A CGD note. Can't hurt asking….
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. 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…
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A CGD Note. In short: we want lots of investment in developing countries; it has to be financially sustainable; direct private project investment is very expensive, indirect private finance through multilateral development banks is a lot cheaper; so scaling through WB/AfDB/ADB/IADB is the sustainable (affordable) model.
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A CGD blog. The MCC is particular about which countries it supports. Among the requirements, Ukraine passes the agency’s (important and legitimate) hurdle that it only works in the world’s low- and lower-middle-income countries. It also passes a lot of other tests the MCC lays out for support, based on a scorec…
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A co-authored Foreign Affairs piece with Scott Morris. The US should leave infrastructure to the World Bank and 'compete' bilaterally with China on human rather than physical capital.
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Co-authored CGD working paper with George Yang. We present data on the global diffusion of technologies over time, updating and adding to Comin and Mestieri’s "CHAT" database. We analyze usage primarily based on per capita measures and divide technologies into the two broad categories of production and consumption. We conclude that there has been strong convergence in use of consumption technologies with somewhat slower and more partial convergence in production technologies. This reflects considerably stronger global convergence in quality of life than in income, but we note that universal convergence in use of production technologies is not required for income convergence (only that countries are approaching the technology frontier in the goods and services that they produce). Dataset here.
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A CGD blog with Samuel Huckstep. In this piece, we explore how training combined with mobility could play a big role in creating the required skills needed- and we offer recommendations to policymakers to pursue this two-pronged plan.
Charles Kenny 