Colleagues and friends of CGD:
This week I started leave from CGD for three-plus months, to teach at Williams College. For those of you from the US west coast and outside the United States, Williams is among America’s most selective (and expensive!) small liberal arts colleges. It’s nestled in a tiny town in the Berkshire mountains in western Massachusetts.
A few years ago, Alaka Holla and Michael Kremer, the latter a leader in the randomization revolution, opened a CGD working paper with this interesting observation:
Over the past 10 to 15 years, randomized evaluations have gone from being a rarity to a standard part of the toolkit of academic development economics. We are now at a point where, at least for some issues, we can stand back and look beyond the results of a single evaluation to see whether certain common lessons emerge.
This is a joint post with Kate McQueston
November 12th is fast approaching and with it comes world pneumonia day. Unfortunately, pneumococcal diseases still pose an enormous global threat--remaining the leading cause of death for children worldwide and taking the lives of 1.4 million children under five years annually. What’s more—a staggering 98% of these children live in developing countries.
I am a big admirer of Nick Kristof, of the passion and concern that animate his books and columns, and of the must-do-can-do spirit that they embody. But sometimes his soft heart gets ahead of the hard head, leading to misleading and intellectually insupportable advocacy of foreign aid. A good example is today’s column.
Last Friday I spoke at this event “What Works in Education”, a research colloquium sponsored by the World Bank, J-PAL, and USAID (which, like the World Bank, has recently released a new education strategy).
I was dismayed to learn recently that school-based deworming in Kenya -- one of the most celebrated and cost-effective successes in global development in 2009 -- was not repeated in 2010. The story of how that happened offers an object lesson in the gritty difficulties of translating evidence into policy.
As the GAVI Alliance gears up for its pledging conference in June, a CGD panel reflected on progress and lessons learned in financing GAVI since 2001 and explored implications for the next decade. Speakers had first-hand experience in the design and implementation of the major vaccine financing instruments—Alice Albright, former CFO of GAVI; Michael Kremer, co-chair of CGD’s Advance Market Commitment (AMC) Working Group; Helen Evans and David Ferreira, GAVI; and Amie Batson, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID. Key takeaways from the event are directly below, and a longer summary—with embedded video clips—is below that. You can also watch a full recording of the event here.
In 2005/06 Malawi bucked the advice of the World Bank, and launched a massive nationwide program to subsidize fertilizer and maize seeds for small farmers. Over the next two years, maize output doubled and real GDP growth jumped from 0 to 5% per annum. Malawi was crowned an economic miracle, and copycat programs sprang up in Tanzania, Zambia, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Senegal.
A new year calls for a development policy wish list. My wish list is about what the rich and powerful global actors– mostly but not solely in the United States – can do to improve lives among the poor and vulnerable around the world in the coming year.
This weekend, children in Nicaragua received Advance Market Commitment (AMC)-financed pneumococcal vaccines that protect against the strains of pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis common in poor countries. Thanks in part to the AMC, the new and improved pneumo vaccines will reach the world's poorest children during the same year children in wealthy countries obtained access, and at a fraction of the price.