Ideas to Action:

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CGD's weekly Global Prosperity Wonkcast, event videos, whiteboard talks, slides, and more.

Growing Business a Development Priority? (Event Video)

4/27/11

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A growing share of the Multilateral Development Banks’ (MDBs) business involves private firms. Lending to, investing in and guaranteeing private firms accounted for more than a third of MDB financial operations in 2008, up from less than a fifth at the start of the decade. What’s driving this surge? Is it appropriate to use scarce global public resources to invest in private firms? Is it good for development? This new CGD report by Guillermo Perry, a former finance minister in Colombia and World Bank chief economist for Latin America, examines this trend. The report identifies the activities, firms, sectors and countries benefiting from the MDB’s private sector operations and explores whether it catalyzes or competes with private financial markets. Perry explores how governments and private firms can benefit, while avoiding conflicts of interest. He concludes the report with a proposed agenda for MDB-private sector activity.

Carbon Taxes After All? A Conversation with William Nordhaus (Event Video)

4/21/11

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On Thursday, March 24, the Center for Global Develompent hosted William Nordhaus of Yale University for a conversation on the efficacy of carbon taxes and other leading carbon reducing strategies. Professor Nordhaus is one of the world's leading experts on the economics of climate change and a leading proponent of carbon taxes.

The Climate Change Vulnerability Index: David Wheeler

4/18/11

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Rapid climate change is upon us, and governments, multilateral organizations, and development agencies are preparing to dole out billions of dollars in adaptation assistance. Nevertheless, little research has gone into calculating which countries are most vulnerable to global warming.

On this Wonkcast, I'm joined by David Wheeler, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, who created an index for determining which countries should be prioritized when the money starts to flow. His new paper, "Quantifying Vulnerability to Climate Change: Implications for Adaptation Assistance", provides an index for comparison of cross-country vulnerability to some of the most extreme climate threats. An accompanying map makes it easy to see which countries will be hit hardest.

Innovation in Vaccine Financing: Assessing Progress and Envisioning Future Directions (Event Video)

4/8/11

Alice Albright

In a recent speech, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah said “The evidence is clear: vaccines are the best public health investment we can make.” As the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) prepares for its June 2011 pledging conference, CGD hosted a panel to look back at global efforts to support vaccination funding in developing countries over the past decade and reflect on lessons learned and future potential. The panel also looked to the issues and challenges facing vaccination financing in the 2010s.

What We Know about Health and Health Services in North Korea (Event Video)

4/7/11

Gilbert Burnham

Little is known about health status and health services in North Korea. The reports that are published are often based on a small number of interviews about events from some years past (Amnesty International), or based on manipulated data (World Health Organization). The reports of defectors and increasing information from inside North Korea paints a picture of continued malnutrition, though less than the 1990s. Health indicators continue to deteriorate in North Korea. There are widespread infections such as tuberculosis, typhoid (and paratyphoid), and hepatitis, suggesting a collapse of public health infrastructure. Increasingly medicines are available principally in markets from private vendors. Hospitalization is common and requires gifts to doctors which may exceed 100% of the patient's monthly household income. Drug problems from locally manufactured methamphetamine is an increasing problem, and reports suggest it is widely available.

Combating Drug Resistance: Rachel Nugent

4/4/11

Rachel Nugent

Drug resistance, a neglected but increasingly urgent problem, receives some much-needed attention this week as the focus of this year’s World Health Day, also dubbed Antimicrobial Resistance Day, on Thursday, April 7. I invited Rachel Nugent, lead author of The Race Against Drug Resistance
, a CGD working group report, for a progress report on efforts to address this problem since the report was released last June.

We begin with some scary stuff—the continued emergence of “superbugs” that doctors don’t like to talk about, such as hospital-bred pathogens that have become immune to antibiotics, drug resistant malaria, and my favorite nightmare, drug resistant TB, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates could infect two million people around the globe by 2015.

21st-Century Multilateralism - The OECD in a G-20 World (Event Video)

4/1/11

Angel Gurria

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), one of a troika of Kennedy-era development institutions (the others being USAID and the Peace Corps) faced with the challenge of transforming themselves to meet the needs of the 21st Century.

In light of this milestone, CGD hosted OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria for a talk titled 21st-Century Multilateralism: The OECD in a G-20 World.

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