Morten Jerven Morten Jerven

A reading list for the data revolution

If you have sat through more than two conferences and workshops on the post-2015 development agenda or the Sustainable Development Goals (or tracked #SDGs or #data2015 on Twitter) you will be aware that there is a certain repetition of ideas. The same soundbites are...
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Are Development Statistics Manipulable ?

That is the question we explore in a new paper I have written with Andrew Kerner and Alison Beatty. Both political scientist at University of Michigan.  Most of you would know that there is a GDP per capita threshold that determines whether you are...
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Statistical Earthquakes

That's what Homi Kharas and Laurence Chandy calls it. They refer to the shifts that the new price data come from the International Comparison Program are causing to the poverty numbers. The new numbers are causing large revisions upwards and downwards for some country,...
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World poverty halved?

The implications from the new 2011 PPP benchmarks from the ICP numbers may mean a huge reduction in the poverty head count in the world. Sarah Dykstra, Charles Kenny and Justin Sandefur at the Center for Global Development draw some implications from thethe new...
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GDP in Ghana – Two lines

As I have discussed elsewhere (here, here and here), in 2010, Ghana changed its base year for GDP calculation from 1993 to 2006, and the cumulative effect of change in methods, base year and adding new data on economic activities meant that total GDP...
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