A CGD note with Scott Morris. Rather than use aid to finance climate mitigation projects (it's the wrong instrument, mis-targeted and inadequate in scale), why not fund a World Bank and IFC capital increase: its cheaper, better targeted, more appropriate to the task, ensures common but differentiated financing, and gives the World Bank Group something useful to do in richer developing countries.
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.
-
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…
-
For The Breakthrough Journal. In his Principles of Political Economy, JS Mill wrote a chapter “Of the Stationary State.” In it he argued that the need for economic growth in the richest countries had run its course. “It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.” I discuss that idea and some possible lessons for the modern degrowth movement.
-
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.
-
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…
-
The Plague Cycle, was published by Scribner in January 2021. I tweeted the draft of the book here and have written about some of what is in it in articles for Politico on disease and border control (which I also discussed with Martine Powers of the Washington Post); Slate on anti-vaxxers ,the need for a global treaty on antibiotics the first global vaccination campaign, and travel bans; Barrons on vaccination risks, MIT Technology Review on the role of the WHO; and then more on the WHO in the LA Times. I also summarized parts of the book for a CGD note: Are We entering a New Age of Pandemics? Richard Florida interviewed me about the book for Fast Company and Cardiff Garcia for NPR's The Indicator. At the Simon and Schuster page for the book you can see some generous blurbs from Laurie Garrett, Steven Pinker, Gregg Easterbrook, Dorothy Porter, Michael Kremer, Francis Fukuyama, David Wootton, Richard Florida, Kyle Harper and Tim Harford. So far it has been reviewed by Kirkus, Booklist, Nature, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, BBC History Magazine, The Diplomat, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times (and again in the FT as a summer reading recommendation), the Irish Independent, Environmental History, Andrew Batson, Diane Coyle, Duncan Green, Kaylie Seed, Cork City Library and AIER. There's an excerpt on Slate, at the OECD, and LitHub, I talked to the Progress Network about the book here, and discussed it with Romesh Ratnesar at Bloomberg, Mark Leon Goldberg at UN Dispatch, Greg LaBlanc at Unsiloed, Rob Ferrett on WPR, Steve Paikin on The Agenda, BFM Malaysia and Ireland's Big Issue. I did book events at the Philadelphia Free Library, Utah State, the Hudson Library, the OECD (with pictures and very kind words from Joshua Epstein), the Tucson Festival and NYU, Nicholas Christakis at the San Antonio Book Festival, shared five insights from the book here, and did the Page 99 test here. There was a CGD launch event with Judy Woodruff on January 26th and I talked to Felix Salmon about the book on Slate Money. The Italian version ("La Danza Della Peste") was reviewed here and here. Five years after the declaration of the Covid pandemic, I wrote about after-effects in the New York Tim
es. -
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…
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
Charles Kenny 