Category: Q. Academic writing
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A review for the Economic Record ( word version). The good or bad news is that the World Values Survey data Norris presents suggests no strong global trend in surveyed trust in people or institutions over time.
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A CEPR book chapter with Justin Sandefur. Despite pledges from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to protect life-saving interventions, we estimate that USAID program cancellations to date would lead to between 500,000 and 700,000 fewer lives saved.
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A policy paper for CGD. This paper examines the changing shape of Chinese investment in Africa, as it evolves from large scale infrastructure toward small scale manufacturing. It looks at the opportunity for the region in the context of a deepening manufacturing labor shortage in China; discusses barriers to that opportunity in both China and…
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A speech at the Oxford Martin School. The world’s richest nations have made considerable global financing promises to developing countries—including a $300 billion annual pledge for climate. But in the last few months aid budgets have been slashed across Europe and in the United States, even as financing is diverted from development and adaptation to…
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A CGD Working Paper with Sogtao Duan and Zack Gehan. This paper tests the hypothesis that the growing proportion of World Bank contracts granted to Chinese firms, particularly in the infrastructure sector, may undermine results by exposing projects to lower standards of work. We find that such concerns are unfounded. We create a dataset of…
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A CGD Working Paper. The World Bank’s extreme poverty line has been a huge marketing success, motivating widespread discussion of global poverty. At the same time, it has growing weaknesses. For measuring progress, we want a fixed-definition indicator. The extreme poverty line is not that. For measuring or guaranteeing access of a basic bundle of…
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A CGD Working Paper with George Yang. This paper explores the potential implications of a declining absolute labor force on economic outcomes. It explores key macroeconomic variables during periods of negative and positive prime age (15-65) population growth (PAPG). These variables include 10-year bond yields, consumer price indices, female labor force participation, GDP, government expenditures,…
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A CGD note. An increasing proportion of official development assistance (ODA) is being dedicated to climate, and climate mitigation in particular. Even were that spending highly effective, and despite reaching about $30 billion in 2020, it is not large enough to finance investment that would significantly slow global climate change. But were it effective, 20 years of…
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A CGD note. Marginal abatement cost curves, which suggest the cheapest approaches to reducing carbon emissions, are out of favor in international climate finance discussions because they are not good tools to use when thinking about systemic and urgent change. On the other hand, internationalfinancing studies based on adding up the investment requirements linked to…
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A working paper for CGD with Eeshani Kapandal and Brian Webster. Research highlights the gains to the quality of policymaking from diversifying the body of policymakers. International financial institutions (IFIs) appear to agree, all issuing diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. But how do these institutions perform when it comes to their own staff—do they lead…