Cross-Post: The Rush for the Entrances in Myanmar
3/14/13
On CGD's Voices from the Center, I just reviewed a good report on the coming aid boom in Myanmar.
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CGD Policy Blogs
The Rush for the Entrances in Myanmar
3/14/13
Over the decade, donors have publicly declared that they would improve how they operate in order to make aid work better. They would coordinate better, let recipient countries take more ownership of project design, and so on. Ten years and ten days ago, there was the Rome Declaration.
Four Arguments against the Elimination of Child Labor
3/8/13
Don't get me wrong: sarcastic headline aside, I'm not in favor of the exploitation of children. However, I feel moved to speak against a recent push, I guess led by Hugh Sinclair, to insert a ban on child labor into the lending policies of microfinance institutions (MFIs), microfinance investors, and such accrediting programs as the Smart Campaign and the Seal of Excellence.
The Nine Ladies Snap Back
3/7/13
The nine client-members on the board of the Grameen Bank, all women, have made a sassy public response to the interim report of the commission investigating the Grameen Bank. (Hat tip to the Grameen Foundation.)
I have to admire the pointed prose:
A Concrete Abstract
3/4/13
Business training programs are a popular policy option to try to improve the performance of enterprises around the world. The last few years have seen rapid growth in the number of evaluations of these programs in developing countries. We undertake a critical review of these studies with the goal of synthesizing the emerging lessons and understanding the limitations of the existing research and the areas in which more work is needed. We find that there is substantial heterogeneity in the length, content, and types of firms participating in the training programs evaluated.
Much Grameen Bank Investigation, Signifying What?
2/27/13
The machinations around the Grameen Bank over the last two years have a had a paradoxical, dreamlike quality. Harsh words have been spoken by mighty leaders. Eminent dignitaries have rushed to the defense. Court battles have been fought. Crimes have been alleged. The mighty Muhammad Yunus has fallen.
Will the Next Microcredit Implosion Happen in Chiapas?
2/19/13
In November 2009, some guy nobody had heard of, Daniel Rozas, wrote an article asking whether there was a microcredit bubble in south India:
The State of Microcredit
2/6/13
If I had had the stamina, I would have inserted into my book a chapter on the history of the microfinance movement.
Debt Deal Reunites Myanmar and the Donors
1/27/13
In the last few days, a delicate dance of reconciliation between Myanmar and its estranged foreign creditors reached its final measures. At the Club de Paris---the collective negotiating forum for creditor governments such as Japan and the United States---a press release just announced a debt deal with the poor and long-isolated Asian nation. The creditors committed to what is by Paris Club standards an exceptionally generous deal: cancelling half the debt in arrears---Myanmar defaulted in 1998---and instituting a 15-year repayment schedule for the remainder, including a 7-year grace period. Because the interest rates on most of these the loans are low, typically about 1%, this stretching out of repayment further reduces the debt's economic cost ("net present value" or NPV). Overall, the NPV will fall 60%. Meanwhile the World Bank and Asian Development Bank made their first loans to Myanmar in more than 20 years, in the process erasing their own arrears issues with the country.
Cross-post: Cato Tops New CGD Index of Think Tank Profile
1/14/13
On CGD's main blog, Julia Clark and I just posted a ranking of noted American think tanks based on their ability to generate public profile: press mentions, academic citations, web traffic, and social media followers. The effort is aimed at providing some healthy methodological competition for another ranking of think tanks, this one looking at institutions around the world, which experts have mostly criticized.