Are Trills the next big thing in development?

The strategic use of 'Trills', or shares in GDP, is an idea proposed by Mark Kamstra and Robert Shiller that could help re-allign incentives and fight rent seeking in both rich countries and poor. It is getting some excited attention in the blogosphere these days - what do you think?

The women effect redux and other unrelated links

Thanks Anita for finding another interesting article discussing the pitfalls of female centered development projects.

And while we are on the gender topic...here is an interesting new paper on women, transactional sex and social insurance. Using diaries of sex workers in West Kenya, the authors find that regular clients are a main source of insurance against income shocks.

A forthcoming book by Abhijiit Banerjee and Esther Duflo offers some critical insights on the main challenges faced by development policy today. Not sure about the release date but it should be soon...