Global Prosperity Wonkcast

Archive for March, 2011

Nancy Birdsall on Cash on Delivery (COD) Aid

March 28, 2011

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Aid Effectiveness, Global Development, Poverty Tags: Cash on Delivery Aid, global devleopment, Nancy Birdsall

A little over a year ago, I invited Nancy Birdsall, founding president of the Center for Global Development, to join me on the Wonkcast to talk about her big new idea, Cash on Delivery Aid (COD Aid), an innovative approach to the delivery of foreign assistance. COD Aid has since gained a lot of traction, so I invited Nancy back to update us on recent developments, including a planned pilot program in Ethiopia.

[Listen to the Podcast]

For those new to the concept, I start by asking Nancy to explain the problems with traditional aid approaches, and how COD aid would solve these. Too often, she says, aid is given based on priorities set by funders who care more about how their money is spent than what outcomes it produces. COD Aid focuses on outcomes by making aid transfers contingent on yearly incremental improvements in an agreed indicator, such as the number of kids who complete primary school and take a test. (For much more on COD Aid, see here.)
Read More…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

2 Comments »

The Untapped Potential of Global Public Investors: Vijaya Ramachandran

March 21, 2011

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Finance, Global Development Tags: developing countries, global finance, global public investors, infrastructure, sovereign wealth funds, Vijaya Ramachandran

Vijaya Ramachandran

Looking for an investor with billions? Want to know where the money is? If you’re a country with a sound financial and political record seeking money for infrastructure, you can find it in the hands of “global public investors” (GPI’s), a growing group of little-known foreign investment vehicles on the prowl for safe investment opportunities.

My guest on this show is Vijaya Ramachandran, senior fellow at CGD, who contributed to a new new report from the Brookings Institute on GPI’s, a term the report authors coined to include such entities as sovereign wealth funds, foreign government employee pension funds, and foreign currency reserve funds.

The Brookings report is aimed at U.S. policymakers at the national and state level who are desperate to repair and improve aging infrastructure but face tight budgets and public resistance to raising funds through taxation. Nonetheless, says Vij, the report findings, especially new detail on the size and nature of GPIs, can be extremely valuable to developing countries, too.

1 Comment »

One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Lant Pritchett on Mimicry in Development

March 14, 2011

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Aid Effectiveness Tags: Capability Traps, Center for Global Development, Isomorphic Mimicry, Lant Pritchett, State Capabilities

Development is easy, right? All poor countries have to do is mimic the things that work in rich countries and they’ll evolve into fully functional states. If only it were that simple. My guest this week is Lant Pritchett, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development and chair of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Master’s program in international development. His latest work looks at how the basic functions of government fail to improve in some developing countries (a dynamic he defines as a “state capability trap”). Part of the problem, says Lant, is that donors often insist on transplanting institutions that work in developed countries into environments where those institutions don’t fit at all.

Despite decades of development assistance, on a wide variety of indicators of how well governments provide certain services—policing, delivering the mail, building roads, etc.—some countries are simply stuck in the mud. Lant’s work meticulously illustrates the depths of the problem. “We thought we would be able to replicate the development process very fast. We thought, these [countries] are going to develop in about 10 – 20 years,” explains Lant. “At the current rate of progress, it will take literally thousands of years for many developing countries to reach Singapore’s level of capability. That’s the capabilities trap.”

9 Comments »

Macroprudential Regulation and Developing Countries: Liliana Rojas-Suarez

March 7, 2011

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Economic Growth, Finance, Global Development, International Financial Institutions, Private Investment Tags: Finance, International Financial Institutions, Liliana Rojas-Suarez, Regulation

Liliana Rojas-Suarez Regulators at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, are hard at work designing regulatory standards to avoid future financial meltdowns like the global financial crisis of 2008. Joining them for two months is Liliana Rojas Suarez, a CGD senior fellow and the founding chair of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee.

I spoke with Liliana just before she left for Basel about macroprudential regulation—an approach that focuses on the systemic risks arising from the collective action of financial institutions. (Liliana had spoken about this at a recent CGD Research in Progress staff meeting; her slides are a useful adjunct to our Wonkcast discussion.)
Read More…