A photo-essay on economic development - Ghana.

10 months ago, I boarded a plane on a cold winter day in New York. When the doors opened on the other side of the Atlantic, Ghana greeted me with tropical heat. As the first stop on a multi-country project intended to study cultural differences and their impact on firm productivity, Ghana was a useful introduction to the challenges and joys of fieldwork. Life in Accra is difficult to predict, making the average day at once complicated and interesting. A power outage may derail plans for a day of data collection or a traffic jam in the city may prevent research participants or surveyors from arriving on time (or at all). Even finding drinking water and showering, mindless tasks one rarely considers in the US, require the newcomer and the Ghanaian alike to economize their cognitive resources. An impromptu dance party or an unexpected invitation to a funeral represent the flip side of this coin, one in which the unpredictable can be either serendipitous or disruptive. Keep reading . . .