Nancy Birdsall

President
president@cgdev.org

Research Topics

Education

Ph.D., Yale University, 1979; M.A., Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 1969; B.A., Newton College of the Sacred Heart, 1967

Background

Nancy Birdsall is CGD’s founding president. From 1993 to 1998, she was executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the regional development banks, where she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio. Before that she worked 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank, including as director of the Policy Research Department.

She is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and over 100 articles in scholarly journals and monographs. Shorter pieces of her writing have appeared in dozens of U.S. and Latin American newspapers and periodicals. Birdsall received her Ph.D. from Yale University and her M.A. from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Prior to launching the Center, she served for three years as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where her work focused on globalization, inequality and the reform of the international financial institutions.

Full CV

Inequality and Development in a Globalizing World - A Syllabus (pdf, 225KB)

Non-CGD Publications

Books

• Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth and Poverty in the Developing World, edited with Allen C. Kelleyand Steven W. Sinding (Oxford University Press, 2001)
• New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World with Carol Graham (Brookings and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999)
• Distributive Justice and Economic Development with Andres Solimano and Eduardo Aninat (University of Michigan Press, 1999)
• Beyond Tradeoffs: Market Reforms and Equitable Growth in Latin America with Carol Graham and Richard H. Sabot (1998)

Papers and Articles

• Education and the MDGS: Realizing the Millennium Compact, by Nancy Birdsall and Milan Vaishnav. Reprinted by permission of the Columbia Journal of International Affairs (Spring 2005). Copyright 2005, The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.
• The World Bank of the Future: Victim, Villain, Global Credit Union? Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. October 2000
• Stuck In The Tunnel: Is Globalization Muddling The Middle Class? by Nancy Birdsall, Carol Graham, and Stefano Pettinato, The Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Working Paper No. 14, August 2000
• Education: the Peoples Asset
  The Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics Working Paper Number 5. September 1999.
• Putting Education to Work in Egypt, by Nancy Birdsall and Lesley O'Connell. Prepared for Conference, Growth Beyond Stabilization: Prospects for Egypt, sponsored by The Egyptian Center for Economic Studies in collaboration with the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector, University of Maryland; the Harvard Institute for International Development, and the US Agency for International Development, February 3-4, 1999, Cairo, Egypt. March 1999.

Contributions to Edited Volumes

• "América Latina y la Globalización: Prebisch Tenía Razón," in Raul Prebisch: El poder, los Principios y la Ética del Desarrollo edited by Edgar J. Dosman. (IADB, 2006)
• "Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America: Deeper Markets and Better Schools Make a Difference," with Jere R. Behrman and Miguel Szekely, in New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World (1999)
• "The U.S. and the Social Challenge in Latin America: The New Agenda Needs New Instruments," with Nora Lustig and Lesley O'Connell, in The Search for Common Ground: U.S. National Interests and the Western Hemisphere in a New Century (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999)
• "Deep Integration and Trade Agreements: Good for Developing Countries?" with Robert Z. Lawrence in Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 1999)
• "No Tradeoff: Efficient Growth Via More Equal Human Capital Accumulation in Latin America," in Beyond Trade-Offs: Market Reforms and Equitable Growth in Latin America (1998)

Articles:

• "That Silly Inequality Debate," in Foreign Policy, May/June 2002
• "Education in Latin America: Demand and Distribution are Factors that Matter," with Juan Luis Londoño and Lesley O'Connell in CEPAL Review 66, December 1998
• "Life is Unfair: Inequality in the World," in Foreign Policy, Summer 1998
• "Public Spending on Higher Education in Developing Countries: Too Much or Too Little?" in Economics of Education Review, 1996