A CGD blog with Erin Collinson. The US Department of the Interior announced last week that the United States would no longer seek to comply with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an international multi-stakeholder organization that aims to increase revenue transparency and accountability in natura…
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 policy note with Tanvi Jaluka and Michael Brown on IMF Article IV negotiations since gender was declared 'macrocritical.' In short, there has been increased attention to the issue as reflected in word counts and discussion of women’s labor force participation, but there is still a long way to go.
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A CGD blog with Cordelia Kenney. On October 4, CGD convened a private roundtable on women and financial technology in development alongside Monica Brand Engel, co-founding partner of Quona Capital (which invests in financial technology solutions in the developing world), and Wendy Jagerson Teleki of the International Fina…
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A summary of the messages in Results Not Receipts in DevEx.
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Estimating the SDGs' Demand for Innovation is a CGD Working Paper written with Dev Patel. How much innovation will be needed to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals? We model shifts in the cross-country relationship between GDP per capita and achievement in key development indicators as “technological gains” and convergence to the best performers at a given income as “policy gains.” Assuming that the United Nations’ income growth projections for low- and middle-income countries are met, we estimate the residual demand for technology and policy innovation needed to meet several critical targets of the SDGs. Our results suggest that (i) best performers are considerably outperforming the average performance at a given income level, suggesting considerable progress could be achieved through policy change but that (ii) the targets set in the SDGs are unlikely to be met by 2030 without very rapid, ubiquitous technological progress alongside economic growth.
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People think they can judge the character of politicians, but they confuse luck for skill. That was a particular problem in 2016. For The Economist.
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A CGD blog. Improving rights for gays and lesbians is a critical human rights issue. Even where it is not illegal, gays and lesbians face violence, discrimination, and social stigma. But our research makes clear that in the developing world as a whole both laws and attitudes are changing for the better, a…
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Why DACA is good, for the Economist.
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A paper by Dev Patel and me for CGD. This analysis examines the relationship between legal reform and social norms surrounding homosexuality. We document three main findings. First, about a fifth of the variation in individual preferences can be explained at a country level. Second, using a difference-in-differences strategy, legalizing homosexuality improves how individuals view the tone of their communities. Third, we provide further evidence supporting a legal origins argument by examining former colonies. Countries that were colonized by the British Empire have significantly worse legal rights for samesex couples than those under other colonial powers. We conclude that adopting legal reform can improve societal attitudes.
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Troops are worthy of support. The Pentagon, not so much. For the Economist.
Charles Kenny 