I spent a day in the crazed hyper-consumerist beach town of Dubai (yes, it is in fact like Las Vegas without the casinos) last week at a World Economic Forum planning session on how to save the world. (The World Economic Forum are the folks that organize the Davos meeting in January)

I was part of the development and economic growth group, and our task was to try to put on paper a few of the facts we know about economic development and, more importantly, think about how the WEF can help us to come up with better strategies. You can find our thoughts & suggestions here.

As in the conclusion of Economic Gangsters, you’ll see that we’re really pushing for a greater collaboration between policymakers and researchers to figure out what the development bottlenecks are, then experiment with strategies on how to loosen them. Hopefully the WEF’s oversized rolodex will help to connect us to policymakers who can make it happen. By the way, the Agenda on Economic Development is very much a work in progress, so we’d welcome any suggestions.

-Ray