It’s evolution, baby – how institutions can improve without critical junctures

The Multidimensional Poverty Index provided for the UNDP (United Nations Developed Program) looks beyond monetary income and shows how poverty is the experience of multiple and simultaneous deprivations. People can fall behind in terms of health, education, and living standards, with challenges including lack of access to drinking water, sanitation, adequate nutrition, or primary education. Those who are deprived of at least one third of the index’s components are classified as mult ...

En distinguant trois économistes reconnu(e)s pour leurs travaux sur l'approche de la pauvreté, les Nobel 2019 ont redonné ses lettres de noblesse à l'économie du développement. Mais, cette nomination c'est aussi la validation d'une méthode d'analyse, jusqu'alors essentiellement utilisée en médecine, méthode d'expérimentation aléatoire, encore appelée randomisation. C'est, donc, un nouveau tournant que prend la recherche économique, celui d'une démarche empirique commencée il y a une ...

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson caught policymaker’s attention to the critical role of institutions for development. Their work gives too much emphasis to the prospects of revolution, however. A reading of the World Bank’s World Development Report of 2017 points to directions that all actors involved in the process, whether domestic or international, elite or non-elite, can take to improve societies. ...