“Author Archive”
By CGDev
Recently I participated in a roundtable on the future of carbon markets at the Center for American Progress. The discussion, co- sponsored by Climate Advisers, was co-chaired by former U.S. senator Tom Daschle and former EPA administrator Carol Browner, and included CAP chair John Podesta. Jim Kim, the president of the World Bank, made opening remarks. In other words, the participants included lots of insiders who know a thing or two about how Washington works—and doesn’t
May 17th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
I'm a little late to this, but recently Chris Blattman set off an interesting debate by criticizing Bill Gates' recent interest in the quality of GDP statistics in Africa. Chris worries that Gates is falling into the trap of "seeing like a state" — i.e., from the top down, obsessing over national statistics — rather than a bottom-up entrepreneur who, presumably, couldn't care less about aggregate GDP numbers. As part of a working group looking at “Data for African Development” together with the African Population Health Research Centre in Nairobi, I'm here to defend the idea of "seeing like a state" in 21st century Africa. I just think Bill Gates is doing it wrong. Seeing like a State vs Seeing like a Donor I don’t mean to pick on Bill Gates.
May 17th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
This is a joint post with Kate McQueston. Mobile applications – or ‘apps’ – seem to be the latest craze in mobile technology for global health programming. The proliferation of these apps is converging around a growing interests in open (and big) data, so you don’t have to look far to find creative ways they are being used to collect and display data in the development sector. More on mobile technology for health from CGD: The Elusive Power of mHealth Six billion connections for health? Mobile users can download apps that map USAID’s portfolio and Development Expertise Clearinghouse (DEC) evaluations.
May 16th, 2013 | Posted in mHealth,Technology | Read More »
By CGDev
Michael Clemens released a groundbreaking (pun intended) new CGD working paper today titled The Effect of Foreign Labor on Native Employment: A Job-Specific Approach and Application to North Carolina Farms. Too busy to wade through the research methodology? Skip instead to this report, International Harvest: A Case Study of How Foreign Workers Help American Farms Grow Crops – and the Economy, also written by Michael and released today by CGD and the Partnership for a New American Economy. As House Judiciary considers Rep.
May 15th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
Up to now, the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (sadly still not widely AKA the HiPoPoDomAe) has done a pretty good job of displaying public collegiality. But in the lead-up to today’s Panel meetings in New York, that began to break down. A story in the Guardian suggested that drafts of the report have been described as “absolutely awful" and “a bit of a car crash.” One big reason for dismay, according to the Guardian: the report drafts don’t include nearly enough in the way of specific language on eradicating $1.25/day poverty, hunger and avoidable child mortality –all by 2030. I’ve written before on this blog about the plausibility problem with zero goals –many of the proposed targets for 2030 would require historically unprecedented progress from those countries furthest away from zero today. If countries with high under-five mortality in 2010 halved mortality between 2010 and 2020, then did it again in the next decade, 28 of them would still miss the proposed zero goal for avoidable child deaths in 2030, for example
May 14th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
This is a joint blog with Alexis Sowa. Last weekend marked the first time in Pakistan's 60-plus year history that a democratically elected government completed its term. This is a major achievement for Pakistan. It also raises the possibility of a new chapter in US-Pakistan relations because a new civilian government led by the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, the winning party) might prove to be surprisingly open to US help in addressing Pakistan's huge development challenges. This is true despite Nawaz Sharif's anti-American rhetoric during the election campaign, and despite the party's insistence in 2011 that USAID close its provincial office in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, the country's most populous and prosperous province, which the PML-N controls
May 14th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
The United Kingdom has been a stalwart funder and innovator in foreign assistance for almost 20 years. In 2011, it created the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) to report to Parliament on the country’s growing aid portfolio. ICAI is a QUANGO in Brit-speak – a quasi-public non-governmental organization – with a 4-year mandate which is undergoing review this year. Recently, I took a look at the reports it has produced to see whether the organization is fulfilling its role in holding the country’s overseas development aid programs accountable. I found one fascinating report which shows what ICAI could be doing and many more reports that made me wonder whether ICAI is duplicating work already within the purview of the agency, Department for International Development (DFID), which accounts for most of the UK’s foreign assistance programs.
May 13th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
Bills, conferences, bilats, and condemnations abound: Assad must go. But as Secretary Kerry wrapped up a meeting on the crisis in Syria with President Putin this week, news leaked of yet another Russian arms deal with Syria. The latest reported deal (in part financed through the Russian foreign-development bank, the VEB) sells ground-to-air missile systems to the Assad government. The Wall Street Journal reports that these batteries “would significantly boost the regime’s ability to stave off intervention in its civil war.” Several of my colleagues here at CGD have been supporting preemptive contract sanctions (PCS) as one of the policy prescriptions needed to prevent these types of arms deals from moving forward. If PCS were to be implemented by say, the US and the EU, any new contracts with the Assad regime would not be recognized in those countries’ courts.
May 10th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
Congratulations to Ambassador Roberto Azevedo from Brazil, who will be the next Director-General of the WTO. Ambassador Azevedo campaigned for the WTO position as an insider who could hit the ground running and that is exactly what he will need to do. He also said that being an insider would help him in rebuilding trust among the members and he will need to get started on that immediately—even before he takes over on September 1. Just three months after he takes office, Avezedo will have to go to the ministerial in Bali and try to find a way out of the Doha Round trap. My preferred alternative is to salvage whatever is possible and declare victory
May 8th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
Robert Rector and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation have written a report claiming that regularizing unauthorized immigrants in the United States will cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars. Neither Rector nor Richwine are trained economists and the methods that they use to arrive at this number are not economic analysis. There is widespread condemnation of Rector and Richwine’s work across Washington. Conservative analysts, in fact, have been the loudest in slamming Rector and Richwine’s inferior methods. When the American Action Forum, Americans for Tax Reform, the Cato Institute, and Rep.
May 7th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
This is a joint post with Rachel Silverman. In recent weeks, the public health world and political pundits alike have been abuzz about results from the “Oregon Experiment,” a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that finds no statistical link between expanded Medicaid coverage and health outcomes such as high cholesterol or hypertension. Limitations of the study aside, the Oregon Experiment is a good example of the importance of rigorously testing all US health programs, rather than just assuming ‘more care = better health’. The Innovation Center at the United States Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, created under the umbrella of the Affordable Care Act, represents a new and encouraging approach to address this problem, an approach that we think has important lessons for global health. As a quick introduction, the Innovation Center is using structured, institutionalized innovation and experimentation to search for a better way.
May 7th, 2013 | Posted in Aid,Aid & Development,Financing,Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
This is a joint post with Amanda Glassman. The World Bank’s Africa Health Forum: Finance & Capacity for Results during its 2013 Spring Meetings brought together ministers of finance and of health from 30 African countries in a unique opportunity for mutual listening between countries and partners. One recurring theme in forum and in the first panel was that results-based financing (RBF) – where financing is conditioned on achievement of results in health – is a key approach to driving value for money. In short: RBF = more money for more health. (You can watch the recorded ministerial discussion here.) The reasons for doing RBF are persuasive, not only for donor agencies but also for countries
May 3rd, 2013 | Posted in Aid,Aid & Development | Read More »
By CGDev
Yet another Bangladesh garment factory tragedy is making headlines. Last November more than 100 workers died in the Tazreen factory fire, some of them because factory managers blocked doors and told them to ignore the fire alarms going off. Last week, at least 400 and perhaps as many as 1,400 people died when a building housing garment factories collapsed. Structural defects were discovered in the building the day before it collapsed and government officials asked factory managers to suspend work. Other businesses in the building shut down but the garment factory owners ordered employees to keep working
May 1st, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
By CGDev
The next Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be the first from Latin America and just the second from a developing country. Ambassador Bashir of Pakistan announced on Friday that Roberto Azevedo from Brazil and Herminio Blanco from Mexico will advance to the final round of consultations while Mari Pangestu from Indonesia, Taeho Bark from Korea, and Tim Groser from New Zealand withdrew. One implication is that Christine Lagarde will retain her position as the only woman to date to head the IMF, the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the United Nations, or the WTO. Other implications are less clear, in part because the consensus-based process discourages frank talk by the candidates. Listen to podcasts with all WTO candidates here The final round of the contest to lead the WTO pits an insider against a relative outsider.
April 29th, 2013 | Posted in Policy & Systems | Read More »
