Charles Kenny

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..

The Ultimate Resource is Peaking

A CGD Working Paper. Julian Simon argued that more people were associated with more prosperity: human talents were the “ultimate resource” and the force behind rising living standards. The last 30 years have been consistent with that view. But, globally, we are making fewer workers—and, more importantly, fewer potential innovators. In rich countries, human capital is growing considerably more slowly than in the past. Meanwhile innovation per researcher appears to be dropping as the population of researchers ages, while it takes longer to get to the knowledge frontier and more collaboration to expand it. Combined with the fact we are increasingly intolerant of risk and increasingly desirous of innovations in sectors where it is particularly hard to increase productivity, it is little surprise that productivity growth is indeed declining. To extend our two-century era of comparatively rapid progress, we need radically reduced discrimination in the global opportunity to innovate.

An End to the Investment Project?

This is an *old* paper  (2012) that I submitted to CGD for peer review and it got shot down. I can't remember why, and I re-used some of the material in Results not Receipts but it has some interesting data in it and I still think I broadly agree with it so, with that caveat lector, here it is.  For many donors throughout most of their history, the major assistance model has involved the tool of the investment project.  This is based on a theory of aid and development that the key constraint facing developing countries seeking rapid growth is lack of investment and that donor financing to overcome that ‘investment gap’ can be overseen through the project process to ensure that it is efficiently spent to generate high returns.  In reality, filling an ‘investment gap’ is neither an empirically well justified nor a practically well-implemented aid strategy.  Furthermore, procurement oversight mechanisms appear to be doing a poor job at ensuring the average effectiveness of an investment portfolio in a country is significantly enhanced, or transferring knowledge, or building institutions.  The procurement-focused project investment model should be limited in use to in cases where (i) a project design is significantly innovative and/or delivers regional or global public goods and/or aid is a large percentage of country investment and no agreement can be reached between donors and government on overall investment priorities in that country and (ii) alternate project approaches like output-based or cash on delivery models are deemed inappropriate.

The Simple Math of Development Finance

A CGD Note. In short: we want lots of investment in developing countries; it has to be financially sustainable; direct private project investment is very expensive, indirect private finance through multilateral development banks is a lot cheaper; so scaling through WB/AfDB/ADB/IADB is the sustainable (affordable) model.

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.

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.

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.

Can Africa Help Europe Avoid Its Looming Aging Crisis?

A CGD working paper with George Yang.  There will be 95 million fewer working-age people in Europe in 2050 than in 2015, under business as usual. This will cause significant fiscal stress as well as slower economic growth. Potential responses include: (a) raising labor force participation by women and older workers; (b) automation; and (c) outsourcing. But none will be sufficient. This leaves immigration: while migrants create demand for jobs as well as fill them, they can help rebalance the ratio of working to non-working populations. The paper compares business as usual estimates of inflows to 2050 with the size of the labor gap in Europe. Under plausible estimates, business as usual will fill one-third of the labor gap. This suggests a need for an urgent shift if Europe is to avoid an aging crisis. Africa is the obvious source of immigrants, to mutual benefit.  Here's a short video presenting the paper.

Unpacking Gender Gaps and Data Gaps in Public Sector Employment and Pay

A CGD Policy Paper with Ugonma Nwankwo and Megan O'Donnell.  We look at available sources to ask (i) Where is data available on employment and wages allowing for comparisons between women and men, and the public and private sectors? (ii) How do women’s employment, compensation, and seniority compare with men’s in the public and private sectors? (iii) How do gender gaps vary by countries’ income level, education levels, and other factors? What are the policy implications of the data we analyze? (iv) Which countries’ efforts can be modeled by others, and how else can global gender gaps in employment and compensation be narrowed? We suggest the Open Government Partnership as a promising platform through which governments can commit to increased transparency around disaggregated employment and wage data, in turn improving policy decision-making aimed at closing gender gaps (or those rooted in other forms of inequality and discrimination). We suggest the Open Government Partnership as a promising platform through which governments can commit to increased transparency around disaggregated employment and wage data, in turn improving policy decision-making aimed at closing gender gaps (or those rooted in other forms of inequality and discrimination).

Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment in the COVID-19 Context

A CGD Working Paper with Megan O'Donnell Mayra Buvinic Shelby Bourgault George Yang.  When health crises like COVID-19 emerge, the shocks to economic, social, and health systems can have different implications for women and girls, with gendered impacts across various dimensions of wellbeing. This paper, part of a series documenting the gendered impacts of the pandemic, focuses on women’s economic empowerment. It begins with a conceptual framework illustrating how the pandemic, associated response measures, economic contraction and different coping strategies intersect with underlying gender norms and inequality in ways that differentially affect the wellbeing of women and girls. It then synthesizes the existing evidence on how the COVID-19 crisis and associated response measures have impacted women’s paid and unpaid work, entrepreneurship, and earnings across sectors in low- and middle-income countries. The paper proceeds to outline economic response measures from national governments and multilateral development banks and the extent to which gender inequalities have been considered in these measures to date. The paper concludes with recommendations aimed at donors and policymakers to ensure the COVID-19 recovery does not exacerbate pre-existing gender gaps in the economy.

Principles for Paris-Alignment and Climate Finance in Development

A CGD note with Ian Mitchell and Atousa Tahmasebi. As ministers and officials meet in the coming year, they will make new financing commitments on climate and promise to ensure all of their activities are “Paris-compatible”—against the backdrop of a global pandemic. Any new commitments on climate finance will need to balance existing development challenges with the pressing need to tackle climate-related risks. This note outlines a set of principles to guide climate-related commitments so that they do more for both climate and development.

A Climate-Dedicated Capital Increase at the World Bank and IFC

A CGD note with Scott Morris. Rather than use aid to finance climate mitigation projects (it's the wrong instrument, mis-targeted and inadequate in scale), why not fund a World Bank and IFC capital increase: its cheaper, better targeted, more appropriate to the task, ensures common but differentiated financing, and gives the World Bank Group something useful to do in richer developing countries.

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.

What Is the Role of Aid in Middle-Income Countries?

A CGD policy paper with Ranil Dissanayake and Mark PlantWe develop screens and principles designed to maximise the impact of aid, especially in richer recipients. All else equal, a dollar spent in the poorest countries will have a larger impact on well-being than a dollar spent in richer countries, so ODA should be concentrated in those countries. But where it is used in middle-income countries, it should be aimed at (i) a major development challenge; (ii) where relatively small amounts of finance can be expected to have a significant return; and (iii) consistent with the political economy of the recipient country or that is likely to induce a shift in the political economy. That implies aid should focus on severe challenges faced by geographic or demographic sub-groups; using a range of tools beyond grants; with the goal of bringing forward, rather than replacing, state capacity; and using multilateral approaches wherever possible. An examination of aid practice suggests it is considerably at odds with what this approach would suggest.

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.

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).

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.

How America Leads Abroad: An Examination of Multilateral Development Institutions

I gave testimony to the House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy (video here).  I said the IBRD should get its capital increase, and the IFC should get its capital increase if it reforms.

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. 

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.

Five Principles for Use of Aid in Subsidies to the Private Sector

A policy paper for CGD.  There is a significant and ongoing ramp-up in support for explicitly subsidized official development finance to the private sector around the world, but its role remains poorly defined. Lessons from the aid effectiveness literature as a whole and principles on effective use of aid suggest the need for approaches that do not merely finance the marginal private investment. Regarding experience of government intervention in markets, subsidies are only one of many options to incentivize the private sector, and bespoke subsidies provided by outside actors are rarely likely to be the most efficient form. This paper discusses where outside subsidy of the private sector may make sense and develops principles for the use of aid in subsidies based on that analysis. Subsidies should be allocated on the basis of necessity in meeting public policy goals; the norm for subsidy allocations should be competitive approaches or open offers; non-competitive subsidies should only support market making; subsidy levels should be capped; and subsidy levels should be transparent. Much of the content of these “new” principles is already implied or specified by the existing Multilateral Development Bank Principles to Support Sustainable Private Sector Operations, but they suggest that development finance institutions should not use their standard business model when using subsidies.

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.

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. 

Examining the Impact of E-Procurement in Ukraine

A CGD Working Paper  examines the impact of Ukraine’s ambitious procurement reform on outcomes amongst a set of procurements that used competitive tendering. The ProZorro system placed all of the country’s government procurement online, introduced an auction approach as the default procurement method, and extended transparency. The reform was introduced with a dramatic increase in the proportion of government procurement that was conducted competitively. This paper examines the impact of ProZorro and reform on contracts that were procured competitively both prior to and after the introduction of the new system. It finds some evidence of impact of the new system on increasing the number of bidders, cost savings, and reduced contracting times.

Women and the Future of Work: Fix the Present

A note for CGD.  There is a lot we don’t know about what automation will mean for jobs in the future, including its impact (if any) on gender inequality. This note reviews evidence and forecasts on that question and makes four main points: (i) Past automation has been (broadly) positive for women’s average quality of life, economic empowerment, and equality. (ii) Forecasts of the gendered impact of automation and AI going forward based on the current distribution of employment suggest considerable uncertainty and a gender inequality of impact that is marginal compared to the potential impact overall. (iii) The bigger risk—and/or opportunity—is likely to be in the combined impact of automation, policy, and social norms in changing the type of work that is seen as male or female. (iv) Minimizing any potential aggravating impact of automation and AI on inequalities in economic power in the future can best be achieved by maximizing economic equality today.

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.

Norms and Reform: Legalizing Homosexuality Improves Attitudes

A paper by Dev Patel and me for CGD.  This analysis examines the relationship between legal reform and social norms surrounding homosexuality. We document three main findings. First, about a fifth of the variation in individual preferences can be explained at a country level. Second, using a difference-in-differences strategy, legalizing homosexuality improves how individuals view the tone of their communities. Third, we provide further evidence supporting a legal origins argument by examining former colonies. Countries that were colonized by the British Empire have significantly worse legal rights for samesex couples than those under other colonial powers. We conclude that adopting legal reform can improve societal attitudes.

Expanding and Measuring Opportunities

Expanding and Measuring Opportunities is a working paper for the Center for Development and Enterprise.  The idea that circumstances and free choice can be neatly divided is open to considerable debate. The [equality of] opportunity framework begs the question, ‘what is in the control of the individual?’ Regardless, equality of opportunity is about ‘birth luck egalitarianism’-minimizing the variance of birth luck-- while maximizing or expanding opportunity is about efficiently raising the average birth luck. One advantage of ‘opportunity expansion’ over ‘opportunity equalization’ is that an accounting between free will and determinism is unnecessary–there is no concern with estimating the impact of genetic or in utero factors on outcomes, for example. However, if we are worried about maximizing or expanding opportunities rather than equality of opportunities, the approach that is appropriate when defining equal opportunity (the state when measured exogenous factors have no bearings on relative outcomes within a country) does not work. This is because we cannot take the stock (or flow) of outcomes as a given or an irrelevance.  Empirically, allowing the stock of outcomes to vary suggests a goal of expanding or maximizing opportunity may involve a markedly different set of policies than equalizing opportunities. This is because variance in opportunities within countries is far smaller than variance across countries.  That implies a focus on raising national average opportunity may have a far bigger payoff than redistributing opportunities or trying to raise the minimum opportunity to the mean within a country --although greater equality of opportunity is likely to be a method to increase absolute levels of opportunity. 

Results Not Receipts: Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption

Results Not Receipts: Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption is a CGD book.  

In the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan, the US Agency for International Development supported the Afghan Ministry of Public Health to deliver basic healthcare to 90 percent of the population, at a cost of $4.50 a head. The program played a vital role in improving the country’s health; the number of children dying before the age of five dropped by 100,000 a year. But accounting standards at the Ministry of Public Health concerned the US Special Investigator General for Afghanistan. There was no evidence of malfeasance, nor argument about the success of the program. For all that the results were fantastic, receipts were not in order. The investigator called for the health program to be suspended because of “financial management deficiencies” at the ministry.

Results Not Receipts: Counting the Right Things in Aid and Corruption explores how an important and justified focus on corruption is damaging the potential for aid to deliver results. Donors treat corruption as an issue they can measure and improve, and from which they can insulate their projects at acceptable costs by controlling processes and monitoring receipts. But our ability to measure corruption is limited, and the link between donors’ preferred measures and development outcomes is weak. Noting the costs of the standard anticorruption tools of fiduciary controls and centralized delivery, Results Not Receipts urges a different approach to tackling corruption in development: focus on outcomes.

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.

A Global Treaty to Reduce Antimicrobial Use in Livestock

A CGD Policy Paper with Kim Elliott and Janeen Madan.  While the misuse of antimicrobials in human health is a key factor accelerating the emergence of drug resistance, we should not overlook the role of agriculture. In the livestock sector, a significant portion of antimicrobials are provided in subtherapeutic doses over long periods of time to speed growth and prevent disease, rather than to treat illness. Currently, the United States and countries across Europe are major users of antimicrobials in livestock, but there is rapid growth in key developing countries. Following the recent discovery of a bacterial gene in pigs and people that conveys resistance to a last resort antibiotic drug, addressing agriculture’s contribution to antimicrobial resistance is more urgent. Moreover, the fact that the gene was discovered within a relatively short time in both China and the United States underscores the global nature of the problem. Drug resistant superbugs do not respect borders. To date, however, there has been little concrete action at the global level.

This paper makes the case for a global treaty to reduce antimicrobial use in livestock. We propose that negotiations could begin with the two dozen or so key countries that account for the majority of global antimicrobial use in farm animals. This could help make significant inroads into the problem, even as those countries work to expand the treaty’s membership. Drawing on lessons learned from the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the paper outlines a framework for a global treaty to reduce livestock’s contribution to the health threat posed by the spread of antimicrobial resistant bacteria.

Expanding Women’s Role in Developing Technology: Increasing Productivity, Improving Lives

A CGD note with Megan O'Donnell, accompanied by a blog looking at the private sector's record of involving women in innovation (car companies: awful, biomed: better).  It is a shocking waste of talent that women are just 15% of listed inventors on patents worldwide.  There are things we could do to make that better.

Why Increasing Female Migration from Gender-Unequal Countries is a Win for Everyone

A policy note for CGD.  Women find it hard to emigrate from countries with terrible women's rights.  It would be self-interested for recipient countries with good rights to favor their entry.

Results Through Transparency: Does Publicity Lead to Better Procurement?

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.

The Impact of Legislation on the Hazard of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Burkina Faso

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 Funding Technology: 10 Recommendations

Donors should take the importance of context on board when designing their technology interventions.  Well, duh. For CGD.

A US Law or Executive Order to Combat Gender Apartheid at Work in Discriminatory Countries

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.

Advancing a Gender-Based Development Agenda

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.

Strengthening the Addis Accord

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.

Suggested Proposals for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development

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].

Finding Cash for Infrastructure in Addis: Blending, Lending and Guarantees in Finance for Development

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.