Political Economy of Development

Bill Easterly at his best:

Professor Auerswald (sorry for my teasing you in this post), you do seem to have a theory of social change in which promises about government intentions to someday change priorities are a major force. My experience of many years of observing such statements is that they are more like New Year’s resolutions that are repeated every year.

It's true policy change is slow--and at the margin people's votes and lobbying are probably not worth much. But I think people undervalue the average return to lobbying. If I had to guess, signing a ONE petition is worth at an order of magnitude more to human welfare than doing a "development project."