Once again, I find myself called upon to critique the central tenets of welfare economics. Quarrelling with the giants of the profession is something I undertake with reluctance and humility. Alas, someone has to do it. That the so-called “evidence-based policy making” (RCTs and comparative cross-country regression analyses, and so…

I consider Ken Opalo, one of the leading political scientists on African legislative development, to be a friend. When I say friend I mean it in the African sense. Friendship in Africa is often characterized by astute, brutal, often unsolicited, questionable advise and incitement to overindulge. The greeting, “gosh, did…

Welfare economics has expanded and over-extended itself. The expansion has been at the expense of tackling the central problem of society: balancing the needs of the individual (i.e., freedom, autonomy, and so on) and the needs of society. The expansion has been justified by the assumption that questions surrounding quality…

The new economics of Stiglitz (and Greenwald, among others) has been touted as the inaugural shift away from the study of the world of “perfections” to the study of the real world as is. We owe to Stiglitz “imperfections” and “asymmetry” as tacit prefixes for information, competition, markets, and so…

Over the last few days (April 7–8, 2021), I have been attending the virtual 2021 Africa Evidence Summit. The summit is organized by Center for Effective Global Action ’s (CEGA) East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) Collaborative, Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA) among others. …

Before I begin, I must point out that this article does not argue the merits and demerits of the socialist system(s). My goal is to make the case that the US system is headed inexorably toward socialism. In order to accomplish this goal, I define socialism and point out why…

Most of the narratives of the last hundred years can be told from the perspective of American hegemony. …

I will be teaching a graduate level course Populism’s Rise in America from September 16 to November 4th, 2020 (Wednesdays 10–11:30 AM). The cost of the course is $55. The course is administered by Encore Learning. It is not too late to register. The course is based on a recent…

In “More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States” (2011), Imani Perry, attempts, above all, to provide a novel multidisciplinary method, centered on the cultural studies analytical framework, for studying race and racism. As I read it, the novel approach examines a…