A CGD blog. The work of USAID in Ukraine is also a sign of what foreign aid can accomplish when it uses the right tools to deliver. It is time that far more overseas assistance was allocated through recipient governments rather than Beltway contractors.
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.
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A CGD blog. The gap between parties on international economic policy is often smaller than the gap between consensus positions over time. While the Biden Administration has introduced migrant-supporting measures including relief for the undocumented spouses of citizens and community sponsorship of refugees, bot…
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A CGD blog. Compared to efforts to agree to an overall carbon pricing mechanism or to binding targets on emissions, sectoral approaches to global binding agreements around greenhouse gasses have made considerably more progress. The Montreal Protocol and a series of follow-on agreements have considerably reduced…
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A CGD blog. Reuters reports today that the US Defense Department spread anti-vaccine messaging across Southeast Asia during COVID as part of an effort to discredit Chinese-manufactured vaccines. At a minimum, the Administration should amend EO 12333 to mandate that no US intelligence or psychological warfare op…
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A CGD blog. It is time for an update to the $100 billion climate finance goal that was agreed to in 2009 as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. In April, Cartagena hosted the first meeting under the ad hoc work programme on the new collective quantified goal on climate fin…
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A CGD blog. Richer aging countries need educated young workers to provide the services and entrepreneurial talent to sustain their quality of life. A growing population of young, increasingly educated people in poorer countries, and especially in Africa, need good jobs and greater opportunities. More trade in s…
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A CGD note. “Two Futures” presents two scenarios—a reasonable best- and worst-case version of the world in 2050 based on the culmination of a wide-ranging CGD research project that forecasts demographic and education trends, sectoral change and the decline of global manufacturing jobs, climate change impacts, and the changing face of development finance and aid—and examines the policy choices that might take us to each of them.
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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 “economic goods and services” we want to measure (potential) access to those services. The extreme poverty line doesn’t do that. For targeting assistance, we want an indicator that influences distribution. The extreme poverty line has largely been ignored in that regard. A multidimensional indicator tied to the Sustainable Development Goals might be a worthy replacement. I discussed the paper with VoxDev.
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A CGD blog. The ongoing global demographic transition is massive in scale and likely impact. For most of the past 200 years, the vast majority of the world’s countries have seen population growth, particularly working-age population growth. As they’ve gone through the “demographic transition” toward lower birth…
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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, government revenue, and stock returns. We find effects may include lower economic growth, declining government revenues, flat or declining labor force participation, and lower investment returns. As negative PAPG is spreading worldwide, this portends a less favorable economic outlook.
Charles Kenny 