Charles Kenny

Climate Change May Have Only Small Effects on Long-Run Global GDP. So What?

A CGD note. The long run global estimates of climate impact on GDP are small. That hides the fact that there are big volatility shocks and impacts are concentrated in poorer countries.  And that matters a lot for policy response. 

Should Infrastructure Investors Care About Human Capital?

A CGD Working Paper with George Yang.  There is considerable interest in increasing private participation in infrastructure to meet the twin goals of climate mitigation and development in low- and middle-income countries. At the same time, this infrastructure needs to make returns in order to be financially sustainable. This paper reviews evidence on the economics of infrastructure investment and the role of human capital and uses two approaches to provide additional evidence on the link between human capital and infrastructure returns: (i) using estimated returns to individual World Bank infrastructure projects and their relationship to country levels of human capital and (ii) broader approaches linking the macroeconomic impact of infrastructure investment in the presence of varying human capital stocks.

America Shouldn’t Copy China’s Belt and Road Initiative

A co-authored Foreign Affairs piece with Scott Morris. The US should leave infrastructure to the World Bank and 'compete' bilaterally with China on human rather than physical capital.

Technology and Development: An Exploration of the Data

Co-authored CGD working paper with George Yang. We present data on the global diffusion of technologies over time, updating and adding to Comin and Mestieri’s "CHAT" database. We analyze usage primarily based on per capita measures and divide technologies into the two broad categories of production and consumption. We conclude that there has been strong convergence in use of consumption technologies with somewhat slower and more partial convergence in production technologies. This reflects considerably stronger global convergence in quality of life than in income, but we note that universal convergence in use of production technologies is not required for income convergence (only that countries are approaching the technology frontier in the goods and services that they produce).  Dataset here.

5 Reasons to Be Optimistic About 2022

For Foreign Policy. More equitable vaccination, new vaccines, more sustainable power, India will be the world's largest country, renewed economic growth and some hope for tigers.

Why Do Some Donors Give More Aid to Poor Countries?

A CGD note.  Donors vary considerably in how much they focus their spending on poorer countries. There are good reasons to believe that the utility-maximizing allocation is focused heavily on the world’s poorest countries, where an extra dollar is likely to make the greatest difference to welfare. However, donors may also allocate resources towards humanitarian causes: particularly seeing disadvantaged subgroups within countries including refugees fleeing violence or natural disasters as deserving particular attention. In addition, donors might believe their aid will achieve more in democratic or ‘well governed’ countries. Perhaps less legitimately, donors might prefer to allocate more aid to countries with closer political or economic ties: ex-colonies, allies, supporters in the UN, or trade partners. Similarly, they might choose to focus their aid on the ‘near abroad,’ as a tool of diplomacy or reflecting higher immediate self-interest. This paper uses some of the indicators highlighted as significant by that literature to examine if they can help explain the variation in poverty focus of donor aid.

A Dark Pandemic Year Could Still Portend a Brighter Future

Maybe... for Foreign Affairs.

Your World, Better

Your World, Better: Global Progress and What You Can Do About It is a book written for the smart and engaged middle school student.  It looks at how America and the World has changed since the reader's parents and grandparents were young: what has happened to health and wealth, homes, school and work, rights and democracy, war and the environment, happiness and depression.   It talks about the things that have gotten better, the sometimes-intensifying challenges that remain, and what readers can do about them. 

Your World Better is optimistic, but it doesn’t shy away from the considerable problems we face: from inequality through discrimination and depression to climate change and infectious threats.  It is meant to encourage kids to help make the world better themselves: tip them from a sense of powerlessness toward action, not into complacency.

The pdf of Your World Better is available to download here for free.  Or you can buy a kindle version for 99 cents or a hard copy for $8.10 on Amazon (or six pounds on UK Amazon here).  Any author royalties from those sales will be donated to UNICEF (so far, a bit more than $800 has been donated, thanks!). I talk about the book to Marian Tupy for the Human Progress podcast and to two (fantastic) middle schoolers for NPR.  Then I did a Slack chat with five middle schoolers for Slate. A CGD discussion about the book and talking to children about progress is here. And here's a fifteen minute video about the book (or try it on Youtube).  I am happy for the *text* (not pictures) to be copied or redistributed in any medium, and/or remixed or transformed for any purpose, with attribution.

"Everyone, no matter how old, or how young, should read this. I’m sending to grandkids and their parents." --Nancy Birdsall

"Great read for middle school kids who want to understand how the world is getting better -- and can become even more so!" --Parag Khanna

"How can you pass up a free book?! And one that is so relevant for today? If you know a middle school student or teacher, pass this along! Incredibly fresh and honest." --Karen Schulte 

"Kids are taught that everything's getting worse and we're all doomed--factually incorrect, and a message that leads to cynicism & fatalism, not constructive action. An antidote: Charles Kenny's new Your World, Better..." --Steven Pinker

 

Degrowth in the Age of Dickens

For The Breakthrough Journal.  In his Principles of Political Economy, JS Mill wrote a chapter “Of the Stationary State.”  In it he argued that the need for economic growth in the richest countries had run its course. “It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.”  I discuss that idea and some possible lessons for the modern degrowth movement.

We Should Be Spending More of Available Aid in Poorer Countries, Not Less

A working paper for CGD.  In the context of an ongoing debate around the role of aid in middle income countries, it is worth revisiting the discussion around aid allocation in general. Accounting for the (disputed) impact of policy and declining marginal returns of aid flows, using a measure designed to focus aid on those in extreme poverty or an approach that accounts for the declining marginal utility of income consistently suggests aid is currently insufficiently focused on the poorest countries. To be equally effective as spending in poor countries, any aid used in upper middle-income countries needs the potential to generate returns that are multiples of those expected in poor countries or have considerable spillover effects in those poorer counties.