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Financial Inclusion and Democratizing Finance – II

10 June 202219 June 2022

Blockchain, Economics, Human Development, ICTD, Innovation

Where are the banks? It seems paradoxical that the mainstream history of micro-finance/financial inclusion does not consider banks. After all, banks are supposed to “bank the unbanked.” So banks are not only missing from such a narrative. They are also Read more

Financial Inclusion and Democratizing Finance – I

30 May 202213 June 2022

Raul Zambrano

Blockchain, Economics, Human Development, ICTD, Social Innovation

From Noise to Signal A couple of weeks ago, El Salvador’s CryptoPopulist President shared on social media news about an international “Bitcoin” meeting his country was hosting starting May 16. He also listed the names of the 44 entities participating Read more

Open Data and Big Pharma

15 May 20221 June 2022

Raul Zambrano

Economics, Innovation, Open Data

In 1980, the U.S. Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act that modified patent and trademark law by allowing universities and small businesses to own inventions created under the funding of the Federal Government. Its core idea was to expedite the commercialization Read more

The Environment and “Socialist” States

1 May 202211 May 2022

Raul Zambrano

Climate Change, Economics, Governance, Human Development, Inequality

Thirty-six years after it first broke the news for the wrong reasons, Chernobyl is back in the headlines thanks to the horrible and absurd Russian invasion. Sixteen months before the well-known Soviet nuclear meltdown of 1986, a plant located in Read more

ICTs and Development Theories – II

15 April 202227 April 2022

Raul Zambrano

Economics, Governance, Human Development, ICTD

Linking ICTs to development External researchers and experts poking for the first time into ICTD might assume that the field has, 30 years after its birth, a cohesive theory on how ICTs impact development. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Read more

ICTs and Development Theories – I

1 April 202227 April 2022

Raul Zambrano

Economics, Governance, Human Development, ICTD

ICTD overview The field of ICTD first saw the light over 30 years ago1 Selected references are provided at the end of the 2nd part of this post. Its overall scope is ambitious as it covers several sectors and thematic Read more

More Bitcoin Inequality

15 March 20225 April 2022

Raul Zambrano

Blockchain, Inequality, Innovation

While still prone to seemingly unpredictable dynamics, Bitcoin’s price seems to have found a new center of gravity in the last year. Since February 2021, the Cryptocurrency has oscillated around 4ok per unit, give or take. It peaked at 67.5k Read more

State Capacity and Digital Technologies – I

1 March 202222 March 2022

Raul Zambrano

Economics, Governance, Human Development

To the Moon and Back It was my elder sister’s 25th birthday when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. We watched the unprecedented event on B&W TV – our grandma openly expressing total skepticism. We then went out for a Read more

Hacking Public Policy Making with AI

15 February 20221 March 2022

Raul Zambrano

Artificial Intelligence, Crowdsourcing, e-governance, Human Development

Modern Evidence-based Policy Making (EBPC) has been around for 25 years, imported into the mainstream from the health sector and its success with randomized controlled trials. The latter has now spread to many other sectors and research areas. A few Read more

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