CGD's weekly Global Prosperity Wonkcast, event videos, whiteboard talks, slides, and more.
Rita Perakis explains a new financing mechanism called Development Impact Bonds. DIBs would provide upfront funding for development programs by private investors, who would be remunerated by donors or host-country governments—and earn a return—if evidence shows that programs achieve pre-agreed outcomes.
Senior fellow Owen Barder is interviewed for an Al Jazeera piece on British aid to India.
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.
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.
In this two-minute 2006 video clip, Ruth Levine, then CGD senior fellow and director for global health, tells the story of CGD’s Making Markets for Vaccines initiative. She describes how a CGD Working Group produced an economic and legal framework for funds to incentivize vaccine development. The G-7 Finance Ministers endorsed the approach and five donors (Canada, Italy, Norway, UK and Russia, and the Gates Foundation) committed $1.5 billion to create an incentive for a vaccine against the strains of pneumococcus disease prevalent in low-income countries. Owen Barder, a co-author of the working group report, and Alice Albright, a member of the working group who was then CFO of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, help tell the story of moving this innovative proposal from idea to action.