Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'economic development'

Progress and Its Enemies

What ultimately drives economic growth and development? Is it culture, institutions, norms, innovation, technology, or some combination of all these things and other factors? Is there any way in which we can organize societies that will allow them to escape mass impoverishment? Continue Reading...

Does Microfinance Help the Poor?

This week at the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics, contributor James Clark asked, “Can microfinance really help the poor?” His conclusion: yes microfinance can work, but with certain caveats. In the last decade, microfinance has become a popular strategy in poverty alleviation, yet many economists and philanthropists often call its effectiveness into question. Continue Reading...

The Most Important (Good) News Story of 2015

From mass shootings to terrorist attacks, political incompetence to racial unrest, there has been no shortage of bad news stories in 2015. Death, destruction, and divisiveness tend to dominate the news cycle, leading us to despair over the direction our world is headed. Continue Reading...

Why Poverty Figures Can Be Misleading

What if told you that between 90-100 percent of Americans are living in “healthcare poverty.” You would probably object and say that while the country certainly has a healthcare crisis, my numbers are surely inflated. Continue Reading...