Search

Begin New Search Publishing Institution Center for Global Development Author Charles Kenny Publication Year within 10 Years Publication Year within 25 Years

1. The Case for Transparency in Power Project Contracts: A Proposal for the Creation of Global Disclosure Standards and PPA Watch

Author:
Mohamed Rali Badissy, Charles Kenny, and Todd Moss
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
he purpose of a nation’s power sector is to deliver reliable electricity at the lowest cost and for the greatest benefit. At the heart of any private electricity generation project is a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), a contract that contains key provisions such as price, payment stipulations, and obligations by the offtaker utility and/or host-government. Despite their significant effects on service quality and public finances, these contracts are often negotiated and signed in secret, with even the most basic terms shielded from the citizenry. This opacity has created risks and, in a growing number of cases, contributed to costly and damaging outcomes, such as overpayment, overcapacity, large debts, and grid instability. Drawing on examples from enhanced transparency in public budgets, sovereign debt, and extractive industries, we propose that governments agree to publish PPAs with any public sector obligation and that funders of private generation projects also agree to minimum disclosure standards. The objective is to create incentives for better practice, improve governance of the power sector, reduce transaction costs, and ultimately, to deliver cheaper and more reliable power for people and businesses. Transparency of PPAs would support the efforts of government policymakers and planners, investors, and development finance institutions to accelerate energy market development and to reap the benefits of open competition. Greater disclosure would also provide crucial information for citizens to hold their own governments accountable for the contracts they sign on behalf of the public.
Topic:
Economics, Energy Policy, Transparency, Electricity, and Purchasing Power
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Unpacking Gender Gaps and Data Gaps in Public Sector Employment and Pay

Author:
Ugonma Nwankwo, Megan O'Donnell, and Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
We look at available sources to ask (i) Where is data available on employment and wages allowing for comparisons between women and men, and the public and private sectors? (ii) How do women’s employment, compensation, and seniority compare with men’s in the public and private sectors? (iii) How do gender gaps vary by countries’ income level, education levels, and other factors? What are the policy implications of the data we analyze? (iv) Which countries’ efforts can be modeled by others, and how else can global gender gaps in employment and compensation be narrowed? We suggest the Open Government Partnership as a promising platform through which governments can commit to increased transparency around disaggregated employment and wage data, in turn improving policy decision-making aimed at closing gender gaps (or those rooted in other forms of inequality and discrimination).
Topic:
Labor Issues, Women, Inequality, Feminism, Data, and Gender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment in the COVID-19 Context

Author:
Megan O'Donnell, Mayra Buvinic, Charles Kenny, Shelby Bourgault, and George Yang
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
As donor institutions and governments seek to provide relief and support recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and global recession, CGD’s COVID-19 Gender and Development Initiative aims to ensure that their policy and investment decisions equitably benefit women and girls. We seek to support decision-makers in understanding the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; assess health, economic, and social policy response measures with a gender lens; and propose evidence-based solutions for an inclusive recovery. Recognizing that the dialogue to date has largely emphasized challenges facing women and girls in high-income settings, our analysis centers on women and girls in low- and middle-income countries. In this policy brief, we summarize the findings of a CGD working paper, Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment in the COVID-19 Context. We explore the impacts of the crisis on women’s economic opportunities and outcomes, document the extent to which governments and donors are taking action to respond to these impacts, and make recommendations for how decision-makers can elevate women’s economic empowerment as a priority in response and recovery efforts. Specifically, we examine the impact of the COVID-19 global recession on women’s work and employment in low- and middle-income countries, including entrepreneurship, wage and salaried work, work in subsistence and commercial agriculture, and unpaid housework and care work.
Topic:
Economics, Women, Inequality, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Gender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Women and the Future of Work: Fix the Present

Author:
Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
There is a lot we don’t know about what automation will mean for jobs in the future, including its impact (if any) on gender inequality. This note reviews evidence and forecasts on that question and makes four main points: Past automation has been (broadly) positive for women’s average quality of life, economic empowerment, and equality. Forecasts of the gendered impact of automation and AI going forward based on the current distribution of employment suggest considerable uncertainty and a gender inequality of impact that is marginal compared to the potential impact overall. The bigger risk—and/or opportunity—is likely to be in the combined impact of automation, policy, and social norms in changing the type of work that is seen as male or female. Minimizing any potential aggravating impact of automation and AI on inequalities in economic power in the future can best be achieved by maximizing economic equality today.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Employment, Inequality, and Feminism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Examining the Impact of E-Procurement in Ukraine

Author:
Artur Kovalchuk, Charles Kenny, and Mallika Snyder
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of Ukraine’s ambitious procurement reform on outcomes amongst a set of procurements that used competitive tendering. The ProZorro system placed all of the country’s government procurement online, introduced an auction approach as the default procurement method, and extended transparency. The reform was introduced with a dramatic increase in the proportion of government procurement that was conducted competitively. This paper examines the impact of ProZorro and reform on contracts that were procured competitively both prior to and after the introduction of the new system. It finds some evidence of impact of the new system on increasing the number of bidders, cost savings, and reduced contracting times.
Topic:
Governance, Reform, Procurement, and Contracts
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe

6. UK Research Aid: Tied, Opaque and Off-Topic?

Author:
G. Lee Robinson, Euan Ritchie, and Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The UK has considerably increased the amount of aid it spends on research in recent years. This policy follows statements by DFID that research is among the best ways of spending aid. It also follows the UK legislating a commitment to spend 0.7 percent of GNI as foreign aid. In pursuing this target, the UK has decreased the proportion of bilateral aid spent through DFID and has channelled more through other departments. BEIS and the Department for Health and Social Care have been big recipients, and research accounts for much of their increased share of aid budgets. The information associated with the majority of this research aid is vague, raising questions about transparency. A large amount of the research is financed using an allocation mechanism that effectively ties it to UK institutions. There are also questions as to the poverty focus of some of the research conducted, given the explicit intention of the UK government to find existing activity to reclassify as ODA following the legislating of the 0.7 percent target. We suggest reporting reforms that will increase transparency and allow greater scrutiny of the way UK research aid is spent. We also call for the UK to live up to its reporting to the OECD that all British aid is untied.
Topic:
Health, Research, Academia, and Funding
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

7. Marginal, Not Transformational: Development Finance Institutions and the Sustainable Development Goals

Author:
Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Development finance institutions have positioned themselves as key agencies to help the world meet the Sustainable Development Goals. It is doubtful that they can deliver. This paper outlines the challenges facing DFIs in achieving (anywhere near) such an expansion in their impact, particularly in infrastructure and particularly in the poorest countries. It notes that private investment in SDG priority areas is low in the poorest countries, and the record of private investment in rolling out services is mixed. These issues are linked in part to significant supply side constraints based on country characteristics. DFIs do better than the market as a whole at investing in challenging infrastructure–but not by much. And while the scale of their ‘leverage’ in terms of attracting dollars that would otherwise not have been invested is hard to determine, in the poorest markets in infrastructure it is certainly low. Finally, DFIs and donors more broadly have long tried to improve deal flow with limited success, suggesting there are few deals on the margin of occurring which only require small extra incentives to materialize.
Topic:
Development, Finance, Institutions, and Sustainability
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. When Does “What Works” Work? And What Does that Mean for UK Aid R&D Spend?

Author:
Charles Kenny, Euan Ritchie, and G. Lee Robinson
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The UK’s Secretary of State for International Development[1] oversees an aid-financed R&D[2] budget that is larger than that of the next 15 biggest donors combined. [3] At the moment, a considerable proportion of that UK R&D spend goes towards solving global technological challenges related to neglected tropical diseases including malaria, and a considerable proportion again towards local evaluation of aid-financed development interventions. Much of the rest is somewhat opaquely distributed to British universities for research supposedly related to development. As well as reform of this last category, the range of more legitimate activities benefiting from ODA “research and development” calls for innovation in approaches to deliver outcomes. This paper will argue there is a (fuzzy) spectrum of development procedures, for some of which global innovation, evaluation, or “best practice” can be informative, for some of which local evaluation or experimentation can be useful, and for some of which perhaps only practical experience and local wisdom can help. That there is a spectrum of intervention types and research opportunities, and that local evidence is often required, has implications for the kind of research that UK aid can usefully support as part of its R&D program and where that research should happen. In turn, that suggests a reform agenda for the way UK ODA for R&D is currently spent.
Topic:
Development, International Cooperation, Foreign Aid, and Research
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

9. Automation and AI: Implications for African Development Prospects?

Author:
Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Now that computers are capable of taking the jobs that require brain as well as brawn, it may appear there is little left for humans to do. There are many scary forecasts of the capacity of automation and AI to replace a lot of workers very fast. Self-driving vehicles may wipe out opportunities for taxi driv- ers and truckers, for example. Brynjolfsson, Rock, and Syverson note there are 3.5 million people em- ployed driving vehicles in the US. If automation reduced that to 1.5 million, that alone would increase total US labor productivity by 1.7 percent,1 but it would also leave two million drivers looking for work. In 2013, Oxford economists Carl Frey and Michael Osborne made waves by predicting that 47 percent of US employment was automatable over the next two decades, with a higher estimate for developing countries.2 Erin Winick of Technology Review subsequently produced a summary table of job losses and gains estimations on automation.3 Some of the worldwide figures are in Table 1. There are clearly two sides to the ledger, but some of the predicted job loss numbers at the global level are considerable. The forecasts suggest bad news for Africa in particular, given concentration in types of low-skill jobs that might be easy to automate, rising working age populations, and already far too few good jobs to occupy the existing population. Arntz et al. suggest the share of workers at high risk of automation is 40 percent amongst those with a lower secondary education and above 50 percent for those with primary or less education.4 Advanced manufacturing and AI applications including automated call centers might even reverse the trend towards manufacturing and low-skilled services moving to developing countries. That would imperil a recent run of global income convergence. And there have been cases of impact al- ready: Foxconn replacing 30 percent of its workforce when it introduced robots, and 1,000 lost jobs in Vietnam when Adidas shuttered a factory and moved production to “speed factories” in Germany and the US. If this is the beginning of a trend, it would be harmful to African development prospects.
Topic:
Development, Science and Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Emerging Technology
Political Geography:
Africa

10. Can the US Development Finance Corporation Compete?

Author:
Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The new US International Development Finance Corporation (USDFC) will be considerably larger than its predecessor, and it will also be more focused on low and lower middle income countries. It will have new tools to deliver but face expanded competition. The major challenge to the DFC is not Chinese investment (which largely funds projects ill-suited to support from the DFC), but other development finance institutions, many of which are deploying increasing quantities of subsidized capital to attract project sponsors. It is not clear that there are sufficient suitable deals in the shrinking set of low and lower-middle income countries to absorb DFI development finance, and the USDFC could lose projects to subsidized finance from elsewhere if this turns out to be the case. Given that, it should be a priority for the United States to agree rules with other donors that prevent development finance institutions from competing on the basis of subsidy. The new DFC needs increased capacity to deliver deals: both the tools provided by the BUILD Act which are being constrained by the administration and the staff and budget to actively build a pipeline of projects. A considerably bolstered administrative budget may involve reducing –potentially to zero—the profitability OPIC traditionally enjoyed.
Topic:
Development, Governance, Finance, Institutions, and Private Sector
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America