Global Prosperity Wonkcast

 

Archive for November, 2010

 

Unpacking India’s Microfinance Meltdown: David Roodman

November 30, 2010

Posted by in Asia, Finance, Poverty Tags: , ,

David RoodmanA crisis is unfolding in India’s microcredit sector that– beyond its immediate effects on borrowers and lenders– will greatly affect the future of financial services for the poor. I’m joined by David Roodman, senior fellow here at the Center for Global Development and author of the forthcoming book Due Diligence: A Guide to Microfinance (which he has shared step by step on his Open Book Blog). David recently traveled to Andhra Pradesh, the epicenter of the crisis. On the Wonkcast, he leads me through the story of the explosive growth of Indian microcredit– and its sudden fall from grace.

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Good Aid? Bad Aid? QuODA Tracks How Donors Stack Up. Interview with Nancy Birdsall and Homi Kharas.

November 22, 2010

Posted by in Global Development

The Wonkcast is taking a Thanksgiving holiday this week. This episode was originally posted on October 4, 2010. We’re re-releasing it to highlight the newly published QuODA methodological report, which you’ll find here.

QUODADonors, academics, and development advocates have long recognized that not all aid is created equal. Often, the impacts of aid are blunted because it’s spent in the wrong places or isn’t coordinated with recipient government programs. How can we know which donors give aid well, and which donors need to improve? My guests on this week’s Wonkcast are Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, and Homi Kharas, deputy director of the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program. They are the co-creators of the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA) assessment, a new tool that tracks and compares donor programs against four dimensions of aid quality.

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U.S. Development Policy in the Next Congress: Sarah Jane Staats

November 16, 2010

Posted by in Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Tags: ,

Sarah Jane StaatsWhat does the new makeup of Congress mean for global development looking forward? My guest this week is Sarah Jane Staats, director of policy outreach here at the Center for Global Development. Sarah Jane is responsible for engaging the development policy community—especially senior staff in the U.S. Congress, the administration and policy experts in leading development advocacy NGOs—in the Center’s research and other programs.

In this Wonkcast, Sarah Jane starts by explaining that, “the first big takeaway with the elections is that they were really not about foreign policy.” Because domestic issues drove the rhetoric of the candidates this election cycle, even the foreign policy positions of some freshman Congressmen are still unknown. Thirty-nine of the sixty new House Republicans align themselves with the Tea Party, a group with no clear foreign policy agenda, much less a unified view about whether and how to engage developing countries.

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Five CGD Experts on the Seoul G-20 Summit

November 8, 2010

Posted by in Global Development Tags: , , , , , ,

G-20 SeoulG-20 leaders gathering in Seoul this week face a full plate of issues, most prominently the effort to stave off beggar-thy-neighbors currency devaluations. This week on the Global Prosperity Wonkcast, we’ve distilled highlights from a private briefing I organized where five CGD experts shared their views on key issues facing the G-20, and their implications for poor people not represented at the table. Snippets below—listen to the full 30-minute Wonkcast for the rest of the story or scroll to the bottom of this page for full event video. If you’d like a bit of historical background on the G-20 and how it came into its current role, listen to my introductory remarks (they’re about 6 minutes long) that give some context for the rest of the discussion.

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