The authors conduct a rigorous econometric analysis of a civil conflict that the Indian Prime Minister has called the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by his country, the Maoist conflict.
In this working paper, the authors find that remittances are often greatly underestimated in surveys. They suggest ways to improve the collection of such data.
In developing countries where elections are costly and accountability mechanisms weak, politicians often turn to illicit means of financing campaigns. This paper examines one such channel of illicit campaign finance: India’s real estate sector. Politicians and builders allegedly engage in a quid proquo, whereby the former park their illicit assets with the latter, and the latter rely on the former for favorable dispensation. At election time, however, builders need to re-route funds to politicians as a form of indirect election finance. One observable implication is that the demand for cement, the indispensible raw material used in the sector, should contract during elections since builders need to inject funds into campaigns. Using a novel monthly-level data set, we demonstrate that cement consumption does exhibit a political business cycle consistent with our hypothesis. Additional tests provide confidence in the robustness and interpretation of our findings.
Although higher education is crucial to development remarkably little is known about what happens within developing country universities. Moreover, while enrollment and budgets are rising, the impact of this growth is unclear. A new CGD working paper by non-resident fellow Devesh Kapur and co-author Megan Crowley offers a fresh look at the effects of higher education in developing countries, how these differ from the effects in rich countries, and the opportunities and barriers to improving both quality and access.
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Efforts to reform the IMF should be complemented by alternative approaches to doing what the Fund does, according to this new paper. The authors argue that competition would give developing countries more bargaining power and spur the IMF to improve. The paper focuses on the IMF's insurance role and argues for rapid restructuring and large cuts of the Fund's budget, with savings used to lower IMF interest rates.
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Critics allege that the World Bank is deeply flawed. Yet the world needs a strong World Bank to help manage development and the related global challenges of the 21st century. Do the Bank's shortcomings put its future at risk? If so, can the Bank be rescued? Rescuing the World Bank, a new book that includes a CGD working group report and selected essays edited by CGD president Nancy Birdsall, offers timely perspectives on challenges that are crucial to the Bank’s future success.
Human capital flows from poor countries to rich countries are large and growing. A leading cause is the increasing skill-focus of immigration policy in a number of leading industrialized countries—a trend that is likely to intensify as rich countries age and competitive pressures build in knowledge-intensive sectors. The implications for development are complex and poorly understood.
A CGD best-seller, Give Us Your Best and Brightest has been praised in Foreign Affairs as "a judicious combination of facts, theory, and informed conjecture on a growing but complex phenomenon about which too little is known." Best and Brightest addresses the migration of well-educated workers from poor to rich countries, and the implications of such migration for development. "The book makes insightful contributions to the literature," says Development Policy Review.
This report was prepared by a Working Group convened by the Center for Global Development to identify key priorities the Paul Wolfowitz at the start of his tenure at the World Bank on June 1, 2005. It argues that Wolfowitz's biggest challenge will not be managing the Bank, with its 10,000 staff, but leading its shareholders, the nations of the world. The report offers five bold but practical recommendations for restoring the legitimacy and increasing the effectiveness of the world's largest development institution.
The paper addresses three key issues raised by the G-7 in its proposals to reform the multilateral banks, in 2001. One, the restructuring of IDA with a part of its lending in the form of grants rather than loans. Two, the harmonization of procedures, policies and overlapping mandates among MDBs. And three, the volume of support by MDBs for Global Public Goods (GPGs) and the rankings and priorities among them.