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

Priority Setting in Health: Building Institutions for Smarter Public Spending — Amanda Glassman

6/11/12

Amanda GlassmanGiven a small budget, would it make sense to vaccinate 10 children against childhood diseases, or one woman to prevent transmission of HIV to her unborn child? In today’s global health arena where resources are limited and demands are growing, policy makers constantly face such budgetary dilemmas with little expert guidance. 

My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Amanda Glassman –a research fellow and director of CGD’s global health program. Her recent report, Priority Setting in Health: Building Institutions for Smarter Public Spending, draws on the expertise of a CGD working group to offer recommendations for improving the allocation of scarce health funding, despite political and bureaucratic constraints.

Development Drums Episode 31: David Roodman on Microfinance

6/7/12

Center for Global Development Senior Fellow David Roodman talks about his latest book‘Due Diligence, An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance’.

David discusses the evidence surrounding the effects of microfinance on the lives of the world’s poor and its implications on aid donors, within the context of his book’s key findings. David then goes on to speak about what he himself has learned about the roles of different kinds of evidence, along with the unusual way in which he used open blogs to guide and inform the writing of his book.

Ag Aid and Tech Breakthroughs – Kimberly Ann Elliott

6/4/12

Food security has been a frequent topic at G-8 and G-20 meetings ever since the food price crisis that preceded the 2008 financial markets crash. It is likely to be discussed again this month when world leaders meet in Los Cabos, Mexico for the 2012 G-20 Summit.

Among the proposals likely to be considered is one with roots in CGD research by senior fellow Kimberly Ann Elliott, my guest on this week’s Wonkcast. Kim is a leading expert on agriculture and poverty, and especially on agriculture pull funding—finance that creates incentives for research, development and delivery of agricultural technology breakthroughs.

In this week’s interview we discuss why food security has featured so prominently on the agenda of global summits; how pull funding differs from traditional approaches; how it could work for specific crops, like vitamin-A enriched sweet potatoes; and the modest scale of the pilots that may be announced at the Los Cabos Summit.

Rethinking Monetary, Regulatory, and Financial Policies in the Midst of the Global Crisis – Liliana Rojas-Suarez

5/29/12

On May 22nd, members of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (CLAAF), convened at CGD to discuss some of the most pressing fiscal and monetary issues affecting Latin American economies. The result of the committee’s two-and-a-half-day-long discussion was a four page statement and several clear recommendations for rethinking financial policies in the midst of a global crisis.

The Climate Change Vulnerability Index -- David Wheeler

5/21/12

This Wonkcast was originally recorded in April 2011.

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.

Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone? – Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz

5/15/12

Vijaya Ramachandran

Since the 2010 earthquake, $6 billion has been disbursed in official aid to help the people of Haiti. Nearly all of it has gone to intermediaries such as international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private contractors. Yet there has been a surprising lack of reporting on how the money has been spent. CGD senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran and research assistant Julie Walz try to follow the money in a new CGD policy paper: “Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?” They joined me on this week’s Wonkcast to explain their findings.

Development Drums: Interviews with EBRD Candidates

5/14/12

On Friday the Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will decide who will be the Bank’s next President.  Today we are publishing interviews with four of the candidates. The four candidates who agreed to be interviewed are:  Thomas Mirow (at 03:58), the incumbent who has completed one four year term as President and is seeking re-election for the second term; Jan Krzysztof Bielecki (at 17:40), former prime minister of Poland; Suma Chakrabarti (35:45), a senior British civil servant;   and Bozidar Djelic (at 47:43), the former deputy Prime Minister of Serbia.  The fifth candidate, Philippe de Fontaine Vive Curtaz, is vice president of the European Investment Bank and did not choose to participate in this process.

Leapfrogging Technology, the Case for Biometrics: Alan Gelb

5/8/12

Alan Gelb

In developed countries, official identification systems are a fact of life, providing the foundation for a myriad of transactions including elections, pension payments, and the legal system. Without functional ID systems, citizens of many developing countries miss out on the benefits of official identification. On this week’s Wonkcast, I am joined by CGD senior fellow Alan Gelb who has been researching the potential for new biometric technology, such as computerized finger printing and iris scans, to help poor countries leapfrog the long and complicated process of setting up ID systems.

Development Drums: Toby Ord on Giving What We Can

4/30/12

Toby Ord is a moral philosopher at Balliol College, Oxford and the president of Giving What We Can, an international society dedicated to eliminating poverty in the developing world. In this interview, Toby firstly talks about consequentialism and the implications for development, with particular focus on cost-effectiveness. Secondly, Toby explains his personal decision to donate a substantial proportion of his income to the developing world, and shares with us the factors that guide his choice of recipients.

Key Challenges for Jim Kim, New World Bank President—Nancy Birdsall

4/17/12

Nancy Birdsall

After an unprecedented competition, with three official nominees, the World Bank announced on Monday that the board had selected Jim Yong Kim, the Korean-born U.S. nominee, as the next president of the World Bank. My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is CGD president Nancy Birdsall, who discusses why it matters who leads the bank and sets out key challenges for the incoming president.

The Challenge of Scaling Up Proven Interventions — Justin Sandefur

4/10/12

Justin Sandefur

My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Justin Sandefur, a research fellow at CGD whose recent work has focused on education in Kenya. One study examines the returns of private schooling, while another looks at the effects of contract teachers on student test scores. The results of these studies highlight shortcomings in public education, including failures of accountability and a dense bureaucracy. 

Oil 2 Cash in Iraq -- Johnny West

4/3/12

Johnny West is a man of many talents. An expert on oil, civil society, and governance in the Middle East who works as an advisor to the UNDP, he is fluent in Arabic, spent more than two decades in the Middle East as a journalist for Reuters, and has just published a highly readable book recounting his journey through the Arab Spring. On this week’s Wonkcast, we catch him between his travels to discuss a new working paper he’s written for CGD: Iraq’s Last Window: Diffusing the Risks of a Petro State. Johnny’s experience in the Middle East makes him think that the region just might be ripe for an Oil 2 Cash revolution that could help foster improvements in governance and reduce poverty.

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).

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