Good news from Zimbabwe

Well... sort of...
And:

"Life in Harare is great - a lot better than in the past - for me at least.
If I want to buy sugar, soap or bread, I no longer have to travel to South Africa.
I can go to the local supermarket.
The trip to to South Africa was 20 hours by bus - and another 20 hours back."

How Economics can get you a date

By Tim Harford, my favourite pop Economics writer:

Moving

I have just left UFPel for a position as professor of Economics at the Center for Engineering, Modeling and Applied Social Sciences at UFABC, São Paulo, Brazil.

The legacy of slavery

Nathan Nunn has published amazing papers on the economic legacy of slave trade for the development of Africa (his paper with Diego Puga is impressive as well). Now his paper with Leonard Wantchekon shows that "individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade today exhibit less trust in neighbors, relatives, and their local government".

HT Claudio Shikida.

If Pollock were a graph designer

Forget Andrew Gelman and his clean graphs. The new style is Pollock-esque.
Congratulations to Ian!!!

Brave New (Virtual) Worlds

an estimated 400,000 Asian workers are now employed in gold farming in a trade worth up to £700m a year.

Edward Castronova has more to say about this.
HT Boing Boing.

Correlation and Causality

Here.
(put the mouse over the image).

Inequality in Latin America was low

Stop the press and read Jeffrey Williamson's paper. I haven't read it yet, but I am wondering if the results hold if you consider the concepts of inequality possibility frontier and the inequality extraction ratio.