A CGD blog. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) recently introduced a bill that tackles an important subject in global security: the under-representation of women in the world’s security forces and, in particular, United Nations peacekeeping operations. That' s a grea…
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 Working Paper with Ben Crisman. Governments buy about $9 trillion worth of goods and services a year, and their procurement policies are increasingly subject to international standards and institutional regulation including the WTO Plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement, Open Government Partnership commitments and International Financial Institution procurement rules. These standards focus on transparency and open competition as key tools to improve outcomes. While there is some evidence on the impact of competition on prices in government procurement, there is less on the impact of specific procurement rules including transparency on competition or procurement outcomes. Using a database of World Bank financed contracts, we explore the impact of a relatively minor procurement rule governing advertising on competition using regression discontinuity design and matching methods. The rule does appear to have a small, positive impact on bidding levels, suggesting the potential for more significant and strongly enforced transparency initiatives to have a sizeable effect on procurement outcomes.
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A CGD brief written with Megan O'Donnell,Mayra Buvinic and Cindy Huang. A repeat of some material from here and here plus more aid spending and buy-in.
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A CGD blog with Megan O’Donnell. The Obama administration has taken some important steps to put women’s economic empowerment at the center of US foreign and development policy, but there’s still plenty of work left to do. Researchers and advocates alike have made the case for why gender equality&mdas…
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A CGD blog. Maryland Senator Ben Cardin recently introduced legislation to establish a tiered system of countries with respect to levels of corruption by their governments and their efforts to combat such corruption. It is great to see Senator Cardin looking for ways the United States can contribute t…
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A CGD blog. Congressman Ed Royce, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with a bipartisan list of cosponsors, is proposing the Digital GAP Act, designed to promote Internet access in developing countries and update foreign policy toward the Internet. And on the other side of Capitol…
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A CGD blog with Todd Moss. Most people accept that we will only achieve sustainable energy patterns with a substantial investment in research and development, but where the research will take place and where energy will be consumed doesn’t necessarily match up. Within 25 years, non-OECD countries will account …
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A CGD paper, with Ben Crisman, Sarah Dykstra and Megan O'Donnell. In 1996, Burkina Faso enacted legislation banning the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Much of the qualitative literature surrounding FGM/C discounts the impact of legal change on what is considered a social/cultural issue. We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys DHS(VI) in Burkina Faso to test for a discontinuous change in the likelihood of being cut in the year the law was passed. We find robust evidence for a substantial drop in hazard rates in 1996 and investigate the heterogeneous impact of the law by region, religion, and ethnicity. Overall, we roughly estimate that over a ten year period the law averted the genital mutilation/cutting of approximately 237,591 women and girls. We qualify our findings recognizing that Burkina Faso is a special case with a long history of bottom-up and top-down approaches to eliminating the practice.
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A CGD blog with Megan O’Donnell. Female genital mutilation/cutting rates have fallen in some countries but risen in others, despite a global ban. A new paper looks at the success story of Burkina Faso and the role of legal reform in decreasing FGM/C.
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A CGD blog. Based on a sample of far too few meetings with Michael, this one was typical: I learned a lot, there was plenty of laughter, he was forgiving and kind, and despite the storm clouds of the moment his optimism for the future seemed intact. Not even two years of cancer would stand in the way of that. I…
Charles Kenny 