Author: Ranil Dissanayake - Aid Thoughts

📚 This is an archive of Aid Thoughts, a development economics blog that was active from 2009 to 2017. Posts are preserved in their original form.

Author: Ranil Dissanayake

127 posts

Ropey use of picture editor notwithstanding...

November 22, 2012

Obscure Causality

October 02, 2011

A Couple of Provocative Thoughts

September 15, 2011

A Little Too Idealized

August 31, 2011

What Now?

August 09, 2011

Property Righteous

July 29, 2011

In the midst of a bigger issue, some odd wording

July 21, 2011

Tomorrow Morning I Will Not Wake Up on the African Continent

July 12, 2011

On Rationality and Information

July 04, 2011

Dissing Development and Economics, Guardian Edition

June 15, 2011

Holy Fake African City, Batman!

June 14, 2011

Reading is Fundamental

June 10, 2011

Influence

June 08, 2011

Grow: The Good, The Bad and The Uncertain

June 01, 2011

Survival of the fittest? Assessing the value of multilateral aid

May 26, 2011

When the Levee Breaks

May 19, 2011

Sir Humphrey Appleby on the Perils of Survey Design

May 07, 2011

Short on words, but long on things to say

May 03, 2011

Decline and Fall

April 20, 2011

It’s not about the money

April 15, 2011

Everyone Says You’re So Fragile

April 12, 2011

Catalysis and Consumption

April 06, 2011

I’m thinking of a word. Can anyone guess what it is?

March 19, 2011

Result!

March 18, 2011

A Little More on Transformation

March 11, 2011

In a Perfect World…

March 08, 2011

More on Transparency

March 02, 2011

Nothing's Happening

February 18, 2011

Inquilab

February 15, 2011

Why do we need the Past?

February 11, 2011

Fuzzy Thinking: Friday Edition

February 04, 2011

Aid Thoughts is Danger, Achtung!

January 31, 2011

Lies, Damned Lies and Distorting Normative Categorisation

January 29, 2011

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES ABOUT THE RULES?!

January 26, 2011

Is this the City that Launches a Thousand Charters?

January 21, 2011

A Reminder

January 17, 2011

Revolution in Africa?

January 15, 2011

Meh

January 14, 2011

Pulling the Strings

January 12, 2011

Links about States

January 10, 2011

Wrong About China

January 10, 2011

Revolution, Oppression, Ornithology and a semi-Charter City

January 04, 2011

MGMT

December 07, 2010

On Entrepreneurs, Capitalism and History

November 23, 2010

It's Complicated

November 18, 2010

The Retired Dictators' Old Age Home

November 11, 2010

The Value of Conflict

November 04, 2010

Pigani kura, msipige vita!

October 30, 2010

How you gonna keep them down on the farm?

October 27, 2010

More on Mobile Phones for Politics

October 20, 2010

In Today’s Language: “Dudes, WTF? STFU and let me do my job!”

October 13, 2010

Hopeless?

October 06, 2010

Importing Capitalism

October 01, 2010

Five Years On – The Commission for Africa

September 15, 2010

A Human Thing

September 06, 2010

In which Andrew Mwenda might be getting what he wants... sort of

August 30, 2010

Religion and the Legal System do not Mix

August 20, 2010

We’ll always have Paris…

August 17, 2010

A Massive Blow

August 16, 2010

The More Things Change...

August 13, 2010

Keeping it in the Family

August 07, 2010

Workers

August 02, 2010

On the Weakness of States

July 27, 2010

The Power of Equality

July 19, 2010

White Noise

July 15, 2010

Unity and Fragmentation

July 08, 2010

Africa at the World Cup: First Impressions

June 16, 2010

More on Romer’s Great Folly

June 14, 2010

Africa’s 9th Millennium Development Goal

June 08, 2010

What Does Development Look Like?

May 28, 2010

In Need of Sexing Up: Audit

May 02, 2010

The Society Wedding of the Year

April 21, 2010

We should be Scared, but not of what we’re Scared of

April 15, 2010

New Political Strategies in East Africa

April 02, 2010

How to Fund an Elephant Hiding in Your Room

March 30, 2010

The Rhetoric of Change

March 27, 2010

Gideon Gono, be glad you're not North Korean

March 18, 2010

Motivation, Leadership and Ideology

March 16, 2010

Learning from a Different Angle

March 06, 2010

Update on Kapuscinski

March 02, 2010

Complexity

February 26, 2010

Incentives in Storytelling and Journalism

February 20, 2010

Heroes and Villains in the Same Body

February 14, 2010

The Prisoner's Dilemma and the Power of Ideas

February 06, 2010

Drop Haiti's debt? Why lend in the first place?

February 04, 2010

Ned Flanders goes to Haiti

February 02, 2010

Habari ya Umeme?

January 29, 2010

I don't normally link things like this, but...

January 24, 2010

Development as Anarchism?

January 22, 2010

“Ask not what you can do for your country…”

January 18, 2010

The Comforts of Daily Chaos

January 14, 2010

Street Fighting Men?

January 08, 2010

Hobsbawm on Violence

January 04, 2010

Power, Glory, Sound, Fury

December 23, 2009

Examining Aid Success Using an Octopus, Classical Economics and a Blog

December 18, 2009

A Short Post about Violence

December 11, 2009

Very Childish Tittering at a Very Serious Issue

December 08, 2009

There are many things in the world I hate. This table is one of them.

December 04, 2009

Why is Dead Aid is more important than Dead Capital?

December 02, 2009

A Very Exciting Post about Grey-Suited Bureaucracy

November 24, 2009

Is Aid Working? Is this the Right Question?

November 23, 2009

Owning Up to Ownership

November 19, 2009

Food for Thought

November 13, 2009

To Find Certainty upon the Dreaming Air

November 11, 2009

“Pay Me Money – Pay Respect; Don’t Insult My Intellect”

November 06, 2009

You can build it. But they still might not come.

October 30, 2009

Taxing Times

October 23, 2009

So Much for the Ten Year Plan...

October 20, 2009

Sound Familiar?

October 16, 2009

Game Theories

October 15, 2009

Living Just Enough for the City? Extended Thoughts on the Charter Cities Proposal

October 07, 2009

"That'll be two hundred trillion dollars and three cents, please..."

October 02, 2009

The More Money We Come Across, the More Problems We See…

October 01, 2009

The Contents of my Brain on a Friday (A Short Post)

September 25, 2009

Apparently, Not Everybody Gets This...

September 23, 2009

We Can Work It Out! We Can Work It Out!

September 15, 2009

In which we Tackle the Most Important Issue in Development

September 08, 2009

A confusion of nations; a violence of states

August 27, 2009

Dirty Words in Development: Incentives

August 24, 2009

"Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages, and even beyond..."

August 20, 2009

“Game the same. Just got mo’ fierce…”

August 18, 2009

A Culture of Development?

August 07, 2009

What We Talk About When We Talk About Aid

July 24, 2009

Aren't you SO GLAD Celebrities are saving Africa?

July 16, 2009

The primary aim of our development policies... is to stop people messing with my car.

July 13, 2009

It's not the size of the dog in the fight...

July 09, 2009

Have We Been Here Before?

June 30, 2009