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.

About Charles

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  • Their Knowledge, Their Rights: Using Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property to Protect Communities

    A CGD blog with Ugonma Nwankwo. In the case of traditional knowledge, developing countries tend to be exporters rather than importers. They also tend to favor stronger protection of traditional knowledge through intellectual property laws, a position that distinctly contrasts with their calls for more flexible IP protect…

  • Scaling the Summit of Democracies

    A CGD blog. One of President Biden’s foreign policy campaign commitments was to hold a “Summit of Democracies” in the first year of his presidency. While skeptics have raised valid concerns-not least which countries should appear on the guestlist- a summit could spur useful reforms at home and abroad.

  • An Agenda for Makhtar Diop at the IFC

    A CGD blog with Charles Kenny. Makhtar Diop, former minister of finance in Senegal and current vice president for infrastructure at the World Bank, has been tapped to be the next head of the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private sector investment arm. This is welcome news: Diop’s experience and talents…

  • Three Ways to Ensure COP-26 Delivers for Poor People

    A CGD blog. Three ways that COP-26 could deliver for those countries are to properly define what counts as “new and additional” climate finance, make sure carbon markets rather than aid pays for the additional costs of mitigation in poorer developing countries, and agree to exempt the poorest countries from car…

  • Release COVID-19 Vaccine Contracts

    A CGD blog. Drugs created with billions in government support, bought almost exclusively by governments and international agencies are shrouded in secrecy: who is paying how much for delivery of what by when is a matter of guesswork and estimate.

  • Four Ideas for Samantha Power’s USAID

    A CGD blog. These proposals would cost money (and so the need to work with Congress), but all are tied to America’s strategic interests and all would help the world exit the COVID pandemic and global recession with greater speed and resiliency.

  • Build Back. Worry About Better Later

    A CGD blog. The slogan “build back better” has become widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to the extent it is used to promise a recovery that ensures less risk of a repeat, greater equality and more opportunity, that’s a wonderful thing. But the term comes with a history-and not a great one

  • COVID-19 and the Plague Cycle

    A CGD blog. Charles Kenny launches his latest book The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease.

  • Allocating Global Aid to Maximize Utility

    A CGD blog. In a paper and blog, Charles Kenny discusses the idea of the declining marginal utility of income and its potential use in allocation decisions.

  • Better Ways to Use Aid in Middle-Income Countries

    A CGD blog with Ranil Dissanayake. In a paper and blog, the authors examine the distribution of aid among countries at different income levels and focus on the aid going to middle-income countries (MICs).