A CGD blog. This is the sixth in a series of blogs looking at regional aspects of future global demographic and migration patterns discussed in my paper Global Mobility: Confronting A World Workforce Imbalance. You can read other blogs in the series here.
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 with Erin Collinson. The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has been operating for less than two years, and already some lawmakers are keen to expand its mandate. On the one hand, it’s good to see such appreciation for the tools of development finance. On the other, we share deep misgivings about pro…
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A CGD blog. This is the fifth in a series of blogs looking at regional aspects of future global demographic and migration patterns discussed in my paper Global Mobility: Confronting A World Workforce Imbalance. You can read other blogs in the series here.
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A CGD blog. This is the fourth in a series of blogs looking at regional aspects of future global demographic and migration patterns discussed in my paper Global Mobility: Confronting A World Workforce Imbalance. You can read other blogs in the series here.
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A CGD blog. This is the third in a series of blogs looking at regional aspects of future global demographic and migration patterns discussed in my paper Global Mobility: Confronting A World Workforce Imbalance. The first two blogs in the series focused on East Asia and Northern Europe.
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A CGD blog. This is the second of a series of blogs looking at regional aspects of future global demographic and migration patterns discussed in my paper Global Mobility: Confronting A World Workforce Imbalance. The first blog in the series focused on East Asia.
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A CGD blog. East Asia’s miracle countries are the stuff of both economic legend and considerable debate. One part of the story may be demographics: East Asia saw rising life expectancy and declining birth rates that dramatically, if temporarily, increased the proportion of the population that was of working age…
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A GCD Policy Paper with Todd Moss and Mohamed Rali Badissy. The purpose of a nation’s power sector is to deliver reliable electricity at the lowest cost and for the greatest benefit. At the heart of any private electricity generation project is a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), a contract that contains key provisions such as price, payment stipulations, and obligations by the offtaker utility and/or host-government. Despite their significant effects on service quality and public finances, these contracts are often negotiated and signed in secret, with even the most basic terms shielded from the citizenry. This opacity has created risks and, in a growing number of cases, contributed to costly and damaging outcomes, such as overpayment, overcapacity, large debts, and grid instability. Drawing on examples from enhanced transparency in public budgets, sovereign debt, and extractive industries, we propose that governments agree to publish PPAs with any public sector obligation and that funders of private generation projects also agree to minimum disclosure standards. The objective is to create incentives for better practice, improve governance of the power sector, reduce transaction costs, and ultimately, to deliver cheaper and more reliable power for people and businesses. Transparency of PPAs would support the efforts of government policymakers and planners, investors, and development finance institutions to accelerate energy market development and to reap the benefits of open competition. Greater disclosure would also provide crucial information for citizens to hold their own governments accountable for the contracts they sign on behalf of the public.
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A CGD blog with Todd Moss. In 2019, Ghana paid an estimated $620 million for electricity that the country did not need or use. That’s a sign of the damage done by secret deals for power.
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A CGD blog. If your toolbox is overflowing with precision guided munitions, the problems you will focus on are ones that (arguably) can be solved with precision guided munitions. Our comparatively tepid response to the pandemic is another sign of the longstanding and excessive prioritization of potential violen…
Charles Kenny 