Ideas to Action:

Independent research for global prosperity

For Educators

This page brings together CGD work of special interest to development studies educators and their students including syllabuses and slidedecks for courses taught by CGD-affiliated professors, podcasts, and videos, and pedagogic writings. Search the materials by topic using the toolbar below and consult a list of development studies programs at US universities via the link to the right.

CGD books are available for purchase online from the Brookings Institution Press or through Hopkins Fulfillment Service, P.O. Box 50370, Baltimore MD 21211-4370. Tel: 1-800-537-5487. For review or exam copies, please send a note to publications @ cgdev.org with details about the potential review or the course you are teaching.

Identity and Development -- Alan Gelb and Julia Clark

10/16/12

Alan GelbBeing able to prove who you are is a powerful tool that can serve as a basis for exercising rights like voting, accessing financial services and receiving transfers, and reducing fraud. Yet billions of people in the developing world lack a means to officially identify themselves. In this week’s Wonkcast, Alan Gelb and Julia Clark draw from their ongoing research on biometric technology and development to explain how developing country governments and donors can tap advances in biometrics to help empower poor people.

The European Crisis: Still in a Deteriorating Trend

10/11/12

In this CNN interview, Senior Fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez explains that recent policy announcement, while in the right direction, do not imply that a solution to the European crisis is on sight. She emphasizes that only decisive actions by the European Central Bank involving not only provision of liquidity (and purchase of government bonds) but also heavy involvement in the restructuring of banking systems in Spain and other European countries will guarantee a credible and permanent solution of the crisis. Lacking these actions, Rojas-Suarez expects continuous volatility in the international capital markets and a deteriorating trend in the Eurozone’s economic fundamentals.

Development Drums Episode 34: The Economics Of Enough

10/10/12

In this episode, Owen talks with author and economist Diane Coyle about her latest book ‘The Economics Of Enough, How To Run The Economy As If The Future Matters’.

Diane shares her thoughts on economic growth as a satisfactory goal for economic and social policy, and discusses the measure of Gross Domestic Product in relation to indicators of happiness and welfare. She also explains her ‘manifesto for enough’ in relation to how it addresses these issues, along with how much it leaves unresolved.

Development Drums is hosted by Owen Barder and produced by Anna Scott at the Center for Global Development in Europe.

The Future of IDA – Todd Moss

10/10/12

Todd Moss
The World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) was created more than 50 years ago to provide low-cost financing to the world’s poorest countries. Economic growth is lifting many of these countries into middle-income status. What happens when most of IDA’s borrowing countries are no longer classified as poor?

My guest on this week’s Wonckast, senior fellow Todd Moss, offers answers from  a new CGD working group report he helped to write: Soft Lending without Poor Countries: Recommendations for a New IDA.

The FED QE3 and its impact on Latin America

10/3/12

In this CNN interview Senior Fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez argued that the Fed's recently announced expansionary monetary policy (QE3) is a response to the lack of action by the US Government and Congress to solve the real problem facing the US: the country's fiscal and debt positions. While not ideal, the Fed's policy is an attempt to improve consumers' expectations who have become highly risk adverse in the face of large uncertainties both in Europe and in the US.
Liliana explained that, in contrast to events in 2010, this time around the effects of the Fed's policies will have less adverse effects on Latin America and other Emerging Market Economies. The central reason is that these countries' current economic cycle is one characterized by declining economic growth resulting from a reduced global demand for their products. This in turn is the result of a global slowdown that includes advanced economies and China. In Liliana's view, to the extent that the Fed's actions can improve markets' confidence, the positive effect--however limited--on US aggregate demand will offset the adverse effects on currency appreciations in Latin America and other economies.

The New Bottom Billion — Andy Sumner

9/24/12

Andy SumnerThis Wonkcast was originally recorded in February 2011. Andy Sumner updates the data from the original Bottom Billion brief in his recent working paper, Where Will the World's Poor Live? An Update on Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion.

Paul Collier’s 2007 book, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, changed the way we think about poverty and development. Collier argued that the majority of the 5-billion people in the "developing world" live in countries with sustained high growth rates and would eventually escape from poverty. The rest—the bottom billion—live in 58 small, poor, often land-locked countries that are growing very slowly or not at all. These countries, stuck in poverty traps, should be the focus of foreign aid, Collier argued.

Development Drums Episode 32: Gender and Development

8/15/12


Gender permeates all development issues, and there is growing debate surrounding how best to implement and promote gender balance and equality throughout the development agenda.This episode broadly focuses on two different views of why we might be interested in women in development: the first based on instrumental reasons (what can women and girls do for development) and the second on more structural and contextual reasons (what development can do for women and girls).

Our guests are Andrea Cornwall of the Institute of Development Studies and Prue Clarke of New Narratives.

The Implications of Complexity for Development - Owen Barder

8/15/12

In this lecture, adapted from his Kapuściński Lecture of May 2012, Owen Barder explores the implications of complexity theory for development policy. He explains how traditional economic models have tried and failed to understand why some countries have managed to improve living standards while other countries have not.

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