A working paper with George Yang for CGD. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) including the International Finance Corporation (IFC) tend to look at their development impact using project-level indicators of outputs and employment impacts. Evaluation of the development impact of DFIs should try to estimate the difference between how the country and sector is with the DFI investment com-pared to how the country and sector would be absent the investment. Using a database of IFC and other investments and sector outcomes covering infrastructure and finance, we find the quantity of IFC investment was significantly associated with larger sums of future non-IFC private investment, but it is difficult to find evidence of an impact on outcomes.
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. What impact do development finance institutions (DFIs) like the IFC have on actual development? Today, George Yang and I release a paper that tries to take a sectoral approach to impact: does an IFC electricity investment lead to more power production per capita in a country, or financing provided t…
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A CGD blog with Vijaya Ramachandran. How gender balanced is the World Bank’s board?
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A CGD blog with Ian Mitchell. This week, development ministers of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) come together for one of their occasional “high-level meetings.” Here’s what we think should be on the agenda.
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A policy paper for CGD. Is research into a Covid-19 vaccine a suitable use of Official Development Assistance (ODA)? What about finance to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Both are clearly good ways to spend money with considerable benefits to developing countries, but is that enough? This note attempts to tease apart a discussion of “is this ODA” from “is this a global public good?” and then separate out again “is this ODA and/or a global public good?” from “is this an efficient way to spend money?” It uses that discussion to frame conclusions about how and what financing of GPGs should be counted as ODA and takes a specific look at the issue of climate change in that regard.
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A CGD blog with Ian Mitchell. As the possibility of a new Cold War between the US and China gains traction in some foreign policy circles, the scale of Chinese development finance has taken center stage. A closer examination suggests the cost to China of this lending is distinctly underwhelming. It would be cheap for the US and …
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On the fact we're a nation of immigrants worried about immigration. In the Dallas Morning News.
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A CGD blog. The UK is about to merge development and diplomacy in a single department: the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about that, but CGD colleagues have pointed out some opportunities as well. One area where combining the talents of DFID and Foreig…
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A CGD blog with Charles Kenny. We need to move forward-or backward-in what we expect development finance institutions (DFIs) to do in terms of financing private sector development in the world’s poorest countries.
Charles Kenny 