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This is an unpublished working paper about the process of parallel experimentation which I take to be a process of multiple experiments running concurrently with some form of common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.

Towards a Theory of Unhelpful Help

These are the slides of a 2009 lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Frankfurt Germany.

Renaissance Humanism and the Post-Socialist Transition

This paper compares some of the themes in the “renaissance” of the post-socialist transition with the Renaissance itself–along with some personal reflections on my experiences in the transition.

Slovene Privatization ESOP

This 1991 paper, coauthored with Uros Korze and Marco Simoneti, described the type of ESOP model in the Mencinger-Korze-Simoneti draft privatization legislation.