This Optimist column argues that developing countries would be better off with less regulation that was better enforced.
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 Shot in the Dark, for Foreign Policy, cheers the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization's supply side initiatives but suggests the need for a greater focus on the demand side –getting parents to bring their kids to get vaccinated.
-
The DR Congo has actually seen some progress in the quality of life over the past 20 years despite income dropping by two thirds —FP column.
-
Chug for Growth for FP suggests the Protestant Work Ethic has nothing on the brewery when it comes to promoting development. Kinda sorta wished it had come out on April 1st…
-
Bentham from the Crypt Once More is a CGD essay. There is a burgeoning academic literature on happiness polls that has used a range of different measures and approaches across countries rich and poor alike to answer the question, “what makes people say they are happy?” The excitement surrounding this work is well justified. These polls suggest an idea of happiness that would be broadly understood by philosophers from Aristotle to Mill to Rawls or Parfit. Happiness studies also suggest some potential reasons why we appear to act irrationally according to the dictates of revealed-preference-utility-maximization. Subjective-well-being (SWB) polls also help to illustrate some of the absurdities of taking income per capita as our measure of the ultimate good. I discussed some of the ideas with Justin Wolfers and Felix Salmon in Aspen.
At the same time, a lot of things we surely care about are not reflected in SWB poll answers. Crosscountry studies involving economies and societies at distinctly different levels of development suggest a limited role for income, rights, health and social factors all combined in explaining SWB. And all the usual criticisms of and concerns with utilitarianism apply to SWB polls. Polls do not capture a be-all and end-all measure of the good. Both because of the difficulty of interpreting SWB evidence with regard to SWB-maximizing policy and because it appears clear that SWB (on whichever measure) is probably not what we want to maximize, considerable caution is required in the use of such polls for policymaking
-
Why the declining cost and complexity of eye care is a huge boon for the developing world –the latest for FP.
-
A CGD blog.
-
-
The Best Things in Life are (Nearly) Free is a CGD Working Paper. The health of the world’s population—including those in the poorest countries—has improved more in the past 100 years than ever before. The improvement is largely a result of the development and spread of cheap, effective technologies (such as vaccines). Other factors, such as national wealth and institutional development, appear to be secondary, suggesting that exogenous models of development may still be relevant in explain gains in global health. In this paper, background to Kenny’s book Getting Better, the authors investigate the cross-country determinants of health improvements and describe the implications for development policy. In short, improving health need not be expensive. Even very poor countries can make great strides with good technologies and good delivery, but it may take time. Historical trends suggest we should not expect too much too quickly. A later version has been published in World Development.
-
Worried about spiralling US health costs? Outsource care to Thailand. This week's Optimist column.
Charles Kenny 