A CGD Working Paper with George Yang. There is considerable interest in increasing private participation in infrastructure to meet the twin goals of climate mitigation and development in low- and middle-income countries. At the same time, this infrastructure needs to make returns in order to be financially sustainable. This paper reviews evidence on the economics of infrastructure investment and the role of human capital and uses two approaches to provide additional evidence on the link between human capital and infrastructure returns: (i) using estimated returns to individual World Bank infrastructure projects and their relationship to country levels of human capital and (ii) broader approaches linking the macroeconomic impact of infrastructure investment in the presence of varying human capital stocks.
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. It is worth emphasizing that a healthy population is needed to produce the workforce that will generate economic returns from new infrastructure capacity. The relationship between health and economic dynamism runs in both directions, and that includes with infrastructure.
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A CGD blog. The kind of investment sustainability that’s getting the most love at the moment is environmental sustainability: we want our buildings, machines, and infrastructure to be low carbon (as we should). But financial sustainability still matters, too: if they are to be a success, solar power plants and …
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A CGD blog. It is surely an urgent moment for multilateral support from the IMF and World Bank. And yet, the institutions’ financial statements suggest that support is declining. Figuring out why and what to do about it should be priority one at the upcoming World Bank-IMF annual meetings.
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A CGD blog. Once you’ve looked at policy as a source of societal progress and regress, especially over the long term, it is hard to look at anything else. As a result, I hope ever-more people in the EA community in town this week decide to work in government, or work on making government work better.
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A CGD note. Can't hurt asking….
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A CGD blog. A lot of people working in global development-including many at CGD like me-would like to see the World Bank’s lending arm for richer developing countries play a larger role financing global public goods like climate change mitigation and pandemic preparedness. That would take a larger IBRD, likely….
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A CGD blog. The existing MCC income cutoff is based on the robust principle that the best buys in global development are concentrated in the world’s poorest countries. (Indeed, when the Corporation started, it only worked in low-income countries for that reason). There is a declining marginal utility of a dolla…
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A CGD blog with Erin Collinson. DFC has been the subject of a growing list of proposals from lawmakers that envision the agency tackling a wider range of challenges than initially envisioned. The agency may find ways to leverage this heightened interest. However, delivering on the bipartisan, foundational vision for DFC amid evolv…
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A CGD blog. For all that investment is far from all we need, we will still need a massive amount of it if we are to meet global targets on sustainable development. Low and zero-carbon power plants expanded electricity, water and sanitation networks universal health and education systems-none come cheap. Estim…
Charles Kenny 