Charles Kenny: E. Economic Development

A CGD Working Paper with Sogtao Duan and Zack Gehan. This paper tests the hypothesis that the growing proportion of World Bank contracts granted to Chinese firms, particularly in the infrastructure sector, may undermine results by exposing projects to lower standards of work. We find that such concerns are unfounded. We create a dataset of World Bank projects that merges data on contracts under the project and project features and outcomes. We examine the association between contracting features and outcomes including the proportion of contract values awarded to non-borrower firms from major supplier countries. We find that the share of project contract value awarded to Chinese firms is not a correlate with better or worse project outcomes. More broadly, borrower country features explain some variance in outcomes but indicators including sector, year, the proportion of contracts awarded competitively, and the proportion that are for goods or civil works have little explanatory value. This (non-causal) evidence is consistent with the idea that World Bank procurement rules broadly work to ensure poor contracting choices are not a major determinant of project outcomes.

Two Futures for Global Development

A CGD note. “Two Futures” presents two scenarios—a reasonable best- and worst-case version of the world in 2050 based on the culmination of a wide-ranging CGD research project that forecasts demographic and education trends, sectoral change and the decline of global manufacturing jobs, climate change impacts, and the changing face of development finance and aid—and examines the policy choices that might take us to each of them.

An End to Extreme Poverty? (Or at Least the Extreme Poverty Line)

A CGD Working Paper. The World Bank’s extreme poverty line has been a huge marketing success, motivating widespread discussion of global poverty. At the same time, it has growing weaknesses. For measuring progress, we want a fixed-definition indicator. The extreme poverty line is not that. For measuring or guaranteeing access of a basic bundle of “economic goods and services” we want to measure (potential) access to those services. The extreme poverty line doesn’t do that. For targeting assistance, we want an indicator that influences distribution. The extreme poverty line has largely been ignored in that regard. A multidimensional indicator tied to the Sustainable Development Goals might be a worthy replacement. I discussed the paper with VoxDev.

The Implications of a Declining Labor Force

A CGD Working Paper with George Yang. This paper explores the potential implications of a declining absolute labor force on economic outcomes. It explores key macroeconomic variables during periods of negative and positive prime age (15-65) population growth (PAPG). These variables include 10-year bond yields, consumer price indices, female labor force participation, GDP, government expenditures, government revenue, and stock returns. We find effects may include lower economic growth, declining government revenues, flat or declining labor force participation, and lower investment returns. As negative PAPG is spreading worldwide, this portends a less favorable economic outlook.

The Future of Global Development and Implications for Aid

A speech at the Oxford Martin School. Richer countries are rapidly ageing and productivity is stagnating. Meanwhile, industry - the motor for rapid economic development in the past - employs ever fewer people worldwide. And yet there is still hope for greater, and shared, global prosperity. Declining working age populations in rich countries are demanding ever-more services. A rising, increasingly educated working age population in lower income economies can provide them. This is an immense, mutually beneficial opportunity to create a new development model, and a new model for development assistance. Aid for economic growth traditionally tried to foster the expansion of export-oriented industrial employment in recipient countries through physical investment. In the future, it can foster the expansion of expatriate employment through skills partnerships.

The Future of Official Aid Flows

A CGD Working Paper with Zack Gehan. In absolute dollar amounts official development assistance (ODA) reached an all-time high in 2021. But as a percentage of recipient country GDP, aid (and broader public investment) flows have been declining for some time. This paper looks at the scale of ODA and official financial flows (including multilateral flows) in comparison to donor and recipient GDP, and suggests some scenarios for the range of flows going forward, as well as examining the potential share of resources taken by climate finance. It concludes that there is a non-trivial chance that ODA for non-humanitarian and climate finance falls in absolute terms over the coming years and that aid becomes increasingly focused on richer countries. In terms of increasing aid available, the most promising strategy for bilateral ODA flows may be to increase the generosity of traditional donors but for broader finance for international development, and particularly multilateral finance, increasing the range of donors may have a larger payoff. This will be necessary, because demand for multilateral finance is likely to rise.

Is Manufacturing Destiny? On the Dynamics of Future Sectoral Shares and Development

A CGD Working Paper with Brian Webster and Ranil Dissanayake. We develop a simple empirical model of sector employment and output shares which, coupled with long-term projections of GDP per capita, provide indicative projections of the evolution and peak of manufacturing in lower income countries to 2050. These indicative projections suggest that cross-country income convergence will continue despite manufacturing peaking as a share of output. This forecast might seem implausible: countries have historically developed and become rich by shifting the composition of their production into manufacturing (and eventually out of manufacturing and into services). But we argue there is reason to think that this is a realistic possibility. First, we argue that there is the potential for a significant relocation of the global manufacturing base in the next two decades that are not fully captured in forecast estimates. Second, notwithstanding this potential relocation, we argue that the role of manufacturing as the unique path to prosperity has likely been overstated. We make the case for cautious, conditional optimism.

The UK’s Strategy towards Development Finance Institutions

This was an evidence submission to the UK Parliament's International Development Committee. I argue that while BII (British International Investment) has been a leader amongst development finance institutions (DFIs) in important respects, and has a strong staff and management focused on improving development outcomes, it still suffers from constraints that limit the impact of DFIs as a whole in supporting sustainable development, especially in the poorest countries. Like other DFIs, BII is unable to mobilize significant capital by crowding in private finance to its investments, its efforts to create new markets for private finance have had limited success and its use of subsidized capital has been inefficient.

Scenarios for Future Global Growth to 2050

A CGD Working Paper with Zack Gehan. We develop scenarios for the shape of the global economy in 2050 building on a simple regression of the historic relationship between current income and lagged income, demographic features, climate, and education, using the coefficients to develop a “central” forecast and error terms to set high and low bounds on country outcomes. Scenarios examine combinations of low and high outcomes for different country groupings. “Central” forecasts suggest slowing per capita growth rates for high income countries as well as many upper middle income countries including China, with continued global income convergence. Scenario exercises suggest the potential for considerable variation in outcomes including global share of the economy and voting power in international institutions..

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

I should note and apologize for two errors: my grandfather fought in France and Germany, not Italy, during World War Two, and one cup of Frosties has eleven grams not eleven ounces (!) of sugar.

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.

Measuring the Development Impact of the IFC and Development Finance

A working paper with George Yang for CGD. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) including the International Finance Corporation (IFC) tend to look at their development impact using project-level indicators of outputs and employment impacts. Evaluation of the development impact of DFIs should try to estimate the difference between how the country and sector is with the DFI investment com-pared to how the country and sector would be absent the investment. Using a database of IFC and other investments and sector outcomes covering infrastructure and ﬁnance, we ﬁnd the quantity of IFC investment was signiﬁcantly associated with larger sums of future non-IFC private investment, but it is difficult to ﬁnd evidence of an impact on outcomes.

Official Development Assistance, Global Public Goods, and Implications for Climate Finance

A policy paper for CGD. Is research into a Covid-19 vaccine a suitable use of Official Development Assistance (ODA)? What about finance to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Both are clearly good ways to spend money with considerable benefits to developing countries, but is that enough? This note attempts to tease apart a discussion of “is this ODA” from “is this a global public good?” and then separate out again “is this ODA and/or a global public good?” from “is this an efficient way to spend money?” It uses that discussion to frame conclusions about how and what financing of GPGs should be counted as ODA and takes a specific look at the issue of climate change in that regard.

What to Do When You Can’t Prove DFI Additionality

A note for CGD with Todd Moss. Answer: competition, make loans less attractive than market, use transparent benchmarks.

Direct cash payments work. We’re about to see how

In the Washington Post on the COVID-19 stimulus component that is giving cash directly to people.

The Real Immigration Crisis

For Foreign Affairs. The next several decades will see populations in Europe and North America age and shrink as people have fewer and fewer children. That trend will hurt economic growth and dynamism and leave too few workers for every retiree. Robots and artificial intelligence will not save rich countries from the economic consequences of a shrinking population. Nor, without a dramatic reversal of current policies toward immigrants, will a flow of workers from elsewhere. To avoid sclerosis and decline, the rich world will have to compete to attract immigrants, not turn them away.

Can the US Development Finance Corporation Compete?

A CGD Policy Paper. The new US International Development Finance Corporation (USDFC) will be considerably larger than its predecessor, and it will also be more focused on low and lower middle income countries. It will have new tools to deliver but face expanded competition. The major challenge to the DFC is not Chinese investment (which largely funds projects ill-suited to support from the DFC), but other development finance institutions, many of which are deploying increasing quantities of subsidized capital to attract project sponsors. It is not clear that there are sufficient suitable deals in the shrinking set of low and lower-middle income countries to absorb DFI development finance, and the USDFC could lose projects to subsidized finance from elsewhere if this turns out to be the case. Given that, it should be a priority for the United States to agree rules with other donors that prevent development finance institutions from competing on the basis of subsidy. The new DFC needs increased capacity to deliver deals: both the tools provided by the BUILD Act which are being constrained by the administration and the staff and budget to actively build a pipeline of projects. A considerably bolstered administrative budget may involve reducing –potentially to zero—the profitability OPIC traditionally enjoyed.

Automation and AI: Implications for African Development Prospects?

A CGD note. I'm comparatively optimistic about automation: Africa needs more of it, the rate of automation does not appear to be rapid enough to suggest short-term dislocation, manufacturing jobs have moved rather than gone away and services offers another technology-enhanced route to development.

When Does “What Works” Work? And What Does that Mean for UK Aid R&D Spend?

A note for CGD with Euan Ritchie and Lee Robinson. This paper argues there is a (fuzzy) spectrum of development procedures, for some of which global innovation, evaluation, or “best practice” can be informative, for some of which local evaluation or experimentation can be useful, and for some of which perhaps only practical experience and local wisdom can help. That there is a spectrum of intervention types and research opportunities, and that local evidence is often required, has implications for the kind of research that UK aid can usefully support as part of its R&D program and where that research should happen. In turn, that suggests a reform agenda for the way UK ODA for R&D is currently spent.

Marginal, Not Transformational: Development Finance Institutions and the Sustainable Development Goals

A policy paper for CGD. Development finance institutions have positioned themselves as key agencies to help the world meet the Sustainable Development Goals. It is doubtful that they can deliver. This paper outlines the challenges facing DFIs in achieving (anywhere near) such an expansion in their impact, particularly in infrastructure and particularly in the poorest countries. It notes that private investment in SDG priority areas is low in the poorest countries, and the record of private investment in rolling out services is mixed. These issues are linked in part to significant supply side constraints based on country characteristics. DFIs do better than the market as a whole at investing in challenging infrastructure–but not by much. And while the scale of their ‘leverage’ in terms of attracting dollars that would otherwise not have been invested is hard to determine, in the poorest markets in infrastructure it is certainly low. Finally, DFIs and donors more broadly have long tried to improve deal flow with limited success, suggesting there are few deals on the margin of occurring which only require small extra incentives to materialize.

UK Research Aid: Tied, Opaque and Off-Topic?

A policy paper for CGD with Lee Robinson and Euan Ritchie who did nearly all of the work. The UK has considerably increased the amount of aid it spends on research in recent years. The information associated with the majority of this research aid is vague, raising questions about transparency. A large amount of the research is financed using an allocation mechanism that effectively ties it to UK institutions. There are also questions as to the poverty focus of some of the research conducted, given the explicit intention of the UK government to find existing activity to reclassify as ODA following the legislating of the 0.7 percent target. We suggest reporting reforms that will increase transparency and allow greater scrutiny of the way UK research aid is spent. We also call for the UK to live up to its reporting to the OECD that all British aid is untied.

Fighting crony capitalism at the World Bank

In The Hill, railing about the the IDA Private Sector Window.

A Radical Proposal To Fight Poverty In The Developing World: Tax The Rich More Than The Poor

A piece for Vox on the barely progressive arguably regressive tax and spending systems of poorer developing countries.

Speeding Sustainable Development: Integrating Economic, Social, and Environmental Development

A CGD Working Paper on policy coordination to help meet the SDGs. TLDR: Important, but hard.

This paper discusses the role for policy integration to speed progress towards delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is required because the goals set very ambitious targets for progress across a range of interlinked areas, encompassing both synergies and tradeoffs. Lessons of policy integration at the national level suggest that it is usually at best partially successful, requiring significant commitment from the highest levels of government. Policy integration regarding foreign affairs has proven even more challenging. This paper suggests a mechanism for prioritizing coordination and the use of coordination tools including regulation, safeguards, taxes, and subsidies. It also suggests re-orienting ministerial responsibilities where possible from input control to achievement of outcomes as well as tools to promote innovation by subnational governments and the private sector.

Two papers on the IFC and other Development Finance Institutions

Inside the Portfolio of the International Finance Corporation: Does IFC Do Enough in Low-Income Countries? with Jared Kalow and Vijaya Ramachandran is a CGD Policy Paper. Between 2001 and 2016, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) committed $127 billion through 3,343 projects across the developing world. During this period, the bulk of IFC’s portfolio has moved lower middle-income countries to upper middle-income countries. Between 2001 and 2004, IFC’s portfolio was dominated by lower-middle income countries. Between 2013 and 2016, Turkey, China, and Brazil received $3.8, $2.9, and $3.0 billion in investments respectively, making them some of the largest recipients of IFC investment. The portfolio shift from lower-middle to upper-middle income countries is in significant part due to recipient countries graduating out of lower-middle income status. Our analysis shows that IFC’s portfolio is not focused where it could make the most difference. Low income countries are where IFC has the scale to make a considerable difference to development outcomes. These are the countries with the greatest need for investment and (implicit) guarantee mechanisms for private investment. And these are the countries receiving the bulk of advisory services support. While an excessive portfolio shift might imperil IFC’s credit rating, the evidence suggests that there is considerable scope for increasing commitments to low income countries without significant impact to IFC’s credit scores.

Comparing Five Bilateral Development Finance Institutions and the IFC with Jared Kalow , Ben Leo and Vijaya Ramachandran is another policy paper. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs)—which provide financing to private investors in developing economies—have seen rapid expansion over the past few years. A recent estimate is that annual commitments from DFIs as a whole grew from $10 to $70 billion between 2002-2014. Many DFIs have ambitions to play an even greater role going forward, continuing expansion and working more in fragile states. DFIs remain a comparatively under-studied set of development institutions in terms of their activities and impacts. Much of the information about DFIs is presented in forms that make aggregation and comparison difficult and time-consuming. This paper describes and analyses a new dataset covering the five largest bilateral DFIs alongside the IFC which includes project amounts, standardized sectors, instruments, and countries. The aim is to establish the size and scope of DFIs and to compare and contrast them with the IFC.

Meeting the Sustainable Development Goal Zero Targets: What Could We Do?

A working paper for CGD with Mallika Snyder. The Sustainable Development Goals are an ambitious set of targets for global development progress by 2030 that were agreed by the United Nations in 2015. Amongst the 169 targets are a number that call for universal access, universal coverage, or universal eradication. These include ending extreme poverty and malnutrition alongside preventable under-5 deaths, ending a number of epidemics, providing universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, primary and secondary education, a range of infrastructure services, and legal identification. These have often been labeled “zero targets.” A review of the literature on meeting these zero targets suggests very high costs compared to available resources, but also that in many cases there remains a considerable gap between financing known technical solutions and achieving the outcomes called for in the SDGs. In some cases, we (even) lack the technical solutions required to achieve the zero targets, suggesting the need for research and development of new approaches.

The IMF: Crawling the Walk on Gender?

A CGD policy note with Tanvi Jaluka and Michael Brown on IMF Article IV negotiations since gender was declared 'macrocritical.' In short, there has been increased attention to the issue as reflected in word counts and discussion of women’s labor force participation, but there is still a long way to go.

Estimating the SDGs' Demand for Innovation

Estimating the SDGs' Demand for Innovation is a CGD Working Paper written with Dev Patel. How much innovation will be needed to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals? We model shifts in the cross-country relationship between GDP per capita and achievement in key development indicators as “technological gains” and convergence to the best performers at a given income as “policy gains.” Assuming that the United Nations’ income growth projections for low- and middle-income countries are met, we estimate the residual demand for technology and policy innovation needed to meet several critical targets of the SDGs. Our results suggest that (i) best performers are considerably outperforming the average performance at a given income level, suggesting considerable progress could be achieved through policy change but that (ii) the targets set in the SDGs are unlikely to be met by 2030 without very rapid, ubiquitous technological progress alongside economic growth.

Why America's overseas aid agency needs reform

Time to revisit the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. For the Economist.

Trump's Flawed Global Vision

For US News and World Report --the world is getting more peaceful and collaboration is increasingly important to US and global well-being.

Political polarisation has grown most among the old

For the Economist. Old people stand in the way of policies that can deal with the problem of too many old people.

Gender Laws, Values, and Outcomes: Evidence from the World Values Survey

A CGD Working Paper with Dev Patel. This paper analyzes six waves of responses from the World Values Survey to understand the determinants of beliefs about women’s roles in society and their relationship with the legal system and outcomes. Using survey data for 300,000 individuals, we find that characteristics of an individual’s home country only explain about a fifth of the variation in values, and a single individual can report strongly different norms about women’s equality across different domains. There is a strong correlation between norms, laws and female labor force participation and between norms and the proportion of legislators who are women—but not between norms and relative female tertiary education. There is some suggestive evidence that laws may be more significant than norms in determining female employment outcomes, but the available evidence does not allow for strong causal statements at the cross-country level.