Usual holiday cheer for The Atlantic...
A piece for the Economist's Democracy in America blog.
In most of the world, net neutrality and ICANN are less important than infrastructure and free speech. For Slate.
The next US administration should allocate at least $1 billion in additional resources—equal to a little over two percent of current US overseas assistance—exclusively dedicated to advancing gender equality in developing countries, with a specific focus on improving women’s and girls’ economic opportunities and outcomes. A CGD brief with Megan O'Donnell Mayra Buvinic and Cindy Huang.
A review of Jonathan Tepperman's book The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline, for Washington Monthly.
A CGD Working Paper with Ben Crisman. Governments buy about $9 trillion worth of goods and services a year, and their procurement policies are increasingly subject to international standards and institutional regulation including the WTO Plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement, Open Government Partnership commitments and International Financial Institution procurement rules. These standards focus on transparency and open competition as key tools to improve outcomes. While there is some evidence on the impact of competition on prices in government procurement, there is less on the impact of specific procurement rules including transparency on competition or procurement outcomes. Using a database of World Bank financed contracts, we explore the impact of a relatively minor procurement rule governing advertising on competition using regression discontinuity design and matching methods. The rule does appear to have a small, positive impact on bidding levels, suggesting the potential for more significant and strongly enforced transparency initiatives to have a sizeable effect on procurement outcomes.
A CGD brief written with Megan O'Donnell,Mayra Buvinic and Cindy Huang. A repeat of some material from here and here plus more aid spending and buy-in.
A CGD paper, with Ben Crisman, Sarah Dykstra and Megan O'Donnell. In 1996, Burkina Faso enacted legislation banning the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Much of the qualitative literature surrounding FGM/C discounts the impact of legal change on what is considered a social/cultural issue. We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys DHS(VI) in Burkina Faso to test for a discontinuous change in the likelihood of being cut in the year the law was passed. We find robust evidence for a substantial drop in hazard rates in 1996 and investigate the heterogeneous impact of the law by region, religion, and ethnicity. Overall, we roughly estimate that over a ten year period the law averted the genital mutilation/cutting of approximately 237,591 women and girls. We qualify our findings recognizing that Burkina Faso is a special case with a long history of bottom-up and top-down approaches to eliminating the practice.
Donors should take the importance of context on board when designing their technology interventions. Well, duh. For CGD.
The World Bank's World Development Indicators, in the print edition, has got rid of the term 'developing countries.' Online, and in operations, nothing has changed. Does this even count as a baby step? For Zocalo Public Square.
A CGD working paper with Megan O'Donnell on World Bank projects and gender. Lots of 'mainstreaming,' less in the way of results.
A policy memo for CGD on a law to help US multinationals combat inequality in the workplace overseas.
A number of countries worldwide have laws that specifically discriminate against women’s participation in the workforce, including bans on particular occupations, restrictions on opening bank accounts or taking jobs without a male family member’s authority, and restrictions on travel. Such discriminatory laws are associated with considerably lower female labor force participation and with negative consequences for economic growth and sustainable development. They also contradict globally accepted norms and values on gender equality in the workplace. The US legislation or executive action we propose would encourage US multinationals to mitigate the impact of local discriminatory legislation to the extent possible within the host country’s domestic laws by following a code of conduct regarding women’s employment, potentially limiting that obligation to the most discriminatory of countries. The proposed legislation is modeled on US anti-apartheid legislation (P.L. 99-440) that encouraged US firms to hire, train, and promote nonwhites in South Africa in the 1980s. Part of the legislation addresses the actions of the executive branch; this could also form a stand-alone executive order.
Piece for Medium on what the TV might teach the Internet about education --entertainment is probably the way to go.
(Still) getting better. For the Atlantic.
A call for smart sanctions on the House of Saud based on its extremism at home and abroad. For Politico.
Paul Ryan only cares about one third of the American idea that condition of birth shouldn't determine outcomes --me in The Atlantic.
With Justin Sandefur, for Vox. The piles of arbitrary adjustments that got us from $1.25 to $1.90.
The United Nations has set conflicting goals for 2030: combatting climate change while providing energy to all. It suggests they aren't by low-balling electricity demand. For the Atlantic.
There’s a simple way to reform welfare: Send money to those who need it, without conditions. For the Atlantic.
For Businessweek: with declining birth rates, rich countries need foreigners.
Where is the bold new Africa strategy we were promised? For the Atlantic.
A column for Bloomberg on Obama's visit to Africa. There had better not be any socckets on display.
A chapter for CGD's White House and the World publication looking at US policies from trade through migration, investment and aid that could improve outcomes for women worldwide. Written with Sarah Dykstra.
A piece on the Thomson Reuters Foundation website on open contracting with Gavin Hayman.
Just in time for the Addis Financing for Development conference, an essay [/collection of blogs] on making the Addis Accord better... Some of the ideas have already been incorporated, sort of, a bit.
Bloomberg column suggesting Greece is one more piece of evidence it is a mistake to let the same people forecast growth who are agreeing debt deals.
The Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa in July represents one of President Obama’s last major opportunities to secure his development legacy. This catchily titled CGD policy brief co-authored with Beth Schwanke offers 14 proposals for commitments the United States Government should consider advancing for the Conference on Financing for Development. [Bets in advance on a hit rate of 0.5/14].
A CGD Policy Working Paper. The total scale of incremental investment requirements in infrastructure in developing countries has been estimated at around USD 1 trillion a year, with a range of related studies suggesting numbers between $815 billion to $1.3 trillion. While all such numbers are open to considerable debate, and were not designed to measure the cost of delivering the specific SDG infrastructure targets, they suggest the likely scale of the financing challenge for an SDG agenda which includes universal coverage to adequate housing, water, sanitation, modern energy and communications technologies. The complexity of infrastructure finance in developing countries suggests that external private investment will remain a minor player in the financing of infrastructure for development. Nonetheless, reforms of development finance institutions and multilateral development banks alongside infrastructure pricing in recipient countries could considerably increase financial flows, and the Addis Financing Conference later this year could help provide the authorizing environment for such reforms.
Slightly misleading headline. Go, just remember you'll be pretty useless, and see it as a learning experience --the start and motivation for a life of advocating or working for development. For @BW.
This CGD Policy Paper focuses on invented or created technologies of the type that could (theoretically) be subject to patents and the potential for international agreements including the Addis Financing Conference to better create and share such technologies. It discusses the nature of invented technologies and the standard policy tools used to support its development. It then addresses two separate questions related to inventions and development: ‘what is invented’ and ‘how it diffuses.’ With this background, it goes on to discuss the role of policy tools including patents, tiered pricing, research support, advance market commitments, and prizes in creating development-friendly technology. It concludes with some recommendations for language to be inserted in the Addis Declaration
The FIFA scandal is a reminder that the size of bribes pales in comparison with the economic damage they inflict --for @BW.
By 2030 we may have managed to eradicate being poor by the average definition two or three decades ago of the poorest 15 countries with available statistics updated by more or less reliable inflation and purchasing power numbers since then.... That's what happens when you have to change the method of calculating extreme poverty because your boss said it could be eradicated. For @BW.
[That said, should note that means in the last few years I've suggested (a) it may be possible to end extreme poverty defined as $1.25/day, which would be good; (b) that it wouldn't be good enough (c) if the SDGs are going to have the goal of ending extreme poverty we should fix the goal posts and (d) fixing the goalposts means that 'extreme poverty' will be increasingly removed from any country's actual definition of poverty...]
A piece on Addis, Paris, New York, post-2015 and financing for development for the IMF's Finance and Development.
Real hope for the eradication of polio, measles, rubella, and maybe malaria. For @BW.
Because there are less of them. For @BW.
A piece with John Norris for Foreign Policy on the history of dams at Inga on the Congo. TLDR: its depressing.
A piece for the UN Chronicle on SDG goal one target one on poverty, pointing out it is unreachable by definition.
There is no doubt that a new set of development goals will be agreed this year but time is fast running out to make sure they matter. For The Guardian.
A CGD Essay previously published as an article on the SDGs and MDGs in Politica Exterior (¿Hemos perdido el rumbo? De los ODM a los ODS).
A working paper with Justin Sandefur, Sarah Dykstra and Amanda Glassman. Since 2001, an aid consortium known as Gavi has accounted for over half of vaccination expenditure in the 75 eligible countries with an initial per capita GNI below $1,000. Regression discontinuity (RD) estimates show aid significantly displaced other immunization efforts and failed to increase vaccination rates for diseases covered by cheap, existing vaccines. For some newer and more expensive vaccines, i.e., Hib and rotavirus, we found large effects on vaccination and limited fungibility, though statistical significance is not robust. These RD estimates apply to middle-income countries near Gavi's eligibility threshold, and cannot rule out differential effects for the poorest countries. There's a policy brief that's an easier read. A revsised version (now with fewer results!) was published in the Journal of Development Economics.
Developing countries are increasingly robust to shocks. For @BW.
The World Bank is facing a bunch of crises --this might be a way out. For @BW.
Anyone who wants to go back to the 50's is old, white, male, hetero and (still) stupid. For @BW.
Misleading title: soaking the rich would help. But the current US tax regime is bad at that. For @BW.
The US response to the AIIB is pathetic. For @BW.