This paper distills and extends recent research on the economics of human development and social mobility. It summarizes the evidence from diverse literatures on the importance of early life conditions in shaping multiple life skills and the evidence on critical and sensitive investment periods...

In the last decades, NGOs have become an important participant in the work of political organizations (e.g., national authorities, the EU or the UN). This development brings many opportunities and also some challenges, including discourse failure which is one of the topics discussed in this...

This short essay on financial speculation with agricultural commodities offers (1) a sur-vey of the real economy factors that caused recent hunger crises, (2) an overview of academic research on the impact of index-based financial speculation on agricultural futures markets, and (3) a discussion...