Up to now, the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (sadly still not widely AKA the HiPoPoDomAe) has done a pretty good job of displaying public collegiality. But in the lead-up to today’s Panel meetings in New York, that began to break down. A story in the Guardian suggested that drafts of the report have been described as “absolutely awful&q
Nicola Gennaioli, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer have just published a fascinating paper in the QJE: “Human Capital and Regional Development”. They constructed a database of 1,569 subnational regions across 110 countries covering GDP, population, education levels, geographic and institutional factors, and looked at correlates with higher per capita income. They suggest that geography and education are significant correlates of regional GDP, while their measures of institutions and culture are less well correlated. They have followed up with a working paper using an expanded dataset, “Growth in Regions” that reports regional convergence of 2.5% a year and note that a rate so slow suggests “significant barriers to factor mobility within countries.”
When US troops leave Afghanistan, will US aid dollars be withdrawn as well? The Obama administration says no. But House Republicans are beginning to push back, bolstered by damning testimony from the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the watchdog tasked with overseeing US aid to Afghanistan, arguing that American aid is being wasted on a corrupt regime.
What do Obama and Bono have in common?
Both have proposed that the world should seek to end extreme poverty over the next twenty years or so.
Obama said so in his annual state of the union address (here) and this week Bono said the same (to be posted here by TED soon) in an interesting and nuanced TED talk in Los Angeles.
This week, eight polio vaccination workers in Sindh and Peshawar have been killed in Pakistan during a three day anti-polio drive (see here). Last week in Afghanistan, two polio vaccinators were also killed. Suspicions of CIA involvement in the campaign have been identified as causes of the attacks. “Our teams are getting attacked, and we are having a hard time hiring health workers because they are worried about being called a spy,” said the Head of Medicine in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province earlier this summer.
What were the most popular Rethinking US Foreign Assistance blog posts in 2012? White House development initiatives get a lot of attention. Major evaluation and learning efforts do too (think: MCC). Budget battles and the more troubling aid stories in aid get a lot of interest, too.
Take a look at our top 10 list below. We look forward to bringing you more analysis and commentary from our CGD experts in 2013. Leave a comment and tell us what you’d like to see more (or less of) in 2013.
As 2012 winds down, it's time once again to look back at the most popular posts to our Views from the Center blog. Surprisingly, posts on the selection process for the World Bank president accounted for four of the top 10.
Pogo famously said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” That thought underpins my conversation with CGD senior fellow Bill Savedoff on corruption and development. Bill joined me last week after hosting a roundtable discussion with two anti-corruption experts who have recently published books on the issue, Frank Vogl, author of Waging War on Corruption and Laurence Cockcroft, author of Global Corruption Money, Power, and Ethics in the Modern World. In our conversation, Bill draws on the key ideas in these two books to unpack the various ways of thinking about—and addressing—corruption in development. We also discuss three emerging areas of CGD work on the issue, each of which focuses on the policies and practices of the rich and powerful—in global terms, us.
From Big Bird to malarkey to binders full of women, it’s been quite the presidential debate series (there was also that whole dramatic shift in the momentum of the race thing).
On Monday, we’ll hear from President Obama and Governor Romney for 1.5 Bob Schieffer-moderated hours on foreign policy. The topics have already been announced, and while it’s possible some development-related questions could come up (mostly likely under the basket of America’s role in the world), the odds aren’t great. Regardless, here are three questions that I’d like to hear the candidates answer.
Your tax dollars bought that bridge, that road, that school. But unless you live in Colombia or the UK, you probably can’t look at the contracts for these things bought on your behalf. My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Charles Kenny, senior fellow here at CGD and we are discussing his latest work: “Publish What You Buy: The Case for Routine Publication of Government Contracts.”