CGD's weekly Global Prosperity Wonkcast, event videos, whiteboard talks, slides, and more.
In celebration of our 10th anniversary, we prepared this film to recount some of CGD's greatest impact achievements over the years. The video features three short stories detailing our work on the 2008 global financial crisis, clean-tech finance, and HIV/AIDS and includes two bonus vignettes about COD Aid and our Closing the Evaluation GAP initiative.
CGD Senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez discusses what implications might befell Latin American economies if the U.S. does not raise its debt ceiling.
President Sirleaf, the first woman to be elected head of state in Africa, provides her perspective on the role the private sector can play in Liberia and in emerging Africa more broadly. Todd Moss moderates a question and answer session after the president’s speech.
Fallout from the killing of Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town has prompted an anxious reassessment of all facets of the complex, troubled alliance between the United States and Pakistan. A new report from CGD’s Study Group on U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan shines light on a crucial and too-often neglected aspect of the relationship: the aid, trade and investment policies that constitute America’s effort to support Pakistan’s development.
The Center for Global Development is proud to have hosted Prof. Michael Kremer (Harvard) and Sarah Baird (GWU) as part of the Massachusetts Avenue Development Seminar (MADS) series. They presented the long-term, follow-up results of Prof. Kremer's research on deworming in Kenyan schools that shows significant, long-term gains in employment and earnings among dewormed children.
Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel present an new approach to global poverty reduction that combines behavioral economics with worldwide field research.Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel present an new approach to global poverty reduction that combines behavioral economics with worldwide field research. Their book takes readers into villages across Africa, India, South America, and the Philippines, where economic theory collides with real life. They show how small changes in banking, insurance, health care, and other development initiatives that take into account human irrationality can drastically improve the well-being of poor people. More Than Good Intentions provides a new way to understand what really works to reduce poverty; in so doing, it reveals how to better invest charitable gifts and official assistance to make a difference in the lives of poor people.
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.
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.
Development scholar-practitioner Duflo was the featured speaker at CGD's sixth annual Richard H. Sabot Lecture honoring the life and work of Richard "Dick" Sabot, a friend, co-author, and founding member of CGD's board of directors. CGD president Nancy Birdsall hosted and served as moderator for the discussion following the talk.
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.
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.
Michael Clemens uses rich census and administrative microdata to show that high rates of emigration by tertiary-educated Fiji Islanders not only raised investment in tertiary education in Fiji, but also raised the stock of tertiary-educated people in Fiji - net departures.
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.
At the World Bank on December 10, 2010, CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens and World Bank senior economist Gabriel Demombynes presented their work analyzing the evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project.
Twenty-five years ago, James Foster's influential work with Joel Greer and Erick Thorbecke helped define the way the world measures poverty. Foster will present his recent work on the theory of how to measure poverty when we care not only about income but also other dimensions of well-being such as health and education. Martin Ravallion, Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank, is the author of a new essay that criticizes the idea of a single multidimensional index. He will argue instead that multiple indicators should be tracked separately.
Michael Clemens, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD)
and visiting scholar at the Financial Access Initiative and at NYU-Wagner
and the NYU Dept. of Economics (Spring 2011), talks about the findings from
his research into the UN Millennium Villages.
Bringing together voices from inside and outside the Fund, the IMF interviewed a number of government officials, NGO representatives, and IMF staff to discuss the new role of emerging market and low-income countries in the IMF.
In this video clip, CGD’s president Nancy Birdsall explains what compromises must be made before emerging market economies assume more control over the IMF. While the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) need to convince the US and Europe that they can be reliable global stewards, rich countries must realize that greater participation is in the long-term interests of all countries.
Senior Fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez made comments on the sovereign debt auctions held recently by several European governments. She thinks the so-called success of these auctions is relative for two reasons. First, it is important to remember that before this auction took place, the European Central Bank intervened to buy sovereign bonds in order to lower spreads in the market, which at the time were sky-high. Second, an important proportion of these bonds have been bought by local investors. It is, therefore, worrisome that the liquidity that the European Central Bank has injected into a number of European banks might be channeled (at least partly) to the purchase of sovereign bonds. The concern is that in the event of sovereign debt defaults, banking crises would also ensue.