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

Cleaning up the Clean Tech Fund

11/10/11

Johnny West

In this short video clip, CGD senior fellows David Wheeler and Arvind Subramanian tell how CGD influenced the World Bank to stop financing coal-burning power plants through the Clean Tech Fund and instead focus on solar thermal power. Drawing on Wheeler’s research, Wheeler and others in CGD engaged directly with senior management at the World Bank, enlisted NGO support, and made the argument for the funding shift in newsletters, blog posts, and Congressional testimony. Watch the film, then learn more about CGD’s work on climate and development.

Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance: Arvind Subramanian

9/20/11

Arvind Subramanian

“February 2021. It’s a cold blustery morning in Washington. The newly inaugurated president of the United States is on his way to the office of the Chinese managing director of the IMF to sign the agreement under which the IMF will provide 3 trillion dollars in emergency financing to the U.S. and the conditionality to which the U.S. will have to adhere.”

Sound like science fiction? To Arvind Subramanian, a joint-fellow at the Peterson Institute and the Center for Global Development, it’s more like economic inevitability – a world in which the United States has no choice but to cede global leadership to China—and accept it’s terms, which in this imaginary case includes withdrawal from the Western Pacific. Arvind joins me on this week’s Wonkcast to explain the careful quantitative analysis that underpins that startling opening passage from his new book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance.

Egypt’s Next Big Challenge: Overcoming Reliance on Rents

2/16/11

Arvin SubramanianAfter the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last Friday, I invited Arvind Subramanian, a former IMF resident representative in Cairo and a regular columnist for the Business Standard, the leading business daily in his native India, to share his views on Egypt’s economic prospects.

In the interview, Arvind argues that Egypt’s biggest economic challenge is reliance on rents, which he defines as wealth derived from historical and geographical legacies rather than job-generating economic growth. Arvind includes among these the Suez Canal, which I was surprised to learn generates some $5 billion a year in fees; aid received in exchange for peace with Israel; the pyramids and other antiquities that draw tourists, and even remittances, which he says are the result not of Egyptian success but of failure that forces its citizens to seek work abroad.

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