Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators known as the Gang of Eight introduced comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a provision for increased temporary, low-skill work visas. CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens, a leading expert in migration, labor mobility, and development, has welcomed the proposal as good for development.
Howard White, executive director of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation or 3ie, told participants in the tenth annual conference of the Global Development Network here in Kuwait that he looks forward to researchers in developing countries playing a major role in 3ie impact evaluations of development interventions.
World Bank chief economist Justin Lin endorsed charges for CO2 emissions in a keynote address at the 10th anniversary conference of the Global Development Network being held in Kuwait. Speaking in an ornate marble hall at the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development following an address by Mohammed Al-Sabah, Kuwait’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lin said that he recognized that such a call might not be politically correct in the oil-rich state.
Eldis, the online aggregator of development policy, practice and research at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, is conducting a survey to identify "the most significant new piece of development research of 2008." This strikes me as having roughly the same statistical validity as American Idol does for when it comes to finding new singing talent. Still, as with Idol and other talent shows, the entertainment value of a popularity contest is hard to dispute!
Once again the G8 has come up tragically short on climate change and a host of urgent problems affecting poor people in developing countries. The good news is that they are at least discussing the right topics. The first Hokkaido G8 document, on the World Economy spills lots of ink on relations between rich and developing economies, including for example, reaffirmation of support for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and CEO of the Center for American Progress, have urged rich world leaders assembled for the G8 summit in Japan to take action on the global food crisis, including rapid release of Japanese rice stockpiles imported mostly from the US. In an Op-Ed in today's Boston Globe they write:
McNealy arrived late, delayed by a meeting at the Pentagon. You could tell he was tired. He’d flown to DC from California with a stopover in Dallas where he stayed up late watching hockey as his beloved San Jose Sharks fell to the Stars in the 4th overtime. Nonetheless, by the time lunch was finished at 1:30pm we had made good progress answering moderator Lawrence MacDonald’s query – does sharing and openness really matter for development?
Sam Loewenberg at Politico has an interesting story that describes the odd coalition that has emerged in opposition to ethanol subsidies -- development and humanitarian NGOs, the livestock and food processing industries, and big oil. As Sam reports:
Still puzzled and concerned about the global food price crisis after reading Arvind Subramanian's smart Q&A? CGD non-resident fellow Peter Timmer peels back the layers of complexity in a thoughtful online audio interview on WILL AM 580, the broadcasting service of the University of Illinois.
Even by the low standards of American TV news, the so-called journalists who ran last night's Democratic debate on ABC were a disgrace to their profession. TV critic Tom Shales nailed it in today's Washington Post in a column titled: In the Pa. Debate, ABC is the Clear Loser.