This is part two of a three-part post on agriculture economic development. Read part one here. In the previous post, I explained my experience working in agriculture. In this one, I will talk more generally about the challenges of agriculture economic development in general. Needless to say, the challenges are Read more…
This is part one of a three-part post on agriculture economic development. After the better part of a year working for Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF), a microfinance institution in the Philippines, I decided to head west again – specifically, to West Africa. In late 2010, I moved to Read more…
“What does it mean to say that one life is “worth more” than another? Aren’t all lives infinitely precious? Well, no, at least not in any sense that’s at all useful for making hard policy decisions about things like job safety and access to medical care. Economists measure the value Read more…
A few weeks ago, the class of 2012 graduated from university and stepped out into the world. And one commencement speech, in particular, has been attracting a lot of attention for its candor and unexpected message: that the success of the graduates sitting in the audience is due, in large Read more…
Just shy of three years ago, this blog came into existence. It had a very simple layout and was located at joshweinstein.wordpress.com. Over time, it grew in both scope and traffic, precipitating the move to a more professional layout and a re-branding as Develop Economies, a name I came up Read more…
In the last five posts, I have described in detail how Bridge International Academies has created a scalable model that can profitably serve the poorest segments of the population. They use data to make decisions, processes to ensure quality, and technology to streamline systems. In other words, they act like Read more…
The following is part five of a five-part post about education in development and Bridge International Academies. In the last post, I talked about how Bridge is able to leverage its economies of scale to both utilize huge amounts of data to make decisions and, once those decisions are made, Read more…
The following is part four of a five-part post about education in development and Bridge International Academies. The first and most obvious criticism of the Bridge model of education is that a scripted curriculum creates a non-dynamic learning environment for children. The western model of education is presmised on the Read more…
The following is part three of a five-part post about education in development and Bridge International Academies The Bridge model is a fundamentally libertarian idea. It is premised on the belief that school choice is a good thing. Many organizations, including development titans like UNICEF, believe that education should be Read more…
I think that one of the reasons that Bridge has been so successful at innovating has been its willingness to bring in a multidisciplinary team to run the show. People like me, who have no background in education, but a good deal of experience in other areas, bring fresh ideas Read more…
