Ideas to Action:

Independent research for global prosperity

Multimedia

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

CGD in Europe -- Owen Barder

3/27/12

Owen Barder

Most Wonkcasts focus on CGD’s research and policy work. This one is different. My guest is Owen Barder and our topic is CGD itself, specifically the effort that Owen is leading to greatly increase the Center’s engagement in Europe. Owen, a CGD senior fellow and director for Europe, previously worked for CGD on our Advance Market Commitment initiative, which led to a $1.5 billion pilot commitment to purchase and ensure delivery of new vaccines to prevent pneumococcal disease. He subsequently spent two years in Ethiopia and recently resumed working for CGD, based in London, to strengthen the Center’s ties with the European development research and policy community. [Note: Owen continues to maintain his own excellent blog, Owen Abroad and to host occasional podcasts, Development Drums; these are also now available on the CGD Website multimedia page.] 

Engagement Amid Austerity: Reorienting the International Affairs Budget -- Connie Veillette & John Norris

3/20/12

Connie Veillette

The U.S. political environment has changed significantly since 2007 when President Obama promised to double U.S. foreign assistance. As the 2012 election cycle presses on, cutting the budget and reducing the deficit are on the minds of many. What does this mean for U.S. foreign assistance? 

My guests on this week’s Wonkcast, Connie Veillette, CGD’s director of the Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, and John Norris, executive director of the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP), have a blueprint for making U.S. foreign assistance more focused and effective amid budget austerity. 

Criminality among Politicians– M. Vaishnav

3/13/12

Milan Vaishnav

In the summer of 2008, the Congress-led government of India released five members of Parliament from jail to support the government in fending off a close no-confidence vote. The five politicians – all indicted for or convicted of murder – cleaned up, cast their votes, and returned to jail the next day.

The preponderance of suspected criminals among Indian politicians is no secret. In a country where one-of-four members of Parliament is under criminal indictment, anecdotes such as this are not uncommon. My guest on this week’s Wonkcast, CGD post-doctoral fellow Milan Vaishnav, was inspired by this story to study criminality among Indian politicians for his forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation. He reached some surprising conclusions.

Latin American Lessons from the 2008 Financial Crisis – Liliana Rojas-Suarez

3/6/12

Liliana Rojas-Suarez

Conventional wisdom has it that when the United States catches a cold, Latin America gets pneumonia. But when the United States caught financial pneumonia in 2008, Latin America escaped with little more than a cold. What’s changed?  

In this week’s Wonkcast, CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez explains why Latin America was mostly successful in coping with the fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis and she introduces a new methodology for predicting how countries will fare in the next global financial crisis. Our conversation draws on her new working paper, Credit at Times of Stress: Latin American Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis, written jointly with Carlos Montoro of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Type

Expert

Initiative

Date