Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson is a contributor to Planet Money, a co-production of NPR and This American Life. He also writes the weekly "It's the Economy" column for the New York Times Magazine.
His work has won several major awards including the Peabody, DuPont-Columbia, and the Polk. His radio documentary on the housing crisis, "The Giant Pool of Money," which he co-reported and produced with Alex Blumberg, was named one of the top ten works of journalism of the decade by the Arthur L. Carter of Journalism Institute at New York University. It was widely recognized as the clearest and most entertaining explanation of the roots of the financial crisis in any media.
Davidson and Blumberg took the lessons they learned crafting "The Giant Pool of Money" to create Planet Money. In two weekly podcasts, a blog, and regular features on Morning Edition, All Things Considered and This American Life, Planet Money helps listeners understand how dramatic economic change is impacting their lives. Planet Money also proves, every day, that substantive, intelligent economic reporting can be funny, engaging, and accessible to the non-expert.
Before Planet Money, Davidson was International Business and Economics Correspondent for NPR. He traveled around the world to cover the global economy and pitched in during crises, such as reporting from Indonesia's Banda Aceh just after the tsunami, New Orleans post-Katrina, and Paris during the youth riots.
Prior to coming to NPR, Davidson was Middle East correspondent for PRI's Marketplace. He spent a year in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2003 to 2004, producing award-winning reports on corruption in the US occupation.
Davidson has also written for The Atlantic, Harper's, GQ, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. He has a degree in the history of religion from the University of Chicago.
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Much of the world's cotton comes from Texas, even though it's not a particularly great place to grow the crop. Big subsidies and heavy technology and R&D spending have helped the United States dominate the global cotton trade for two centuries. -
Foreign ministers and officials from the World Bank and IMF fail to reach an agreement on debt relief. But outgoing World Bank President James Wolfensohn is hopeful that ministers laid the groundwork for a future breakthrough during a series of meetings in Washington this weekend.
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The World Bank's international board of directors approves Paul Wolfowitz as the bank's next president. Wolfowitz is now undersecretary of defense and was an architect of the war in Iraq.
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China's cheap labor has sparked a booming manufacturing sector and a threat to U.S. factories and plants. But NPR's Adam Davidson writes that faith in good old American ingenuity lends some manufacturers hope that they will be able to compete successfully against the Chinese.
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The U.S. trade imbalance with the rest of the world, especially China, is forcing American manufacturers to find ways to boost their exports in order to stay afloat. NPR's Adam Davidson visited two factories in Erie, Pa., that are focusing on niches that cheap labor in China cannot easily fill.
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Aid workers struggle to help millions of survivors of the tsunami that swept across South Asia two weeks ago. Pneumonia has emerged as a major threat in the aftermath of massive flooding that made drinking water scarce. In Banda Aceh, many schools will reopen Monday. Hear NPR's Adam Davidson in Banda Aceh.
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In Indonesia's Aceh province, relief efforts focus on providing uncontaminated water to hundreds of thousands of survivors. Meanwhile, tons of food sits in warehouses, and more vehicles are needed to transport it. NPR's Adam Davidson reports.
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One week after a tsunami killed tens of thousands in coastal areas of Indonesia's northern Aceh province, relief workers are only beginning to make headway. The scale of the disaster, and the need for aid, is staggering -- there are no vehicles to carrying needed supplies, and aid workers fear mass starvation if food supplies aren't distributed in the next several days. NPR's Adam Davidson reports.
