Today’s Readings 1.2.2013

1. Jeff Sachs weighs in on violence for 2013 (HuffPo)
2. Challenges (and echoes of the past) as the US prepares to leave Afghanistan (NYT)
3. Beate Gordon, one of the principal authors of Japan’s pacifistic Constitution and an unlikely giant, dies at 89 (NYT) (Japan Times)
4. Guns and the emergency room (NYT)
5. Hard-line policy cutoffs encourage some businesses to restrain hiring, but the problem looks vastly overblown (Economix)
6. Focusing on health care costs causes more spending. Even more reason to switch to a Japanese style fixed pricing system. (Bloomberg)
7. Debunking gun control debate myths (Bloomberg) I also liked this idea of billionaires supportive of gun control buying out the Freedom group and dissolving it. (Bloomberg)
8. Is tobacco growing good for African economies? (Africa News)
9. Open data is democratizing, and necessary for development and public engagement (World Bank Blogs)
10. Wages increase in Tanzania, but costs are going up more quickly. I encountered this problem in Kenya. Failure to keep up could not only compromise development, but could also present incredible challenges to producing quality research. (World Bank Blogs)