741 I also enjoyed reading Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment. Written in the early 1990s, it pre-saged the current economic crisis. The phrase "Too big to fail" appears 7 times, if I recall correctly, in the first 2 chapters.

Jonas, thanks so much for sharing those readings. I'll get started. I can't wait to see what emerges.

Dear Prakash Kamble, Thanks for your comment. There are more than a billion people in the world living on less than two dollars per day. These people will never be fed by global commercial agriculture as we know it, but with the right infrastructure of market access for small landholders they can feed themselves and begin the road out of poverty. This is not a simple concept of "value chain" improvement, but a complex problem that will require development of institutions to support market access for small landholders. Such a process requires a broad base of support for at least 10 years, but it can be done. We did it in Armenia and although the process will different in other countries. It can be done. Do see millerbillr.com

Thank you, Petro! Interesting paper by Sauvy! Please, share keep sharing! I appreciate your suggestions very much!

Dear all, I have observed that in the discussion we have focused on the variables of human capital, technological capital, and the environment, but it is important to consider that all economic activity involves know how (technology) and how it is adopted by the man, I give this link where you can check several authors who discuss the topic. http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/items-by-subject?subject=Community%2FRural%2FUrban+Development

Paper is informative ... Nice efforts...

Thanks alot

One needs to understand the politics and ideology behind international NGOs before making any claim. The issue is after the collapse of USSR, most of the western allies in the cold war, who are dictators in their own countries were abandoned becos the new unipolar world order led by the US did not need their services again. But because of the state failures and other problems caused during the cold war, state structure in Africa was weak and most African govt could not account for most of the foreign aids and grant given to them, then as a result, international NGOs were established as a proxy through which foreign aids could be channelled. However, due to the problems of international law, state institution cannot be ignored without causing diplomatic row. Therefore, state were tolerated but foreign govt trust the judgement of international NGOs than that of state institutions in Africa. To me International NGOs are spies being financed to give policy information of the host country. They are product of global policy of neoliberal capitalism.

Dear Jigar, My personal favorites on the subjects are, Susantha Goonatilake, Nihal Perera, Leela Gandhi, Vandana Shiva, Frantz Fanon, Aileen Moreton- Robinson and Michael F. Brown. These are some books I have referred to on Post-Colonialism. Publications by the above mentioned authors are also mentioned here - Alatas, Syed Farid (2006) Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism. New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. Anderson, Chris ( 2009) Critical Indigenous Studies: From Difference to Destiny. In Cultural Studies Review: Volume 15: Number 2: September 2009. Anghie A. (2006) The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Post-Colonial Realities. In Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 739-753. Routledge Ashcroft B. and Kadhim H. (ed) (2001) Edward Said and The Post-Colonial. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Ashcroft B., Griffiths G. and Tiffin h. (1998) Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge (This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2001) Boldrin M and Levine D(2008). Economic and Game Theory: Against Intellectual Monopoly. Brown, Michael F. (2003) Who Owns Native Culture? Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cambridge University Press. NY Champagne, D. (2007) In Search of Theory and Method in American Indian Studies. In American Indian Quarterly. Summer 2001: Vol. 31. Issue 3 Childs P. and Williams R. J. P. An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory. London: Prentice Hall. Connell, Raewyn (2007) Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. New South Wales: Allen and Unwin. Fanon, Frantz (1952) Black Skin White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. Forwards by Ziauddin Sardar and Homi K. Bhaba. London: Pluto Press (new edition:2008) Fanon, Frantz (1963) The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press Feyerabend P (1975). Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. Humanities Press, London Gandhi, Leela (1998) Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New South Wales: Allen and Unwin. Gandhi, M. K. (1938) Hind Swaraj. Reprint, Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad. Gandhi, M. K. (1950) Satyagraha in South Africa, tr. Valji Govindji Desai, revised edn. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. (1997) Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. AnthonyJ. Parel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goonatilake, Susantha (2001) Anthropologizing Sri Lanka: A Eurocentric Misadventure. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hardt M. and Negri A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hassan, M. (2002) Velocities of Zero: Conquest, Colonization and the Destruction of Cultures. Toronto: TSAR Publications. Hokowhitu, B. (2009) Indigenous Existentialism and the Body. In Cultural Studies Review: Volume 15, Number 2, September 2009. Huntington S.P. (1998) The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster Kidwell, C.S. (2009) American Indian Studies: Intellectual Navel Gazing or Academic Discipline? In The American Indian Quarterly. Volume 33. Number 1. Winter 2009. Pp. 1-17. Loomba A. (1998) Colonialism/ Postcolonialism. New York: Routledge (Reprinted 1998, 2000) Mishra V. and Hodge B. (2005)‘What Was Postcolonialism?’ in New Literary History, Volume 36, Number 3, Summer 2005, pp. 375- 402. Published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Moreton- Robinson, Aileen (ed.), (2004) ‘Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous Representation’ in Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Perera, Nihal (1998) Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka. Colorado: Westview Press. Ramόn G. (2011) Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking and Global Coloniality. In Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World. California: eScholarship University of California. Said, E. (1993) Culture and Imperialism, London: Chatto & Windus. Said, Edward, W. (1978) Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. (Reprint 1995). Middlesex: Penguin Group. Shiva, V( March 9, 2011) Swaraj: A Deeper Freedom. In Navdanya International Website Last accessed- 25 October 2011- http://www.vandanashiva.org/?p=611 Shiva, V( September 12, 2010) Earth Democracy. In Navdanya International Website Last accessed- 25 October 2011- http://www.vandanashiva.org/?p=364 Young, Robert J. C. (2003) Postcolonialism- A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Richard Heider, Totally agree with you. I've developed a lot of these ideas in a new book (cheaply available on kindle) called Demography, Territory and Law, The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press. It's all about landrights and locally based power. It is helpful to read your statements here. Like what you say about money. So intuitively correct yet so hard to say against a tide of propaganda that money is everything.

I recommend the grouded theory to research your suty is a optimistic selection,because grouded theory is a appropriate quality method use into a full new study question,you need not any old theory to reference,you can use it to explore some new phonemonys,if you have no money to do reviews,internet is a good approch to collect what you want to get material,which include blog,bbs and pdf file from grassboot's opinion.

Hi Nisha, Which type of sources you are looking for, on design, sample size, sampling, questionnaires?

@Robert Bradfield, the article you refer to is "Let's take the con out of econometrics." It is by Edward E. Leamer of UCLA, and was published in the American Economic Review, Vol.73, pp. 31-43, 1983. Not only is 60-70% error too large to minimize successfully, denying its existence is just unscientific.

Thanks so much !!! It's helpful !!!

NGO's dedicated to humanitarian work are doomed to failure. Funding is not there. An NGO dedicated to developing markets in the private sector can succeed as did CARD.am , but practical experience and funding must be available to the NGO. This does not happen overnight, but when it does the results are excellent. See Millerbillr.com

Yes, it is correct women consult migrant husband to take decisions but leftbehind women involves more in socioeconomic activities than those with husbands at home.

I am of the view that management of the funds just like Alexander and Sussy have echoed is strategic to poverty alleviation. Very few MF schemes provide fund management assisistance to the illeterate and near illiterate borrowers some of whom percieve the funds as a piece of the national cake rather than an access to credit to be utilized and paid back.

Allow me to share my personal experience traveling to Mandangin Island (known also as Goat Island) just off the coast of Sampang, Madura, Indonesia. The people on Goat Island gather rain water, or use crude measures to desalinate sea water for daily purposes. Last year, the regional government decided to build a modern desalination facility to cater for the whole island (the plant began operating early February 2012) Sadly, the plant runs on diesel, and diesel needs to be transported by boat from mainland Madura (making it quite expensive). People are charged by the gallon of water from the plant, and the government subsidizes the remaining operational costs of the facility (a very large amount of subsidy is required for as long as the plant is operational) Right now, the plant runs on 50% capacity due to government budget restraints. People still turn to rain water and crude desalination methods to fulfill their daily needs. If only the government would use renewable energy to run the desalination plant (they could have used wind power and solar panels to power the plant, and provide electricity to the whole island) My point is: to provide water or improve access to water, we also need to think of other factors that affect the means to do so. Madura's regional government had not thought of the desalination plant thoroughly, thus their good will and efforts only bring more load to regional expenditure.

A properly funded NGO with technology specialists in food processing, marketing (not sales) and access to funding either by banks or grants can be extremely successful. See card.am for an example of perhaps the most successful NGO you will find as a case study. Also see millerbillr.com for the background study of card ngo