Multimedia

My guest on this week’s show is David Roodman, a research fellow here at CGD who has spent the past year writing a book on microfinance. He has shared this experience online through his open book blog, posting chapter drafts, analyzing ongoing research in the field, and soliciting comments and suggestions. I ask David why he decided to write his book in such a public way, and what he’s learned over the last year.

David replies that when it comes to policy research, people write books for four reasons. “One is to help you think through a complicated process… Another is to provide a basis for shorter spin-off pieces… Another is to signal that you’re an expert about something. And then the last is, oh yeah, to write something for people to read.” David says blogging about the book-writing process has helped him to partially accomplish the first three goals even before the book is complete. It has also, somewhat unexpectedly he says, changed his writing style, something he discussed recently on the blog.

Can aid donors find a better way to deliver aid? My guest this week is Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development. Along with William Savedoff and Ayah Mahgoub, Nancy is working on a potential new way of disbursing foreign assistance called Cash on Delivery Aid. COD Aid seeks to devise simple, results-based contracts that reward developing countries for making progress towards previously agreed goals—such as increased primary school completion rates, vaccination coverage, or access to clean water.

In the podcast, Nancy explains that the traditional mode of giving aid, in which donors often take an active role in prescribing which actions recipient governments should take, can undermine incentives for governments to identify problems and design and implement locally appropriate solutions. "We have to create a system in which outside resources actually help the developing country governments find out what works in their particular setting," says Nancy.

My guest this week is Rachel Nugent, deputy director for global health here at the Center for Global Development. Rachel directs the Center's work looking at the links between population, poverty, and economic growth and serves as the coordinator of the Population and Poverty Research Network, which held its fourth annual conference recently in Cape Town, South Africa.

Many of us are familiar with how development influences population growth: as incomes rise, fertility rates and average family size tend to fall; populations grow more slowly. Rachel explains that while this relationship is important there are many important unanswered questions about how population policies affect development outcomes. For example: if a poor country slows population growth by actively encouraging family planning, will the families involved and the nation reap economic benefits? Under what circumstances?

My guest this week is Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Vij directs the Center’s research on fragile states—countries where, often due to recent or ongoing conflict, the basic functions of government are weak or nonexistent. These states present special challenges to aid donors and practitioners, both in planning how to give aid effectively and in delivering it.

Vij explains that learning how to respond to state fragility will hold benefits for development even in more functional states. “”We certainly have a set of countries that are a complete puzzle to policymakers, to development practitioners, to the foreign assistance community,” she explains. “But there are other countries that have weaknesses within them, elements of fragility. They might not be fragile overall, but they may have certain areas that are in need of assistance, or they may at different points in time present as cases that are representative of very weak states.”

My guest this week is Oeindrila Dube, a postdoctoral fellow here at the Center for Global Development and an assistant professor of politics and economics at New York University. She is the author, along with Suresh Naidu, of a new paper that examines the relationships between U.S. military aid to Colombia and paramilitary violence and electoral participation in that country. Her paper reaches the unsettling conclusion that U.S. military assistance dollars may in fact be responsible for raising the levels of political violence.

As climate talks get underway in Copenhagen, the specifics of an agreement to slow global warming and adapt to its effects are far from settled. My guest on this week's Wonkcast, Jan von der Goltz, has spent the last few weeks surveying views in the global development community about what these specifics should be.

Jan is the author, along with CGD president Nancy Birdsall, of a new CGD paper It’s One Climate Policy World Out There--Almost that presents the results of a recently completed CGD survey. The online survey, which Nancy and Jan launched in mid-November, collected the views of nearly 500 respondents, hailing from 88 countries, who mostly work on international development issues.

On this edition of the Wonkcast, I am joined by senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez, who discusses her work as co-chair of the CGD Task Force on Access to Financial Services. Financial regulation—and access—is a hot topic right now, as countries try to reduce the chance of future financial crises, while also ensuring access to financial services. The US House and Senate are currently wrestling with exactly what a revamped US regulatory system should look like.

In CGD’s first Global Prosperity Wonkcast I interview senior fellow Todd Moss on his innovative proposal for managing Ghana’s anticipated $1 billion per year oil windfall: money to the people. Subscribe to the podcast if you have iTunes; read Moss’s executive memo to Ghana’s President John Atta Mills, or get the full story in Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution.