This striking WB table, showing that transport costs 57% of a Sowetan's wages, misinterprets the original result.

In the original paper, average out-of-pocket transport costs are 17% of wages. The 57% figure includes the cost of time—still sadly high.

dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/hand…

It's hard to have a conversation about why African farmers are poor without confronting this graph.

Is there a better way to honor Duncan Green's #globaldev blogging legacy than dedicating a farewell post to him & his amazing work?!? Happy retirement, Duncan, the digital development community will miss you! aidnography.blogspot.com/2024/04/farewe…

The latest evidence on this is that in rich countries from 1870-2015, housing has actually been the best-performing asset class, with a real return of 7%, beating stocks. You also need to include the rental yield, not just price appreciation.

from Jordà et al (2019)

IMF I want to note that these are our (@juhreka13 , Emily Oehlsen, Verónica C Pérez ) calculations, which you asked us for on the condition that you’d cite us.

'I would like to see a building, say, the Empire state, [with] the name of every bricklayer, the name of every electrician, with all the names... Everybody should have something to point to.' -- Mike Lefevre, a steel mill worker from Chicago, Studs Terkel's Working.

My rendition

Excited to read (and hopefully review) this!

Singapore is known worldwide for two things: its fabulous wealth and its authoritarian party-state. Less well-known is how one UN-appointed Western advisor had a hand in creating both.

My 🌐 latest post 🌐 explores Albert Winsemius's legacy in Singapore: global-developments.org/p/you-can-even…

Not normally a podcast guy but the 99% Invisible interview with AOC on The Power Broker is a must-listen (starts at ~111min).

Remarkable to hear a rising star of US politics discuss urban design + theories of politics/change in a thoughtful, low-BS way.

99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-po…

Apologies, this one is a little dark.

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It turns out the reason Eurostat has rents for various cities is they use it to calculate pay differentials for EU officials who live outside Brussels. The sample is deliberately unrepresentative and aims to be 'comparable with those actually occupied by officials in Brussels'

Thread: After more than a year of work, we have now launched dataforindia.com, a public platform that seeks to expand access to Indian data for everyone, and deepen the understanding of the country that can come from this data