World Bank Executive Directors: Show Us Your Scorecard

April 11, 2012

The World Bank’s Board committed itself in April 2011 to choosing its next president through an “an open, structured, deliberate process.”   Currently there are nearly unanimous calls for the selection among the existing three nominees to be based on an “open, transparent, competitive and merit-based” process.  Unfortunately the “smart money” in the world’s capitals still believes that the selection among the three nominees:  Jim Yong Kim, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Jose Antonio Ocampo, will be driven exclusively by power politics.

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Why Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Should Be the Next Head of the World Bank

March 23, 2012

The US had a chance to lead.  It abdicated that chance to play domestic politics and put forward a US nominee who is manifestly less qualified to be head of the World Bank than the alternative candidate nominated by African countries: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

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Impact Evaluation and Political Economy: What Does the “Conditional” in “Conditional Cash Transfers” Accomplish?

January 12, 2012

Some economists, with their recent fad for “evaluation”, have managed to get themselves deeply confused about what the “conditional” in “conditional cash transfer” (CCT) is really about. They often interpret the “effectiveness” of CCTs relative to the action/behavior/outcome that was conditioned on—for example, the impact of schooling-conditioned transfers on enrollment rates.

But the key question is whether the value of the conditionality in CCT lies in the political symbolism provided by the condition that supports the transfer, or whether the condition has some additional benefits (or what mix of the two).
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The Illusion of Equality

September 15, 2009

CGD recently posted my working paper, The Illusion of Equality, co-authored by Martina Viarengo. The motivations behind the paper go back to when I was a kid. When people were coming to our house, my mother would put us five children to work trying to clean up because “company” was coming. And when company was there, we were put on our best behavior (or out of sight). I remember asking my mom one time (out of laziness not sincerity): “But, Mom, don’t we want these people to know how we really live and what we are really like?” My mom’s quick reply: “You think I want people to know I have a son like you? Get to work.” Read More…

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  Erin on Why Don’t They Want What We Know They Need?: I think it’s important to note that people in developing countries often use the same...
  
  Bill Savedoff on Why Don’t They Want What We Know They Need?: Great thread here. I think a further humbling example comes from analyzing a tribe of...
  
  April Harding on EBRD Raises the Bar for International Appointments: Interesting and perhaps a bit unintuitive isn’t it that the secretness...
  
  Shawn Cunningham on Why Don’t They Want What We Know They Need?: Dear Charles, This is a great post. I wonder if another reason could be that...
  
  Christian Meyer on It’s not an IDA world anymore: Hi Jiesheng, the point that we are trying to make here is that disbursements to the current set...
  
  

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