Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
Two positive development stories emerged from the UK education sector last week: A new tutoring scheme is hiring Sri Lankan tutors for British children. And the UK Department for Education is proposing a new international teaching qualification, which could make international recruitment easier.
Today, we published the Commitment to Development Index (CDI) 2018, which ranks 27 of the world’s richest countries on how well their policies help the more than five billion people living in poorer countries. European countries dominate this year’s CDI, occupying the top 12 positions in the Index and with Sweden claiming the #1 spot. Here, we look at what these countries are doing particularly well in the past year to support the world’s poor, and where European leaders can still learn from others.
The Canadian government has made some impressive steps towards prioritizing gender and women’s rights in international relations. I’m hoping that’s a sign of momentum towards even bigger steps in the New Year—using the full range of tools from trade and migration policy through investment and aid.
Germans have given Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term as chancellor, but once again without a parliamentary majority. It seems likely that Merkel will now try to negotiate a black-green-yellow “Jamaica coalition” (referring to the parties’ colors) with the Greens and the pro-business Liberals replacing the Social Democrats as coalition partners. Despite the gain in vote for nationalists, our analysis suggests the Jamaica coalition could actually strengthen Germany’s role in accelerating global development, as well as benefitting Germany.
Even if there were a robust and credible negative impact on wages of non-Hispanic male natives without a high school degree from low skill migrant arrivals (which there isn’t), this would not justify limiting immigration as there are better instruments to achieve the same objectives, with much less cost.
In 2015, there were 77,470,857 visits to the United States from other countries. These visitors brought tremendous benefit: not only did they each spend an average of $4,400 on US goods and services during their stay, but also they helped US firms engage with foreign markets, raise the quality of students here, and help with the diffusion of knowledge. We should want more of these tourists and businesspeople, and the above suggests a real cost to inaccurate visa screening mechanisms—of which blanket bans are a prime example.
The Trump administration has imposed a number of entry restrictions through executive order, justifying them on national security grounds. But one additional set of concerns regards the economic costs of tightening visa restrictions, which can be considerable even when looking solely at temporary visitors. While the current bans would likely have a limited economic impact on the US through reduced tourist and business travel, the extension of restrictions could carry increasingly heavy economic costs.
Whatever you think about Brexit, it doesn’t make sense to secure Britain’s economic future by adding red tape. Theresa May’s government wants to tamp down net migration. That’s has opened space for some new self-defeating proposals.
Love it or hate it, Brexit implies some of the biggest changes to European trade and development policy in a generation. Decisions made over the next three years will have important consequences for people living in developing countries, possibly for decades to come. That is why we are scaling up our work at CGD to assess the policy choices realistically and find new opportunities to improve development outcomes.
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.
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