I'd like to remind people of this incredibly important paper debunking negative stereotypes about China's rise in Africa. It finds that Chinese firms in Africa have a positive impact on economic development, capacity building, and innovation.

Contrary to what Noah is saying, outrage is a core component of social progress. Examples: the British suffragette movement, the US civil rights movement, and the South African anti-apartheid movement. In fact, all these movements were characterised by civil disobedience.

Thanks Keno Haverkamp for a very nice review of my book, the Future of the Factory, in Journal of Development Studies (JDS). Keno analyses key arguments and evidence really nicely, so his review also provides a great overview of my book. tandfonline.com/eprint/IQ6ESIY…

I remember thinking how Graeber's concept of 'bullshit jobs' played out perfectly during the pandemic. Who were the essential workers? They were definitely not bankers, management consultants, or corporate lawyers. RIP David Graeber, we miss your insights.

I'm sorry but Norway is not killing it, we're one of the world's largest oil exporters. We love to portray ourselves as sustainable but our economy is completely dependent on oil. We're the definition of green hypocrisy.

Why is this phrased in a celebratory way? If anything, this chart explains the lack of economic development in Africa. The chart shows that African countries are lead exporters only in categories of primary commodities. This is exactly what needs to change.

Weird method. Say I want to write a review on the state of economics. I choose all articles with the word 'economics' in the title, and then - surprise surprise - I find most of them are reviews. What an indictment of the state of economics: 'they are only writing reviews'!

People seemed to appreciate this reading list, so I'm posting it again (with a small update). It's the 10 key books in the reading list for my course, "Development Economics", which I teach at Cambridge.

This criticism of degrowth is problematic. Degrowth calls for a reduction in energy and resource use in global North, not in the global South. In that sense, you'd expect more scholars in the global North to write about degrowth.

This hit piece has already come under heavy criticism and for good reason. The methodology really is extremely flawed. The authors look only at studies with "post-growth" or "degrowth" in the title, but this ignores much of the key empirical work that has shaped and advanced