Charles Kenny

Books, Papers and Articles

Charles Kenny is the author of Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More (Basic Books: 2011); The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest is Great for the West (Basic Books: 2014) and The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease (Scribner 2021). He spent fifteen years as an economist in the World Bank and now works at a Washington DC think tank, the Center for Global Development, where he researches and advocates for policies governing investment, trade, technology and migration that would be good for both developing and industrialized countries alike. In addition, he is a widely cited researcher on the economics of happiness. Kenny was a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and was a columnist for Bloomberg Business¸ where he wrote on global development and its impact on the US. He has also written for outlets including the Economist, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Politico, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Time, the Guardian, Salon and CNN. He has presented at the World Economic Forum, Aspen Institute and Legatum Institute events. He has given talks at numerous colleges and universities. He has appeared on PBS, Al Jazeera, CCTV, Vox, Reuters TV and Bloomberg TV. On radio he has been a guest on NPR and the BBC as well as numerous podcasts. Charles has a history degree from Cambridge University, Masters degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a PhD in Development Studies from Cambridge. The product and beneficiary of transoceanic romances, he thinks globalization is an immense force for good. He can be contacted at charlesjkenny at gmail.

recent posts

Category: D. Overselling the Web?

  • Overselling the Web: Development and the Internet

    Overselling the Web? Development and the Internet is being published in September 2006.  The book discusses the role of the Internet in development, and policies designed to increase its impact.  The widespread and rapid adoption of the Internet in the developing world suggests that there are real opportunities presented by the new technology.  At the…

  • Overselling the Web Chapter One: Will the Internet Change the World?

    Chapter One of Overselling the Web? looks at some predictions regarding the impact of the Internet on development.  George Gilder chose December 31st, 1999 most suitably to suggest the change might be millenarian: With any technology that will change the world so radically as the Internet… religious wars are important and inescapable….The twentieth century has…

  • Overselling the Web Chapter Two: The Link Between Technology and Growth

    Chapter Two of Overselling the Web? discusses the role of technology in growth.  It begins by defining technology in economic terms.  Technology is everything that isn’t capital and labor.  As such, it covers new inventions such as the steam engine or the transistor, but also includes ‘business technology’ (management techniques and systems) ‘political technology’ (forms…

  • Overselling the Web Chapter Three: ICT in the Industrialized World

    Chapter Three of Overselling the Web? looks at the impact of ICTs in wealthy countries, with a focus on the US.  It opens with a discussion of the evidence regarding the total factor productivity (TFP) impact of ICTs.  ICT using sectors have seen considerable investments in computing and communications –they accounted for as much as…

  • Overselling the Web Chapter Four: ICT in the Developing World

    Chapter Four of Overselling the Web? reports on the rapidly shrinking digital divide.  Already, access in terms of Internet use per dollar of GDP is higher in the developing than the developed world.  Business use in particular is reaching global ubiquity –even in Kenya, 78 percent of firms use email. This is a strong sign…

  • Overselling the Web Chapter Five: Experiments with E-Government

    Countries can generate significant returns from incorporating ICTs into government reform programs.  Singapore’s government estimates that every dollar it has spent on ICTs has generated $2.70 in returns.  But it isn’t easy to do, and for every success there are examples of expensive disappointment.  Richard Heeks suggests that failure rates for IT projects in developing…

  • Overselling the Web Chapter Six: Sustainable Policies for E-Development

    Chapter Six of Overselling the Web? opens with an analysis of the technological divide separating India from the US: Already, there is more than a seventy-fold difference in access rates between US and Indian households. That gap is far larger than the income divide between the two countries.  Worse, the divide is linked to productivity,…

  • Overselling the Web Chapter Seven: Confronting the Costs

    Chapter Seven of Overselling the Web? notes the long tradition of linking technological advance to dramatic social change –stretching back to the Communist Manifesto which suggested that railways were catalysts to revolution.  And it is hard to argue with the fact there have been significant social changes as a result of the Internet.  But you…