This week's column is on government contract publication. No, really, it is exciting and important. You know how Secret Santa gifts aren't usually as good as the ones you get from your loving spouse? That's in part because they are secret. The same thing applies to contracts. Sort of.
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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Let There Be Light is the second weekly column for Foreign Policy –a paen to the light emitting diode and its potential impact in Africa.
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Learning About Schools in Development is a CGD Working Paper. It is a longer version of this, which itself was a revised version of this. There has been considerable progress in school construction and enrollment worldwide. Paying kids to go to school can help overcome remaining demand-side barriers to enrollment. Nonetheless, the quality of education appears very poor across the developing world, limiting development impact. Thus we should measure and promote learning not schooling. Conditional cash transfers to students on the basis of attendance and scores, school choice, decentralization combined with published test results, and teacher pay based on attendance and performance may help. But learning outcomes are primarily affected by the broader environment in which students live, suggesting a learning agenda that stretches far beyond education ministries.
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What Resource Curse? is the first of my weekly columns ("The Optimist") for Foreign Policy. It suggests there isn't a resource curse. But that doesn't stop EITI and Todd Moss' cash transfer scheme being good ideas.
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Good Ideas for Bad Times is the latest piece for Foreign Policy –it rounds up some new(ish) ideas related to development thinking including just giving money to the poor, geotagging, transparency in aid flows and new approaches to migration policy.
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Suerpfast: Is It Worth A Subsidy? is a working paper written with my brother, Robert Kenny, at Communications Chambers. Governments around the world are investing multiple billions to support the roll-out of fiber. These subsidies are based on the premise that fiber to the home brings substantial externalities. However, the evidence that basic broadband has contributed significantly to economic growth is decidedly mixed, and points to low returns for (expensive) superfast upgrades. This is especially the case given that many of the applications used to emphasize the supposed benefits of fiber to the home can be delivered by basic broadband or by superfast to business and government rather than to homes. In addition, other high speed broadband infrastructures are often simply ignored when making the case for fiber, and fiber rollout is credited with bringing benefits that would in fact require major systems and social change in other parts of the economy. Given the benefits of fiber have been considerably overstated, governments should think very hard indeed before supporting fiber rollout to the home. The paper casued a bit of excitement in Australia, and attracted some critics. Here is our response. The paper was published in info (vol 13, No. 11). We published a short version in The Journal of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (gated, here).
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This review of Linda Polman's The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong With Humanitarian Aid? was published in the November/December Washington Monthly. It's an under-researched polemic by a brave author on an interesting subject.
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We Don't Need No Universal Education? was published online by the Harvard International Review. The piece notes that there are multiple links in the chain between building schools and an economic impact to education, and argues that some of those links are often very weak, indeed. It concludes that we might want to spend more time on improving the quality of education before we worry overmuch about its universal extent.
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Best Decade Ever is in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. It argues that the "Naughty Aughties" (pls. blame editors :-)) have been the finest ten years in history.
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Bomb Scare was published in the May issue of Foreign Policy. It suggests that Malthusianism has been and remains wrong, worldwide. It is based on the arguments from Is Anwhere Stuck in a Malthusian Trap?, which has been revised and published in the May edition of Kyklos (Vol. 63, no. 2). I spoke about the article on KERA's Think.
Charles Kenny 