Charles Kenny

Books, Papers and Articles

Category: Q. Academic writing

  • ICT: Promises, Opportunities and Dangers for the Rural Future is for the Rural Futures conference in Plymouth, UK in March.  The paper briefly reviews the evidence regarding the rapid rollout of rural ICT access worldwide, and the powerful tools that access can unleash.  At the same time, it suggests the limits to the ICT revolution…

  • Is There an Anti-corruption Agenda in Utilities? is forthcoming in Utilities Policy. In a networked utility setting (few, predominantly monopoly providers), it is very hard to measure the extent of grand corruption using perceptions or surveys. It is even harder to measure the extent of damage done specifically by corruption, petty or grand. As a…

  • What Do We Know About Economic Growth, Redux is an unpublished short paper.  It revisits the cross-country growth literature six years after What Do We Know About Economic Growth Or, Why Don’t we Know Very Much?  Since then, even more evidence has piled up that growth is a complex, context-dependent process difficult to explain using…

  • Infrastructure Governance and Corruption: Where Next? was issued as a working paper in August, 2007. Governance is central to development outcomes in infrastructure, not least because corruption (a symptom of failed governance) can have significantly negative impact on returns to infrastructure investment. This conclusion holds whether infrastructure is in private or public hands. This paper…

  • 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…

  • This is a review of Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence: Self Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950.  It appeared in the Business History Review vol. 81 no. 2.  The book is well worth a read.

  • Is Anywhere Stuck in a Malthusian Trap? is an unpublished short paper.  The key features of the Malthusian model are that (i) income determines population growth, with rising wages increasing survival rates and (ii) there is a vital factor of production (land) which is fixed, implying decreased returns to scale for all other factors. The…

  • Construction, Corruption and Developing Countries was published as a working paper in June, 2007.  The construction industry accounts for about one-third of gross capital formation. Governments have major roles as clients, regulators, and owners of construction companies. The industry is consistently ranked as one of the most corrupt: large payments to gain or alter contracts…

  • 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  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…