Ideas to Action:

Independent research for global prosperity

Tag: Data

 

The Global Fund Opens Up

5/17/13
Amanda Glassman

 

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria recently made it easier to find out where their money is going with the launch of a new, online grant portfolio portal.   This welcome and timely tool comes amid the Global Fund’s ambitious replenishment process that asks donors for $15 billion over the next three years to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria – a considerable amount that totals twice the Fund’s average annual disbursements over the past decade.  So we’re pleased to see the Global Fund take such a significant step to show stakeholders how these investments are being spent and what they are achieving.   And as avid users of Global Fund data ourselves, we’re particularly pleased to see a few features of this new tool:

 

Seeing Like a State in Africa: Data Needed

5/17/13
Justin Sandefur

I'm a little late to this, but recently Chris Blattman set off an interesting debate by criticizing Bill Gates' recent interest in the quality of GDP statistics in Africa.  Chris worries that Gates is falling into the trap of "seeing like a state" -- i.e.,  from the top down, obsessing over national statistics -- rather than a bottom-up entrepreneur who, presumably, couldn't care less about aggregate GDP numbers.   

Saving Lives by Visualizing Deaths

3/22/13
Denizhan Duran

My recent wonky indulgence has been exploring the visualization tool of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), which produces stunning graphs that display a snapshot of our planet’s disease burden across 5-year intervals from 1990 to 2010. The global and regional results of the study were launched in December 2012 in a special issue of The Lancet, and there are several country-specific papers expected this year.

Institute of Medicine Pushes PEPFAR on Data Collection, Disclosure

2/25/13
Mead Over

The Institute of Medicine, the prestigious health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, has weighed in with a massive report on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the multibillion dollar US effort to confront the epidemic in the developing world. The evaluation validates PEPFAR’s enormous reach during its first 10 years and identifies concrete actions that Congress and PEPFAR should take for the program to become more sustainable moving forward.

What Is Microfinance?

10/11/10
David Roodman

I'm seen as an expert on microfinance. I'm writing a book about microfinance. I blog about microfinance. I go to microfinance conferences. So you'd think I know what microfinance is. But I'm not sure I do.

How would you define "microfinance"? Google, helpful as always, lists definitions like these:

Financial Access Studies Clash over Whether Glass is Half Full or Half Empty

11/6/09
David Roodman

The biggest controversy to hit microfinance since the Compartamos IPO erupted this week as easygoing, bookish economist types at two East Coast microfinance research institutions dueled over the longstanding empirical question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. CGAP researchers, citing industry-consensus best-practice guidelines, accentuated the positive in observing that about 2.5 billion adults worldwide have accounts with formal banking institutions (about 2.5 billion do not). Academic researchers at the NYU-based Financial Access Initiative adopted a more skeptical stance, pointing out that Half the World is Unbanked.

OK, so I won't quit my day job for nightclub comedy.

Two new studies are indeed out tallying how many people have credit or savings accounts with commercial banks, savings banks, post office savings banks, cooperatives, government development banks, and microfinance institutions. The FAI report is short and sweet and draws on data from Patrick Honahan, who is now governor of Ireland's central bank. In contrast, the CGAP report harvests new information collected by surveying financial regulators in 139 countries.

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