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: J. Internet and ICTs

  • Baywatch: Bigger than Aid?

    Baywatch: Bigger than Aid? is an unpublished short paper.  It ponders the economic impact of the television program Baywatch —an everyday tale of lifesaving folk– on people in the developing world.  It concludes that, without considerably greater academic attention to the subject, we may never know the coefficient of Baywatch episodes on per capita income…

  • Ending Global Poverty Through Tax Breaks to Bill Gates

    Ending Global Poverty Through Tax Breaks to Bill Gates is an unpublished short paper. Many developing countries have enacted or are considering subsidies and tax breaks for the ICT industry.  This paper argues that the economic justification for such favoritism is very weak.  It is based in part on material from Overselling the Web.  A…

  • ICTs Enterprise and Development

    ICTs Enterprise and Development  is a draft chapter for ICT4D edited by Tim Unwin. It was written with Mike Best. There is no doubting that ICTs have had a significant development impact. Micro- and macroeconomic approaches alike suggest that the rollout of ICTs has improved livelihoods and increased the productivity of businesses. At the same…

  • Internet Governance on a Dollar a Day

    Internet Governance on a Dollar a Day  is forthcoming in Information Polity.  Globally, around one billion people live on a dollar a day. About 44 percent –nearly half– of the World’s population lives on less than two dollars a day. This paper examines the importance of "Internet governance" to such people. Arguments over generic top-level…

  • Young People and ICTs in Developing Countries

    Young People and ICTs in Developing Countries  is forthcoming in Information Technology for Development.  The paper is co-authored with Naomi Halewood.  Young people are often ‘first adopters’ of new technologies, and this appears to be the case with ICTs.  Evidence from the developing world suggests that young people have widespread access to broadcast technologies and…

  • Toward Universal Telephone Access

    Toward Universal Telephone Access Market progress and progress beyond the market was published in Telecommunications Policy vol. 31. It was written with Rym Keremane.  The last 10 years have seen an explosion in access to telephone services worldwide based on rapid technology advance in increasingly competitive markets. The mobile phone has driven expansion in subscribers…

  • Caribbean Telecommunications Reform

    The OECS and Regional Telecommunications Reform, co-authered with Donnie DeFreitas and Robert Schware, was published in info, Vol. 3, No.3. The Impact of Reform on Telecommunications Prices and Services in the Countries of the OECS, co-authored with Robert Schware and Eliud Williams, is forthcoming in the Journal of Information Technology for Development. Five member countries…

  • 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…