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These articles have appeared in newspapers worldwide, including:
2001, Venezuela
Accra Daily Mail
The Age, Australia
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DC Examiner, USA
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Duluth News Tribune, USA
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Frontier Post, Pakistan
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The Independent, Zimbabwe
International Herald Tribune, World
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Iowa City Press Citizen, USA
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Modern Ghana
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National Review, USA
Nature, UK
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New Times, Rwanda
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New York Sun, USA
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Al Rai Alaam, Kuwait
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Rwanda Times
Salisbury Review, UK
San Francisco Chronicle, USA
The Scotsman, UK
Siglo XXI, Guatemala
South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
The Spectator, UK
The Standard, Hong Kong
State Journal Register, USA
The Statesman, Ghana
Straits Times, Singapore
Taipei Times
Taiwan News
The Times, UK
Times Herald, USA
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Tucson Citizen, USA
Turkish Daily News
Wall Street Journal, World
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This page will host the archive of our soon to be launched criticalopinion blog ...

Environment

Agriculture in Africa

By Kendra Okonski
17 Jan 2008
In December, there was an interesting article in the International Herald Tribune, which discussed how crop yields in Malawi were improved through fertilizer subsidies (i.e. the title of the article, "Ending famine, simply by ignoring the experts" -- the "experts" being those who advised the Malawian government not to give such subsidies). However, the article doesn't examine the underlying causes of lack of means to acquire fertilizer, seeds and other agricultural inputs (etc)...

Trade & Development

Too much power in too few hands

By Denis Beckett
22 Jan 2008
For the moment, the news from Kenya is called "good": Odinga's confrontational rally shelved; Kibaki's non-speak policy softened; mediation filtering in. Things are not worsening...

Free India

By International Policy Network
4 Feb 2008
Our friend and colleague Barun Mitra, head of Delhi’s Liberty Institute, has a great piece in Monday’s LiveMint.  Free India’s Land Market contrasts India’s process of industrial liberalization with the heavy regulations that continue to stifle the land market.   The Tata Nano shows that India can be a contender on the world market. But, as Barun underlines, this manufacturing marvel will remain the exception unless further economic reforms are undertaken.   Barun particularly focuses on India’s archaic land laws where “restrictions such as zoning, land ceiling and land use laws, along with unclear titles and poor land records, grossly undervalue land prices.” In a country where 60% of the population still depends on agriculture these land laws are a barrier to development and economic growth - including agricultural improvement.   Reforming land laws would allow the poorest to use their assets to obtain mortgages and credit, to launch themselves into new competitive sectors and to lift themselves out of poverty...

Health

New report shows that donor-supported local drug production harms patients

By International Policy Network
5 Feb 2008
A new study (PDF link) published today by the Campaign for Fighting Diseases shows that local drug production is not always best. It shows that donor agencies such as the World Bank are trying to defy this basic law of economics by trying to foster local production in entirely inappropriate markets...

Trade & Development

Bill Gates throwing good money after bad

By Caroline Boin
7 Feb 2008
During the annual World Economy Forum in Davos, Bill Gates announced that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had set up a US$300 million fund to improve agriculture in the developing world, particularly Africa. For someone who built his fortune in free markets, it is odd that Bill Gates should believe that large amounts of money alone can fight hunger and poverty in the long-term.  William Easterly, author of "The White Man's Burden" and critic of foreign aid, says “a New-Age blend of market incentives and feel-good recognition will not end poverty...

Environment

New study: adaptation cheaper than mitigation

By Kendra Okonski
8 Feb 2008
In a new Cato Institute study, Indur M. Goklany uses cost information from the UN Millennium Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to evaluate the merits of adaptation and mitigation, two different approaches to climate change.  This cost information reveals that it is far less costly to reduce vulnerability to climate-sensitive problems (such as malaria and water scarcity) than to mitigate by reducing greenhouse gases...

Technology

The limits of leapfrogging (The Economist)

By Alec van Gelder
8 Feb 2008
A recent World Bank report on technology and development (The Economist, 7 Feb. 08, subscribers only) confirms what we've been saying for a while: without the right institutions to facilitate trade and development, such as legally-recognisable property rights and the rule of law, the gains from new technology in under-developed countries will be limited. It's true that mobile phones can stimulate more economic activity and help people help themselves.  But few other technologies, if any, are capable of replicating what mobile telephony has already achieved in countries where markets are rigged by powerful politicians and basic infrastructure remains inadequate for all but the ruling clique.

Health

Unintended consequences of aid

By International Policy Network
12 Feb 2008
Foreign aid programmes suffer from the curse of good intentions: while billions pour into high-profile drug-focused programs targeting malaria and Aids - in the US, 43% of foreign health assistance funds HIV efforts - less glamorous but more widespread problems such as maternal care and the public health infrastructure are overlooked. Dr. Santa comes to town, by Jon Entine:   It is the curse of good intentions...

Wealth equals health

By Philip Stevens
18 Feb 2008
A new report from British pressure group Save the Children claims that economic growth does not necessarily translate into a healthier population. The report cites examples such as India, which still suffers high rates of child mortality despite having undergone a prolonged period of economic growth. This report saysnothing new. Reading between the lines, it is a fairly standard call for governments to redistribute wealth and intervene more heavily in the economy, in order to iron out the inequalities which they perceive to perpetuate ill health. However, economic growth certainly does improve health of the individuals who are able to benefit from it, not least because it enables people to afford better sanitation and living conditions, which are the key to reducing most of the disease burden in less developed countries.  The point is that not everyone is able to share in economic growth, largely because of counterproductive governance.  For example, if the poor do not have property rights, it makes it impossible for them to borrow capital to invest in their own businesses and education and climb up the economic ladder.  Meanwhile, the poorest countries erect massive, costly regulatory obstacles to entrepreneurship, meaning that only the politically well-connected and rich can start businesses and create wealth.  And so on. Save the Children are right to point out that the poor are still suffering unacceptably poor health as a result of poverty.  Their diagnosis is way off the mark, because the redistributory measures they advocate would stifle economic growth and cut off the one mechanism that is vital for improving health. It would be more constructive for Save the Children to talk about empowering the poor instead of clobbering the rich.

Trade & Development

Food protectionism, prices and Doha

By Hannah Stone
19 Feb 2008
This Wall Street Journal news analysis argues that current high global food prices could prompt countries to cut import tariffs on agricultural products, thus making an agreement in the Doha trade talks easier – although there is no prospect of a cut in EU or US farm subsidies. The EU has temporarily removed all tariffs on cereal imports, while countries as diverse as Russia, India, and South Korea have cut tariffs on various agricultural imports...

Technology

Will the internet kill off Hollywood?

By Barun Mitra
29 Feb 2008
A long article in The Economist (21 Feb. 2008) analyses the premature reports of the death of Hollywood, saying it can overcome piracy and adapt to  new media.  Barun Mitra comments:- The Gutenberg press did not make handwriting obsolete but actually contributed to expanding literacy...

Health

US FDA BRINGS GOOD HIV/AIDS DRUGS TO THE POOREST

By Jeremiah Norris
7 Mar 2008
CLICK HERE FOR FULL ANALYSIS at the Campaign for Fighting Diseases   In the global fight against HIV/AIDS, there is perhaps no greater single contribution to public health than the US FDA Fast Track Process: the World Health Organisation had been giving “prequalification” approval to untested medicines on the grounds that it was better to give poor drugs to the poor than nothing. In fact, those drugs could be harmful to patients as well as helping the disease mutate.     As the prequalification scandal broke in 2004, the FDA offered free testing to any foreign drug being sold as a generic: this meant better drugs in general for the poor but also meant that the huge US PEPFAR programme could buy these approved drugs in the sure knowledge they were getting the right products. Now, 70% of PEPFAR beneficiaries, or about half of all HIV/AIDS patients, get these FDA-approved generics.   What the FDA and the reformed WHO prequalification system have achieved is only an indication of what more can be done for the benefit of poor patients. Jeremiah Norris Center for Science in Public Policy, Hudson Institute, Washington DC.

Trade & Development

Food crisis

By Jasson Urbach
12 May 2008
Prices of staple foods have risen by more than 50 per cent over the last six months, causing riots from Cameroon to Burkina Faso, Haiti and Egypt and threatening to push 100 million people into poverty.  Developing countries complain about the farm subsidies (some 29% of farmers’ income in the OECD) in developed countries and rich countries complain about the trade barriers put up by developing countries against manufactured goods: but the biggest barriers of all are between developing countries, particularly in Africa, protecting inefficiency, high prices and corruption. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently condemned protectionism: “International grain markets must remain open and functioning normally… beggar thy neighbour food wars cannot, in the long-run, help anyone.” The share of developing countries in world trade grew from 29 per cent to 37 per cent between 1996 and 2006, while trade itself was doubling – a massive increase that could be improved by more trade, held up by the stalled Doha Round at the World Trade Organisation. While humanitarian aid saves lives in disasters, development aid simply strengthens trade-distorting policies and corruption in both developing and developed nations. READ the full article at  http://www.freemarketfoundation.com/.