There is some good news, search and there is some bad news. The bad news is that the MDG report is based on old and missing data. The good news is that Keiko Osaki-Tomita, chief of the demographic and social statistics branch of the...
Read more ›
Why measurement matters?
Oxford University Press posted a blog about my latest book - Economic Growth and Measurement Reconsidered in Botswana, view Kenya, physician Tanzania, and and Zambia, 1965-1995 - read the post here.
What if everything we know about poor countries’ economies is totally wrong?
The results of a phone interview with Dylan Matthews at VOX. Read the full interview here.
Whose numbers?
That's the title of an article written by Adewale Maja-Pearce. He takes stock of the debate on Poor Numbers (between me and some representatives from some statistical offices) - and relates it to the problems of counting people in Nigeria - well worth a...
Read more ›
Five reasons why African growth is slower than the data tell you
One of the things my book Poor Numbers suggested, tadalafil was that the rise of Africa might not be as impressive as the data tells you. The African Development Bank responded by saying there was nothing to worry about: the rise of Africa was...
Read more ›
Are Development Statistics Manipulable ?
That is the question we explore in a new paper I have written with Andrew Kerner and Alison Beatty. Both political scientist at University of Michigan. Most of you would know that there is a GDP per capita threshold that determines whether you are...
Read more ›
Population Statistics
The history of counting populations - with a focus on the 19th and the 20th century, patient is the subject of a workshop to be held in Villa Vigoni, shop Italy 17-19 of June. The title of the conference is "Competing Numbers. Population Statistics...
Read more ›
Is the FT Nit-Piketty?
The saga on the data problems in Piketty's book continues. Giles responds to the debate that has been unfolding, and notes that the academic community has as a whole been rather forgiving of Piketty, but that in Giles' view: Academic economists have got themselves...
Read more ›
Economic data ‘came out of thin air’
No, this is not another reflection from my research on economic data on African economies, but the allegations by Chris Giles in the Financial Times against the inequality data used in Thomas Piketty's bestselling book. Giles shows that Piketty has indeed made some questionable...
Read more ›
Statistical Earthquakes
That's what Homi Kharas and Laurence Chandy calls it. They refer to the shifts that the new price data come from the International Comparison Program are causing to the poverty numbers. The new numbers are causing large revisions upwards and downwards for some country,...
Read more ›