Global Economic Issues

Interesting article discussing the impact of access to mobile phones on development.

Mobile phones: weapons against global poverty

Here’s a new article from CNN by Jeffrey Sachs about population growth.

With 7 billion people on earth, a huge task before us

We’ll discuss the famine in Somalia over the next couple weeks but these articles/video from CNN.com really do a good job of explaining the problem.

Famine turns to health crisis in Mogadishu

U.N. far short of dollars to deal with Africa famine

Born into hunger (video)

Want to help? Here are a couple NGOs with good reputations that accept financial donations:

• AmeriCares
• Catholic Relief Services
• Doctors Without Borders
• International Medical Corps
• International Rescue Committee
• Mercy Corps
• Oxfam America
• Save the Children
• UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency
• UNICEF
• World Food Programme
• World Vision

An interesting article in Foreign Policy:

One of the more interesting sections of the article:

In one study conducted in two regions of China, researchers offered randomly selected poor households a large subsidy on the price of the basic staple (wheat noodles in one region, rice in the other). We usually expect that when the price of something goes down, people buy more of it. The opposite happened. Households that received subsidies for rice or wheat consumed less of those two foods and ate more shrimp and meat, even though their staples now cost less. Overall, the caloric intake of those who received the subsidy did not increase (and may even have decreased), despite the fact that their purchasing power had increased. Nor did the nutritional content improve in any other sense. The likely reason is that because the rice and wheat noodles were cheap but not particularly tasty, feeling richer might actually have made them consume less of those staples. This reasoning suggests that at least among these very poor urban households, getting more calories was not a priority: Getting better-tasting ones was.

For those curious, the CAI has posted their 990 Tax Forms (and other financial documents) for every year since the organization’s inception online.

CAI Financial

They’ve also posted a new response available here.