On Rawls and Nussbaum

This paper was delivered at a 2008 conference in Leuven on Martha Nussbaum’s book Frontiers of Justice. The paper was to be published in the conference proceedings, but somehow that never happened.

Lessons of the Moldova ARIA Project

This paper, coauthored with Vladimir Kreacic, describes a remarkably successful World Bank project in the poorest of the countries of the former Soviet Union. It contains many lessons for development projects elsewhere.

Four Enterprise Creation Schemes: Putting Jane Jacobs to Work

This note presents policy ideas about entrepreneurship and enterprise creation derived from or, at least, inspired by Jane Jacobs’ writings.

Micro-Finance and other Development Fads

These are the slides for a 2012 talk given at USC along with Milford Bateman and Lamia Karim on mircofinance.

Pragmatism versus Economics Ideology

This paper contrasts some of the wisdom of philosophical pragmatism with the social engineering ideology implicit in the conventional economics profession. The principal case example is the transition strategies of Russia versus China.

Investment Climate for Who?

This is one of my few writings on globalization. It started as a memo for the World Bank Chief Economist that “complicated” the issue of “improving the investment climate.”

Parallel Experimentation

This is an unpublished working paper about the process of parallel experimentation which I take to be a process of multiple experiments running concurrently with some form of common goal, with benchmarking comparisons made between the experiments, and with the “migration” of discoveries between experiments wherever possible to ratchet up the performance of the group.

Knowledge and Ignorance in the Post-Socialist Debates

These are the slides for my talk in the invited lecture series, The Specter of Ignorance, at the Korbel School of Denver University May 2012.

It’s not the What but the How that counts

These are slides from a lecture sponsored by The Philanthropic Enterprise given in New York October 2012.

Good Intentions: The Dilemma of Outside-in Help for Inside-out Change

This article in the Non-Profit Quarterly applies some of the key lessons from development philosphy (in my Helping book) to the community development work of foundations.