A review for the Economic Record ( word version). The good or bad news is that the World Values Survey data Norris presents suggests no strong global trend in surveyed trust in people or institutions over time.
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. The process of procuring goods and services to deliver US development assistance remains shut down. June 17th marked 259 days into the 2025 fiscal year. At an equal daily rate, you’d expect cumulative new obligations across the US government at that point to be running at about 70 percent of the tot…
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A CGD blog. China’s relationship with multilateral development institutions, including the World Bank, is of great interest to US lawmakers. In particular, there is concern over the fact that the World Bank lends to China and sometimes finances Chinese contractors to work on projects in its member countries, ev…
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A CEPR book chapter with Justin Sandefur. Despite pledges from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to protect life-saving interventions, we estimate that USAID program cancellations to date would lead to between 500,000 and 700,000 fewer lives saved.
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A CGD blog. Haiti finds itself on the list of countries facing a Trump administration travel ban for the second time in two terms. The official reasons are that Haitians often overstay their visas and that there is a risk of the “establishment of criminal networks, and other national security threats.” But Hait…
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A CGD blog with Justin Sandefur. The White House has presented further details of its FY 2026 budget request. It includes a proposed two-thirds cut to global health and humanitarian funding. Such a reduction is impossible to reconcile with assurances from the administration that it is preserving life-saving assistance. A rough esti…
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A policy paper for CGD. This paper examines the changing shape of Chinese investment in Africa, as it evolves from large scale infrastructure toward small scale manufacturing. It looks at the opportunity for the region in the context of a deepening manufacturing labor shortage in China; discusses barriers to that opportunity in both China and the Africa region; and the potential response of Western countries. It may be possible for at least some economies in Africa to benefit from a combination of Chinese investment in manufactured export and processed commodity industries and preferential access to economies including the US and China if geopolitics allow, but there are many reasons this could fail and the geopolitics are increasingly hostile. A backup plan for regional growth would be wise.
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A CGD blog. FEWS NET, the US-financed famine early warning system, was one of the casualties of the US foreign assistance “pause.” The good news is that it has resumed operations. But what it has to report is deeply concerning.
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A speech at the Oxford Martin School. The world’s richest nations have made considerable global financing promises to developing countries—including a $300 billion annual pledge for climate. But in the last few months aid budgets have been slashed across Europe and in the United States, even as financing is diverted from development and adaptation to projects that have little impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, attempts to unlock trillions in private investment at the project level using billions in aid have comprehensively failed. How can we effectively fund both climate action and development when current financing approaches are falling woefully short? Concessional finance for development and adaptation in the poorest countries, profitable lending for development and mitigation in richer developing countries.
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A CGD blog. In August last year, I made a modest proposal to China’s Minister of Finance regarding IDA, the soft lending arm of the World Bank that works with the poorest countries. I suggested China might want to become an equal IDA shareholder to the US. While Beijing did increase its contribution in the sub….
