Charles Kenny

Books, Papers and Articles

Category: Q. Academic writing

  • 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)…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…