I get a lot of emails asking me which organizations they should give money to for the Haiti disaster relief. While I have my personal preferences, this should really be a personal decision.

But you’re the expert! You know better than I who is doing good work and who isn’t!

Well, yes and no, but that’s besides the point. While I am on the ground here, certainly, and do have both positive and negative experiences with various aid agencies, giving money is a personal act, and if you’re serious about helping Haiti, you must be prepared to do a little work.

But I just want to give money. It’s not realistic to expect everyone to do research about which organizations are bad and which ones are good! People don’t have time for that.

I would argue that’s precisely one of the problems with international development today: donors have not yet demanded the kind of transparency and rigor from the organizations they donate money to, thus eliminating any incentive for an organization to be transparent and rigorous in its efforts.

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I’m posting a paper I wrote for Ricardo Godoy in the Spring of 2009 for his course, “The political economy and measure of income inequality, social capital, and empowerment in developing countries.” If the title of the course seems a bit long to you that’s because it is. It’s ridiculously long. I’ve never seen a course with a title like that.

Anyway, you can download the full PDF, or read it here. Enjoy.

PDF Download: Development, Aid, and Inequality: Relationships in Haiti 1987-2007

It should be noted that, while this paper makes some interesting points, and I was pleased with a lot of the graphs (scroll down to the end if you want to skip the writing), ultimately this paper was a failure in that it did not prove its central thesis, which is that external shocks such as hurricanes cause more foreign aid, which in turn creates greater inequality in Haiti. I got the first connection between external shocks and foreign aid, but could never really establish a strong link between foreign aid and inequality. Still, the paper does have value. I hope.

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