Charles Kenny

What Do We Know About Economic Growth, Redux

What Do We Know About Economic Growth, Redux is an unpublished short paper.  It revisits the cross-country growth literature six years after What Do We Know About Economic Growth Or, Why Don't we Know Very Much?  Since then, even more evidence has piled up that growth is a complex, context-dependent process difficult to explain using linear growth models.  We do know that the best way to be rich today is to have been rich yesterday, however. That result has led some researchers to revisit Nineteenth Century explanations including God and superior breeding as the ultimate determinants of wealth.  But the 'truly ultimate' answer may as well turn out to be geography.

Baywatch: Bigger than Aid?

Baywatch: Bigger than Aid? is an unpublished short paper.  It ponders the economic impact of the television program Baywatch --an everyday tale of lifesaving folk-- on people in the developing world.  It concludes that, without considerably greater academic attention to the subject, we may never know the coefficient of Baywatch episodes on per capita income growth.

Ending Global Poverty Through Tax Breaks to Bill Gates

Ending Global Poverty Through Tax Breaks to Bill Gates is an unpublished short paper. Many developing countries have enacted or are considering subsidies and tax breaks for the ICT industry.  This paper argues that the economic justification for such favoritism is very weak.  It is based in part on material from Overselling the Web.  A version was published in The Globalist.

Charles Kenny

Charles is the author of Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More (Basic Books: 2011) and The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest is Great for the West (Basic Books: 2014). He spent fifteen years as an economist in the World Bank, and now works at a Washington DC think tank, the Center for Global Development, where he researches and advocates for policies governing investment, trade, technology and migration that would be good for both developing and industrialized countries alike. In addition, he has studied the economics of happiness. He has a history degree from Cambridge University Masters degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a PhD in Development Studies from Cambridge University.

Charles was a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and a columnist for Bloomberg Business¸ where he wrote on global development and its impact on the US. He has also written for outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Politico, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Time, the Guardian, Vox, Salon, the Economist and CNN.

He has presented at investor conferences including for Eurofinance and for Buttonwood Investments as well as at the Urban Land Institute, the World Economic Forum, Aspen Institute and Legatum Institute events. He has given talks at colleges and universities including Duke, Northwestern, Columbia, and Oxford. He’s spoken at public events including at Town Hall Seattle, Zocalo and Veerstichting. He has appeared on PBS' Ideas in Action, Gesprek Op 3 (Dutch TV) Al Jazeera, CCTV, Vox, Reuters TV and Bloomberg TV. On radio he has been a guest on NPR, KERA, Kojo Nnamdi, and the John Batchelor Show.

Charles can speak on a range of topics related to globalization and global progress and its impact on America, as well as global health and the economics of happiness.  He is an optimist about global progress and its positive impact on America. The product and beneficiary of transoceanic romances, he thinks globalization is an immense force for good, and offers Americans new opportunities to learn, work, invest and improve their happiness and wellbeing.

Here is a one-pager and a CV/resume.  Contact Charles.