Charles Kenny
Books, Papers and Articles
Charles Kenny writes about global development — what’s working, what isn’t, and how the world can do better. An economist who spent fifteen years at the World Bank, he is now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.
Category: R. Columns and general writing
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Good Ideas for Bad Times is the latest piece for Foreign Policy –it rounds up some new(ish) ideas related to development thinking including just giving money to the poor, geotagging, transparency in aid flows and new approaches to migration policy.
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This review of Linda Polman's The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong With Humanitarian Aid? was published in the November/December Washington Monthly. It's an under-researched polemic by a brave author on an interesting subject.
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We Don't Need No Universal Education? was published online by the Harvard International Review. The piece notes that there are multiple links in the chain between building schools and an economic impact to education, and argues that some of those links are often very weak, indeed. It concludes that we might want to spend more time…
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Best Decade Ever is in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. It argues that the "Naughty Aughties" (pls. blame editors :-)) have been the finest ten years in history.
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Bomb Scare was published in the May issue of Foreign Policy. It suggests that Malthusianism has been and remains wrong, worldwide. It is based on the arguments from Is Anwhere Stuck in a Malthusian Trap?, which has been revised and published in the May edition of Kyklos (Vol. 63, no. 2). I spoke about the article on KERA's Think.
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More on TV, this time in Time (with bonus video for those who can stomach it). The editing process was an exercise in humility —here's the original draft, which is about five times longer.
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Revolution in a Box was published in the November issue of Foreign Policy. The article notes the continuing global spread of television sets and an explosion of viewer choice driven by cable, satellite and digital technologies. It suggests this is a good thing, pointing to evidence that access to competitive television can improve womens' standing in…
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Africa's Crisis is a Think Again piece for Foreign Policy. It takes some of the ideas from The Success of Development and tries to squeeze them into seven short contrarian arguments… I discussed the article on World Vision Report. Meanwhile, I did a few guest posts at A Fistful of Euros on themes from the book, as…
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A Cheaper Way to Better Healthcare is a short article written for the McKinsey publication What Matters. The article concludes that strong health outcomes don't take a lot of money –they take targeted interventions in prevention and some very cheap cures.
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Crisis? What Crisis? is an unpublished short paper. It asks if a sense of despair regarding the state of development worldwide can be justified, or if the record suggests grounds for greater optimism.
Charles Kenny 