Ocampo for president; IMF in Judea; de Soto is wrong on property rights; where are legal systems pro-poor?; Afghan girl-boys; oil rush in East Afica; No Women, no Peace: links I liked

Interesting – Jose Antonio Ocampo is running first in a Guardian online poll on who should be the next president of the World Bank. Voting closes in about 12 hours

An IMF report on Judea, circa 33 AD. Easter satire from Bill Easterly (keep clicking to expand).

Another research nail in the coffin of Hernando de Soto’s influential work on the need to get informal firms to go formal (see The Other Path). After paying a bunch of informal firms in Sri Lanka to register, researchers went back regularly for 31 months and found ‘firms were no more likely to obtain credit, participate in government programs, or get government contracts. However, we do find formalizing led to firms doing more advertising, keeping receipt books, and having more trust in local government.’

The Economist summarizes an intriguing new World Bank paper that tries to calculate the impact of legal systems on inequality in five countries. It finds that the law is strongly pro-poor in India and South Africa, roughly neutral in Brazil and Indonesia, and strongly anti-poor in Nigeria. The Authors blog about their findings here. [h/t Swati Mishra]

Tahir Qadiry discusses ‘the long-standing Afghan tradition of Bacha Posh – disguising girls as boys’. [h/t Kate Cronin-Furman]

‘”We will make sure that the oil in Kenya is a blessing for the people of Kenya and not a curse,” Kenya’s energy minister Murungi said, in reference to other countries whose people remain mired in poverty despite having struck oil.’ Kenya strikes oil and another experiment with the resource curse begins. The Economist reviews East Africa’s new hydrocarbon ‘el Dorado’.

No Women No Peace. Nice campaign video [h/t Anne-Katrin Arnold]