On 7 May 2013 I presented Poor Numbers at the Africa Talks of the University of Birmingham. It was filmed and is now posted. http://youtu.be/ypGikIFf8LM
Year: 2013
Book talk at UMB in Ås, Norway
I present my book at noon on August 13 at the UMB School of Economics and Business, recipe and then on August 14, there is a public event in from 6 pm, organized by Vitenparken, called Perspektiver på Afrika. Poor Numbers will be available for...
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Economic Growth and Measurement Reconsidered in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, 1965-1995
That's the title of my next book. To be published by Oxford University Press. It is expected to be available in March 2014.
Poor Numbers featured in Nature’s Summer Books
In the short review, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, writes: This book offers fascinating, disturbing insights for anyone interested in the role of numbers in the social sciences. For those using global economic databases, it should be required reading. Read more here.
Reading Economics
My latest paper in the Canadian Journal of Development studies is a suggestion for how we can teach economics to interdisciplinary students in development studies. This is the abstract: What is the role of the economics discipline in teaching and studying international development today?...
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The Political Economy of Agricultural Statistics
My most recent paper now available in Early View from the Journal of Agrarian Change. The political economy of agricultural policies – why certain interventions may be preferred by political leaders rather than others – is well recognized. This paper explores a perspective that...
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The Lancet
Poor Numbers gets a favourable mention in The Lancet. The call it a superb book about development statistics Read the short review here.
Situational Analysis of the Reliability of Economic Statistics in Africa: Special Focus on GDP Measurement
That is the title of a recently released report from the African Development Bank. As you might guess the report has been motivated by the data quality concerns expressed in Poor Numbers but the preface oddly spends time not discussing data quality or the...
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IMF Regional Outlook Report for Sub-Saharan Africa May 2013
The IMF REO for Sub-Saharan Africa was released in May, no rx and it is good to see that the authors of the report considers the importance of base years in Box 1.1 on page 4: One factor raising concerns about the quality of...
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When A Poor Country Gets A Lot Richer
Planet Money, on National Public Radio spoke to me about Ghana, GDP revisions and statistics in Africa and summarized as: People talk about GDP as if it means something solid, as if it's a mathematically derived and agreed upon fact. But in conversations we've...
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