Today I attended the launch of the Charter for Compassion at the National Press Club.  Sponsored by TED and the Fetzer Institute, the Charter is being...

In 2007, GlobalGiving put in place what is perhaps the first philanthropic guarantee. If any donor is not satisfied with her donation for any reason,...

After the success of the first Development Marketplace at the World Bank in early 2000, Mari and I began sketching out additional competitions to extend the idea of creating a real marketplace for development.

One concept was to give vouchers to government officials and allow them to "shop" among...

This paper "Beyond Planning: Markets and Networks for Better Aid" by Owen Barder at CGD looks worth reading. Here is the summary:

The political economy of aid agencies is driven by incomplete information and multiple competing objectives and confounded by principal-agent...

"Growth is innovation, and you can't know in advance how to do the innovative thing, or else it wouldn't be an...

Here is a nice article by Dan Woods in Forbes about the popular concept of crowdsourcing.

In some ways he is constructing and attacking a strawman ("crowds create innovation"). But the article does clarify that the real value comes from OpenSourcing -- i.e., allowing pretty much anyone to...

Countries in every region of the world, from the poorest to richest...have all seen improvements in average levels of health and education over the past century.

An initiative called

"I wouldn't call it a competition, I'd call it a collective," Josh Potocki, the chef and owner of 158 Pickett St. Café in South Portland, said of the city's food scene. "We are all trying to raise the level of food in...

Global improvements in quality of life have been fostered by the spread of technology and ideas. Very cheap health technologies that can dramatically reduce mortality have spread rapidly across the world. The proportion of the world's infants vaccinated against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus -- the DPT shot -- climbed...

Marc Gunther's father died -- this appreciation by Marc is well worth reading.

Excerpt:

"I'm writing about him today because, despite an often-difficult relationship, his experiences inevitably helped shape my thinking on a number of topics relevant to this blog...immigration, globalization and religion, among them...My dad had...

There is a lot of schlock out there in book stores on the personal motivation and business shelves.  "If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It" is a typical title, with many books assuring you that if you just take the first step, the world will rise up to...

Nothing, as long as they don't monopolize control over decisions, resources, and information. Experts -- people with special skills, a lot of experience, and/or who have...

The aid industry has spent over $2 trillion since World War II to help spur the development of poorer countries, with not enough to show for it. Some people argue that the returns to the money spent are zero. Others argue that at least some of the aid money has...

One economist leading the effort to define that new paradigm is Andrew Lo, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who sees merit in both the rational and behavioural views. He has tried to reconcile them in the "adaptive markets hypothesis",...