Charles Kenny

What Drives Broadband Traffic?

A paper written with Zack Gehan and Robert Kenny, forthcoming in Telecommunications Policy. Worldwide there is an ongoing policy and regulatory push to make very high speed broadband available as widely as possible. Underlying the policy interventions to support higher speeds is an implicit assumption that higher speeds will enable different (and socially valuable) use. In this paper we empirically test whether higher speed lines are associated with greater household data usage in the UK. We find that after allowing for demographic factors, higher speed in fact has a very limited relationship to traffic. This suggests that mid-speed broadband is not in fact a constraint on household usage (as measured by traffic), and thus the benefits of policy interventions to support higher speeds remain somewhat speculative.

IFC 3.1?

A CGD note.  The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is in the process of a considerable transformation, designed to grow its operations and expand their development impact. This paper discusses the rationale and elements of a continuing change agenda, focused on ensuring the IFC best serves its ultimate clients --people in developing countries.

Aid-Financed Mechanisms for Technology Development

A CGD policy paper with Euan Ritchie and Lee Robinson.  This paper outlines the broad rationale for approaches beyond patents to support the development of technologies specifically useful to developing countries and the role for aid-funded approaches within that. It outlines some of the mechanisms that can be used and summarizes their strengths and weaknesses. The exercise suggests the need for an ecosystem of support mechanisms, and a concluding section asks how the United Kingdom’s official development assistance (ODA) for R&D could better support such an ecosystem. The UK government has committed to establishing a new institution to fund non-ODA R&D, modelled on the Advanced Research Projects Agency. We talk about how a similar model would work for development-orientated research, and what amendments may need to be made to ensure ODA-funded R&D reaches its potential.  (see also the policy brief on our conclusions of the research overall.  Bottom line: ODA for R&D is good, how the UK is spending it is bad).

Gender Equality in US Think Tank Leadership: Data from Tax Records

A CGD note with Julian Duggan.  Across the 71 leading US think tanks for which we have data, we find that the average share of trustees and directors that were women was 23 percent, the average share of highly compensated employees that were women was 30 percent, and highly compensated women were paid 92 percent of what highly compensated men were paid. 

New procurement guidelines shed light on secrecy versus public right to know

A piece for the Contracting Excellence Journal with Caroline Anstey, summarizing The Principles on Commercial Transparency in Public Contracts.  

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.

Why life expectancy in America is down again

Opioids and a lagging public health response.  In The Economist.

Is political polarisation cutting Thanksgiving dinners short?

Bipartisan dinners are shorter.  In the Economist.

America’s unfair voting laws

ID laws and other restrictions on voting don't lower voter fraud but they do disenfranchise minorities.  For the Economist.

Is it getting harder for American women to combine work and family?

For the Economist: expectations are up, support for parents isn't.

Women, especially younger ones, could swing the mid-terms

Women don't like Donald Trump.  They also appear energized to vote.  For the Economist.

Why people vote against their economic interests

Bemoaning the victory of culture war over class war in US politics.  In The Economist.

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.

Gun politics after Parkland

Has anything changed in the gun control debate?  For the Economist.

How Republicans embraced identity politics

The party of white people can't accuse Democrats of being all about identity politics.  For the Economist.

The outsize influence of the gun lobby

A small business with big business clout.  For the Economist.

Locking up more people does not reduce crime

Marginal impact of imprisonment on crime in the US is zero.  Me in the Economist.

Irrationality at the Voting Booth

People think they can judge the character of politicians, but they confuse luck for skill.  That was a particular problem in 2016.  For The Economist.

The Rumors [of the Death of Liberalism] Have Been Exaggerated

A review of The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce and The Fate of the West: The Battle to Save the World’s Most Successful Political Idea by Bill Emmott, for Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Racist behaviour is declining in America

Trump's pandering is to a declining and small minority.  For The Economist.

Jeff Sessions orders tougher drug crime charges

For the Economist.  Evidence suggests the policies will increase murder rates.

Why America Has a Trust Problem

Don't blame the Donald for this, at least. For the Economist.

It's Not Perfect, but the Un is a Good Deal for 'Merica

For Ozy. Yay UN.

Why think-tanks are concerned about a Trump administration

A piece for the Economist's Democracy in America blog. 

Why Obama Is Selling Africa Short

A column for Bloomberg on Obama's visit to Africa.  There had better not be any  socckets on display.

The Good Old Days Were Fine. These Days Are Better

Anyone who wants to go back to the 50's is old, white, male, hetero and (still) stupid. For @BW.

India's Problem Is Rape, Not Uber

Sadly, women get raped in regular taxi cabs, too.  For @BW.

Why America Needs an Exit Tax

Because it does such a lousy job of taxing wealth at home.  For @BW.

Does More Education Lead to Less Religion?

Nope.  For @BW.

Why Private Donations Aren't Helping America's Poor

Donations are small, aimed at rich people's charities and pro-cyclical.  For @BW.

America's Foreign Policy Needs a Shakeup

Want to know what's wrong with foreign policy: the most influential voices have an average age of 85.  For @BW.

How Germany's Ban on Uber Hurts the Poor

Stand up for the little driver.  In @BW.

How To Stop the Global Crisis of Domestic Violence

Laws help --in @BW.

Is Air Travel Too Safe?

Safety regulations make it very expensive.  In @BW.

... Even More Reasons to Feel Good About 2013

As well as contributing the bit about violence to Peter Coy's end of year roundup, I wrote up some more reasons to be happy about 2013 --all for @BW.

Why Private Contractors Are Lousy at Public Services

@BW column on outsourcing.

The U.S. Can Survive a Shutdown but Not a Default

@BW column on default and furloughs.

The Global Gay-Rights Revolution

Its not just the US where Gay rights are on the march --in @BW.

The FP Interview: Bill and Melinda Gates

I interviewed the Gates' --here's what FP printed.

Counting Our Blessings

An FP column for Thanksgiving with ten things to be thankful for --first up: turkeys (and the rest of us) should be happy that vegetarianism is spreading.

Bomb Scare

Bomb Scare was published in the May issue of Foreign Policy. It suggests that Malthusianism has been and remains wrong, worldwide.  It is based on the arguments from Is Anwhere Stuck in a Malthusian Trap?, which has been revised and published in the May edition of Kyklos (Vol. 63, no. 2).  I spoke about the article on KERA's Think.

Why do people die in earthquakes ? the costs, benefits and institutions of disaster risk reduction in developing countries

Why do people die in earthquakes? is a working paper issued in January 2009.  A version was published in the journal Disasters in 2012. Every year, around 60,000 people die worldwide in natural disasters. The majority of the deaths are caused by building collapse in earthquakes, and the great majority occurs in the developing world. This is despite the fact that engineering solutions exist that can almost completely eliminate the risk of such deaths. Why is this? The engineering solutions are both expensive and technically demanding, so that the benefit-cost ratio of such solutions is often unfavorable compared with other interventions designed to save lives in developing countries. Nonetheless, a range of public disaster risk-reduction interventions (including construction activities) are highly cost effective. The fact that such interventions often remain unimplemented or ineffectively executed points to a role for issues of political economy. Building regulations in developing countries appear to have limited impact in many cases, perhaps because of limited capacity and the impact of corruption. Public construction is often of low quality - perhaps for similar reasons. This suggests approaches that emphasize simple and limited disaster risk regulation covering only the most at-risk structures and that (preferably) can be monitored by non-experts. It also suggests a range of transparency and oversight mechanisms for public construction projects.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Crisis? What Crisis? is an unpublished short paper. It asks if a sense of despair regarding the state of development worldwide can be justified, or if the record suggests grounds for greater optimism.

Is Africa a Failure?

Is Africa a Failure? is an unpublished short paper. The usual way to refer to the performance of African countries over the forty or so years since independence is as a ‘crisis,’ or even a ‘rot.’ In these versions of Africa’s recent history, there is but one thing to argue over –who is to blame. This does, however, raise the question, ‘at what has Africa failed?' The answer for parts of the continent is clear –but these cases do not make up the majority (or even a sizeable minority) of the region. In many important respects --not least health-- Africa’s post-colonial record remains one of considerable success.

A Note on the Ethical Implications of the Stern Review

A Note on the Ethical Implications of the Stern Review is an unpublished short paper.  The Stern Review adopts two interesting elements in its calculation of the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation.  First is a ‘global welfarist’ approach that values the utility of the World’s people (now and into the future) equally, and sets global utility maximization as the correct goal for policy.  Second is an assumption of a declining marginal utility to income.  Consistent application of the ‘global welfarist’ approach and the declining marginal utility of income together would demand an urgent process of global income redistribution.  Over the long term, this might see the richest ten percent of the World’s population facing an average redistributive tax rate in the region of 82 percent.  A version will be published in the Journal of Environment and Development.

What Is Effective Aid? How Would Donors Allocate it?

What Is Effective Aid? How Would Donors Allocate It? was issued as a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper in September, 2006.  There are significant weaknesses in some of the traditional justifications for assuming that aid will foster development. This paper looks at what the cross-country aid effectiveness literature and World Bank Operations Evaluation Department (OED) reviews have suggested about effective aid, first in terms of promoting income growth and then for promoting other goals. This review forms the basis for a discussion of recommendations to improve aid effectiveness and a discussion of effective aid allocation. Given the multiple potential objectives for aid, there is no one right answer. However, it appears that there are a number of reforms to aid practices and distribution that might help to deliver a more significant return to aid resources. We should provide aid where institutions are already strong, where they can be strengthened with the help of donor resources, or where they can be bypassed with limited damage to existing institutional capacity. The importance of institutions to aid outcomes, as well as the fungibility of aid flows, suggests that programmatic aid should be expanded in countries with strong institutions, while project aid should be supported based on its ability to transfer knowledge and test new practices and/or support global public good provision rather than (merely) as a tool of financial resource transfer. The importance of institutions also suggests that we should be cautious in our expectations regarding the results of increased aid flows.

The Trouble with the MDGs

The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success, co-authored with Todd Moss and Michael Clemens was published as a Center for Global Development Working Paper (No. 40) in May 2004.  The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unlikely to be met by 2015, even if huge increases in development assistance materialize. The MDGs are a set of quantitative, time-bound targets for indicators such as poverty, education and mortality in developing countries adopted unanimously by the UN in 2000. However, the rates of progress required by many of the goals are at the edges of or beyond historical precedent. At the same time, there appear to be limits to the degree to which aid can contribute to development outcomes. Estimates of the ‘cost’ of reaching the MDGs are nevertheless frequently misinterpreted to mean that a certain quantity of aid—such as the oft-cited $50 billion—could cause the Goals to be met. Despite many benefits of the MDGs, there has been little discussion so far of potential costs of the specific form taken by these goals, especially the creation of unreasonable expectations about what is achievable in a short time frame and about the role of aid in the development process. Many countries making extraordinarily rapid progress on MDG indicators, due in large part to aid, will nonetheless not reach the MDGs. Unrealistic targets thus may turn successes into perceptions of failure, serving to undermine future constituencies for aid (in donors) and reform (in recipients). This would be unfortunate given the vital role of aid and reform in the development process and the need for long-term, sustained aid commitments. Though goal-setting can be useful, these particular goals might be better viewed not as practical targets but instead as valuable reminders of the stark contrast between the world we have and the world we want, and as a call to redouble our search for interventions to close the gap more rapidly.

A summary version in French was issued by Courrier de la Planete No. 76.  A summary version in English appeared in Sustainable Development Law and Policy VI, 1, 2005.  A brief on the paper was issued by the Center for Global Development in September, 2005.  The paper is forthcoming in World Development.

The Price of Oil

The Price of Oil: is it Low and is that Bad? co-authored with James Bond, was published in the International Journal of Global Energy Issues 17, 4, 2002.  The long-term price of oil should rest near its long run marginal cost (LRMC). Past price history and both demand and natural supply factors suggest that an oil price in the low teens is closer to the LRMC than the prices experienced over most of the last 25 years. For oil producing countries, this low price might not be as damaging as is often supposed - and might indeed encourage higher long-term growth. For oil consumers, low prices offer the opportunity to reform markets and reduce subsidies, with positive impacts on electricity rollout, development and the environment. For oil companies, low prices suggest the need to create new profit opportunities, but some of the more flexible and competitive players have already begun to show that this is possible.

Written when the price of oil was well below $20, the paper's prediction that oil prices would remain low looks a little weak...

Stock Markets in Africa

Stock Markets in Africa: Emerging Lions or White Elephants? co-authored with Todd Moss, was published in World Development, 26, 5 (1998). The number of stock markets in African countries has doubled over the last 7 years. Although these markets remain small and illiquid, they are growing rapidly, and will become an increasingly important part of many African economies. Using examples taken from experience in other developing regions and Africa’s recent past, this paper evaluates the common economic criticisms of stock markets and the political pitfalls involved in their operation. It concludes that the positive economic effects of bourses on African economies are far larger than any negative effects, and argues that the political costs can be mitigated while political benefits can also be gained. It finishes by suggesting reforms that can be put in place to reap more benefits and further reduce costs from stock markets on the continent.

It was reprinted in S. Mensah and D. Seck African Emerging Markets: Contemporary Issues Vol. 1 (Accra: African Capital Markets Forum).