Does Development Make You Happy? Subjective Wellbeing and Economic Growth in Developing Countries was published in Social Indicators Research, 73, 2, 2005. The evidence for any relationship between GDP/capita growth and growth in subjective wellbeing (SWB) in wealthier countries is disputed, at best. However, there are a number of reasons commonly articulated for thinking the relationship should be stronger in less developed countries (LDCs). This paper looks at both reasons for expecting the relationship to be stronger in developing countries, and those for a weak link that might still apply in LDCs. Finally, it turns to a limited data set to see what that might tell us. The results suggest that, at least in middle-income countries, there is little strong evidence in favor of a connection between growth and SWB.
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 Short Review of Information and Communication Technologies and Basic Education in LDCs: What is Useful, What is Sustainable? was co-authored with Jeremy Grace and published in the International Journal of Educational Development 23 (2003). Information and communication technologies such as radio and television have long been used in education. The advent of the technology of the Internet has created pressure for Internet access in primary and secondary schools across the world. This paper reviews some of the available evidence on the impact and cost of such technologies in developing countries. It concludes that while there is strong evidence for the efficacy and efficiency of interactive radio instruction, the evidence on the impact of computer-supported education remains mixed, and costs are prohibitive for many LDCs (less developed countries).
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W(h)ither the Digital Divide?, written with Carsten Fink, was published in info 5,6, in 2003. The "widening digital divide" has the status of fact in most discussions of the global distribution of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and that this divide is a problem is widely accepted. This paper challenges both assumptions. First, looking at various measures of the digital divide, there is a divide in per-capita access to ICTs but developing countries show faster rates of growth in network development than developed countries. Moreover, when employing a per-income measure of access, developing countries already "digitally leapfrog" the developed world. Second, the paper examines the prediction that disparities in absolute access to ICTs between countries will lead to reduced development prospects in poor countries. Past experience has shown that it is very difficult to make predictions of this type. The paper concludes that we may be posing the wrong policy questions when focusing on a "digital divide" as it is commonly understood.
The article was discussed in The Economist’s Economics Focus.
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The Internet and Economic Growth in Less-developed Countries: A Case of Managing Expectations? was published in Oxford Development Studies 31, 1, 2003. A discussion of the theory of technology and economic growth suggests potentially negative implications for the impact of the Internet on developing countries. Technology in general is undoubtedly central to the growth process, but economists define technology in very broad terms. The impact of any particular, invented, technology is likely to be small. This theoretical perspective is supported by the empirical evidence on the limited impact of past "information revolutions" on less-developed countries (LDCs) and the present impact of the Internet on advanced economies. Furthermore, LDCs appear ill-prepared to benefit from the opportunities that the Internet does present–they lack the physical and human capital, along with the institutions required, to exploit the e-economy. Finally, even optimistic forecasts of the Internet’s global economic impact are small in scale compared with the challenge of development. This has significant implications for development policy.
The paper was previosuly issued as a WIDER discussion paper, it will be published as a chapter in A. D’Costa (ed) The New Economy in Development (London: Palgrave).
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Can Information and Communication Technologies be Pro-Poor? co-authored with Emmanuel Forestier and Jeremy Grace, published in Telecommunications Policy, 26, 11, 2002. There is over 20 years of accumulated cross-country evidence on the link between telecommunications provision and economic growth. Looking at micro-studies from a range of countries including Bangladesh, Botswana and Zimbabwe, there is also some evidence that provision of telephony has a dramatic effect on the income and quality of life of the rural poor. This paper examines cross-country evidence to discover if teledensity (the number of telephones per capita) has a pro-poor growth impact—fostering increased average incomes while reducing inequality. It also examines the impact of telecommunications rollout on quality of life variables including infant mortality and literacy. It finds that, historically, telecommunications rollout has had a positive and significant impact on increasing inequality and little impact on quality of life variables. A reason for this is tested and preliminarily confirmed that rollout has (historically) only benefited the wealthy. The paper will then turn to emerging evidence on the role of the Internet in poverty relief and statistics on the access gap in provision between rich and poor, suggesting that this new ICT will also be a force for income divergence. Using the results of the cross-country analysis on telecommunications, the paper will conclude with a discussion of potential policy responses (such as sector reform and universal access programs) to turn telecommunications from a source of growth that also increases inequality to a source of growth that diminishes it.
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The Price of Oil: is it Low and is that Bad? co-authored with James Bond, was published in the International Journal of Global Energy Issues 17, 4, 2002. The long-term price of oil should rest near its long run marginal cost (LRMC). Past price history and both demand and natural supply factors suggest that an oil price in the low teens is closer to the LRMC than the prices experienced over most of the last 25 years. For oil producing countries, this low price might not be as damaging as is often supposed – and might indeed encourage higher long-term growth. For oil consumers, low prices offer the opportunity to reform markets and reduce subsidies, with positive impacts on electricity rollout, development and the environment. For oil companies, low prices suggest the need to create new profit opportunities, but some of the more flexible and competitive players have already begun to show that this is possible.
Written when the price of oil was well below $20, the paper’s prediction that oil prices would remain low looks a little weak…
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Should we Try to Bridge the Global Digital Divide was published in info 4,3, 2002. The standard set of statistics for measuring the "digital divide" involve per capita use of various information and communications technologies (ICTs). Underlying these statistics is an assumption that higher usage per capita would be a good thing, and ubiquitous usage would be a great thing. This article begins by examining poor people’s information needs, and noting that poor countries have to provide information infrastructure both to meet those needs and the communications requirements of business and government. The article argues that there will be a role for the Internet as part of that information infrastructure. However, features both of poor countries, and particularly of the poor people who reside in those countries, suggest that the utility of widespread Internet access may be limited. Given that providing widespread Internet access will also be complex and expensive, this suggests the goal of "closing the digital divide" by attempting to reach ubiquitous Internet use in less developed countries (LDCs) might be a costly mistake.
I summarized the article in a piece for Foreign Policy.
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Information and Communication Technologies for Direct Poverty Alleviation: Costs and Benefits was published in Development Policy Review, 20, May 2002. Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are powerful tools for empowerment and income generation in developing countries. The cost-effectiveness of different ICTs does vary between developed and less developed countries, however. This article reviews the potential efficacy of radio, telephony and the Internet as tools of direct poverty alleviation in the latter. While the requirements for their successful utilisation make radio and telephone far more suitable technologies for the poor, traditional ICTs can act as a sustainable intermediary for them to gain indirect access to the power of the Internet. Governments should concentrate on opening up private and community provision of broadcasting and widening access to telephone services, so that they can effectively play this intermediary role.
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Prioritizing Countries for Assistance to Overcome the Digital Divide was published in Communications and Strategies, No. 41, First Quarter, 2001. In order to provide the right type of assistance to the right countries to overcome the digital divide, some method of prioritization is required. This paper attempts to take a first step in that direction. After a brief literature review, it develops two indicators of the present level and quality of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) access in a country, as well as four indicators (beyond income) of the determinants of access and quality. After testing the determinant indicators to see if they are, indeed, related to the quality and quantity of access, it uses them to suggest priority countries for particular types of donor intervention to overcome to digital divide. The paper then turns to limitations of the proposed approach and conclusions.
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What Do We Know About Economic Growth Or, why don’t we know very much? was published in World Development 29, 1, 2001, co-authored with David Williams. The last 10 years has seen an explosion in cross country econometric studies of growth, driven by two factors—new mathematical models of the growth process that lend themselves to econometric testing, and new data sets that make such testing possible. This paper looks at a selective review of these studies. It concludes that the results are disappointing in that no model has proven robust to trial by repeated regression. The paper suggests some reasons for this—including that the tested models tend to be ahistorical and over-simple in terms of their causal accounts. It concludes with possible lessons for econometric work in this area.
Some of the ideas in the paper are recycled for an article for The Globalist published January 2005, Do we Know How to Develop?
Charles Kenny 
