Notes from my talk at last week’s launch of Jean Drèze’s new book, Sense and Solidarity. Has anyone written Jean Drèze’s biography? If not, why not? A fascinating figure, surrounded by myths and legends (did he really sleep rough in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the square next to LSE, when he…

Don’t forget to take the FP2P Readers Survey. Only takes 5 minutes, honest, and there’s prizes….. Being poor often means living with constant shame. Efforts to mitigate poverty must recognize the importance of self-respect — or risk perpetuating the problem they seek to solve. Excellent from Keetie Roelen at IDS …

OK, I’m probably going to regret this but… should I use Uber taxis? I got into a big argument about this in Canada last week, not that there was a uniform position — Ellie the Oxfam Canada campaigner sees Uber as the spawn of the devil, while Ifthia the fund…

When I visited Stanford recently at the invitation of Francis Fukuyama, I also dropped in on Walter Scheidel, an Austrian historian who has taken time off from his main interest (the Romans) to write a powerful, and pretty depressing, book on inequality. Like Fukuyama, Scheidel is a big brain who…

Huge thanks to everyone at Oxfam Canada, its Executive Director Julie Delahanty and the splendid Shirley Pryce (here’s the three of us) for making last week’s tour such fun, even though they made me dance onto the stage to Bob Marley’s ‘Stand up for your Rights’, get up at 4am…

Some more academic humour to add to the recent ‘what researchers say v what they mean’ post, (gets better as you go down the table) via Chris Blattman. From a 1990 ‘Economics to Sociology Phrasebook’ by two baffled economics students. It shows its age, but wears well, which is as much as any of us can aspire to.

Getting Francis Fukuyama to endorse How Change Happens was one of the high points of publication — he’s been a hero of mine ever since I read (and reviewed) his magisterial history of the state (right). Last week I finally got to meet him, when I took up an invitation…

Spent a fascinating day last week talking to staff at the Gates Foundation at its HQ in a cold, grey and sleety Seattle (felt quite at home). I presented the book in one of those ‘brownbag lunches’ that Americans love (although these days ‘clear plastic box lunches’ would be more…

Oxfam Humanitarian Policy Adviser Ed Cairns reflects on using evidence to influence the treatment of refugees Who thinks that governments decide what to do on refugees after carefully considering the evidence? Not many, I suspect. …