Search

Begin New Search Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution Center for Global Development

351. The Economics of Population Policy for Carbon Emissions Reduction in Developing Countries

Author:
David Wheeler and Dan Hammer
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Female education and family planning are both critical for sustainable development, and they obviously merit expanded support without any appeal to global climate considerations. However, even relatively optimistic projections suggest that family planning and female education will suffer from financing deficits that will leave millions of women unserved in the coming decades. Since both activities affect fertility, population growth, and carbon emissions, they may also provide sufficient climate-related benefits to warrant additional financing from resources devoted to carbon emissions abatement. This paper considers the economic case for such support. Using recent data on emissions, program effectiveness and program costs, we estimate the cost of carbon emissions abatement via family planning and female education. We compare our estimates with the costs of numerous technical abatement options that have been estimated by Nauclér and Enkvist in a major study for McKinsey and Company (2009). We find that the population policy options are much less costly than almost all of the options Nauclér and Enkvist provide for low-carbon energy development, including solar, wind, and nuclear power, second-generation biofuels, and carbon capture and storage. They are also cost-competitive with forest conservation and other improvements in forestry and agricultural practices. We conclude that female education and family planning should be viewed as viable potential candidates for financial support from global climate funds. The case for female education is also strengthened by its documented contribution to resilience in the face of the climate change that has already become inevitable.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, Gender Issues, and Third World
Political Geography:
Africa

352. To Formalize or Not to Formalize? Comparisons of Microenterprise Data from Southern and East Africa

Author:
Vijaya Ramachandran, Manju Kedia Shah, Alan Gelb, and Taye Mengistae
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Why do firms choose to locate in the informal sector? Researchers often argue that the high cost of regulation prevents informal firms from becoming formal and productive. Our results point to a more nuanced story.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Markets, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
Africa

353. Criss-Crossing Globalization: Uphill Flows of Skill-Intensive Goods and Foreign Direct Investment

Author:
Arvind Subramanian and Aaditya Mattoo
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills, embodied in goods, services or capital from poorer to richer countries. We first present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure which combines the sophistication of a country's exports with the average income level of destination countries, we show that the performance of a number of developing countries, notably China, Mexico and South Africa, matches that of much more advanced countries, such as Japan, Spain and USA. Creating a new combined dataset on FDI (covering greenfield investment as well as mergers and acquisitions) we show that flows of FDI to OECD countries from developing countries like Brazil, India, Malaysia and South Africa as a share of their GDP, are as large as flows from countries like Japan, Korea and the US. Then, taking the work of Hausmann et al (2007) as a point of departure, we suggest that it is not just the composition of exports but their destination that matters. In both cross-sectional and panel regressions, with a range of controls, we find that a measure of uphill flows of sophisticated goods is significantly associated with better growth performance. These results suggest the need for a deeper analysis of whether development benefits might derive not from deifying comparative advantage but from defying it.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Brazil, Spain, and Korea

354. Climate Change Negotiating Positions of Major Developing Country Emitters

Author:
Jan von der Goltz
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Developing countries with large greenhouse gas emissions play a decisive role in negotiating a post-Kyoto climate agreement. No effective program to reduce global emissions is possible without their support. At the same time, developing countries face a delicate task in balancing their growing responsibility for a livable climate with the pursuit of continued economic development. This article discusses the negotiating positions major developing country emitters are taking on core issues. Among the most vital unsettled questions are burden sharing between developed and developing countries, the role of the market in the international climate architecture, as well as implementation arrangements. An annex discusses current mitigation policies of major developing country emitters, and argues that developing countries are already taking meaningful action to limit the growth of their greenhouse gas emissions.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Environment, Treaties and Agreements, and Third World

355. The Illusion of Equality: The Educational Consequences of Blinding Weak States, For Example

Author:
Lant Pritchett and Martina Viarengo
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Does the government control of school systems facilitate equality in school quality? There is a trade-off. On the one hand, government direct control of schools, typically through a large scale hierarchical organization, could produce equalization across schools by providing uniformity in inputs, standards, and teacher qualifications that localized individually managed schools could not achieve. But there is a tendency for large scale formal bureaucracies to “see” less and less of localized reality and hence to manage on the basis of a few simple, objective, and easily administratively verified characteristics (e.g. resources per student, formal teacher qualifications). Whether centralized or localized control produces more equality depends therefore not only on what “could” happen in principle but what does happen in practice. When government implementation capacity is weak, centralized control could lead to only the illusion of equality: in which central control of education with weak internal or external accountability actually allows for much greater inequalities across schools than entirely “uncontrolled” local schools. Data from Pakistan, using results from the LEAPS study, and from two states of India show much larger variance in school quality (adjusted for student characteristics) among the government schools—because of very poor public schools which continue in operation. We use the PISA data to estimate school specific learning achievement (in mathematics, science, and reading) net of individual student and school average background characteristics and compare public and private schools for 34 countries. For these countries there is, on average, exactly the same inequality in adjusted learning achievement across the private schools as across the public schools. But while inequality is the same on average, in some countries, such as Denmark, there was much more equality within the public sector while in others, such as Mexico, there was much more inequality among the public schools. Among the 18 non-OECD participating PISA countries the standard deviation across schools in adjusted quality was, on average, 36 percent higher in government than in private schools. In cases with weak states the proximate cause of high inequality again was that the public sector distribution of performance had a long left tail—schools with extremely poor performance. Relying on blinded weak states for top-down control of educational systems can be lose-lose relative to localized systems relying on bottom-up control—producing worse average performance and higher inequality.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Government, Political Economy, and Social Stratification
Political Geography:
Pakistan and India

356. Making Markets for Merit Goods: The Political Economy of Antiretrovirals

Author:
Ethan B. Kapstein and Josh Busby
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
This paper examines the role of policy entrepreneurs and global activists in shaping the international market for antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV/AIDS. When ARVs first came on the market in the 1990s they were exceedingly expensive; the cost of treatment was upwards of $10,000 per year. These drugs were thus accessible only to those patients who had high incomes. But in 2006, the “international community,” meeting at a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS), made an astonishing pledge to those who were infected with HIV. It proclaimed that there should be universal access to ARV treatment. This UNGASS, following up on an earlier historic UN special session devoted entirely to AIDS in 2001, marked the first time in history that the international community pledged itself to chronic care for the ill, which in this case includes the approximately 30 million people around the world estimated to be HIV positive. How do we explain the transformation of ARVs from private goods, which only a few could afford, into merit goods that were (at least declaratively) to be made available to everyone? In other words, how does a norm of “universal access to treatment”—that no person should be denied these life-extending drugs—become the ethical basis for global public policy with respect to pharmaceutical allocation? What are the lessons of the ARV story for other global issues? These are the primary questions we explore in this paper. Briefly, we argue that the policy entrepreneurs and activists who promoted the creation of a universal access to treatment regime—of the transformation of ARVs into global merit goods—relied on a combination of moral arguments and ideas with favorable material circumstances. From the ethical perspective, the task of these entrepreneurs was to convince the “international community” that access to ARVs was a “human right,” or conversely to convince decision-makers that it was morally wrong to allocate these life-enhancing drugs solely on the basis of ability to pay. But from a material standpoint, these arguments were greatly facilitated by the lowering prices of ARVs caused by a combination of differential pricing (that is, lower prices for drugs in the developing world than in the advanced welfare states) and competition from generics producers, coupled with increases in foreign aid spending devoted to HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Topic:
Globalization, Health, and Markets
Political Geography:
United Nations

357. Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution

Author:
Todd Moss and Lauren Young
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Ghana can be considered a relative success story in Africa. We cite six variables—peace and stability, democracy and governance, control of corruption, macroeconomic management, poverty reduction, and signs of an emerging social contract—to suggest the country's admirable political and economic progress. The expected arrival of sizeable oil revenues beginning in 2011–13, however, threatens to undermine that progress. In fact, numerous studies have linked natural resources to negative outcomes such as conflict, authoritarianism, high corruption, economic instability, increased poverty, and the destruction of the social contract. The oil curse thus threatens the very outcomes that we consider signs of Ghana's success. This paper draws lessons from the experiences of Norway, Botswana, Alaska, Chad, and Nigeria to consider Ghana's policy options. One common characteristic of the successful models appears to be their ability to encourage an influential constituency with an interest in responsible resource management and the means to hold government accountable. The Alaska model in particular, which was designed explicitly to manufacture citizen oversight and contain oil-induced patronage, seems relevant to Ghana's current predicament. We propose a modified version of Alaska's dividend program. Direct cash distribution of oil revenues to citizens is a potentially powerful approach to protect and accelerate Ghana's political and economic gains, and a way to strengthen the country's social contract. We show why Ghana is an ideal country to take advantage of this option, and why the timing is fortuitous. We conclude by confronting some of the common objections to this approach and suggest that new technology such as biometric ID cards or private mobile phone networks could be utilized to implement the scheme.
Topic:
Corruption, Economics, Oil, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa and Ghana

358. Beyond Planning: Markets and Networks for Better Aid

Author:
Owen Barder
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The political economy of aid agencies is driven by incomplete information and multiple competing objectives and confounded by principal-agent and collective-action problems. Policies to improve aid rely too much on a planning paradigm that tries to ignore, rather than change, the political economy of aid. A considered combination of market mechanisms, networked collaboration, and collective regulation would be more likely to lead to significant improvements. A “collaborative market” for aid might include unbundling funding from aid management to create more explicit markets; better information gathered from the intended beneficiaries of aid; decentralized decision-making; a sharp increase in transparency and accountability of donor agencies; the publication of more information about results; pricing externalities; and new regulatory arrangements to make markets work. The aid system is in a political equilibrium, determined by deep characteristics of the aid relationship and the political economy of aid institutions. Reformers should seek to change that equilibrium rather than try to move away from it. The priority should be on reforms that put pressure on the aid system to evolve in the right direction rather than on grand designs.
Topic:
Development, Political Economy, and Foreign Aid

359. Opening Markets for Poor Countries: Are We There Yet?

Author:
Kimberly Ann Elliott
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Despite six decades of trade liberalization, trade policies in rich countries still discriminate against the exports of the world's poorest countries. Preferential market access programs were designed to spur larger and more diversified exports from developing countries, but product exclusions and burdensome rules undermined their usefulness, especially for the poorer countries. Most rich countries have made reforms since the UN Millennium Declaration in 2000 called for duty-free, quota-free market access for the least-developed countries. After the World Trade Organization ministerial communiqué called upon developing countries “in a position to do so” to also provide such access, key countries have moved toward that goal. But much remains to be done to achieve the goal of meaningful market access for the poorest countries, including reformed rules of origin that facilitate rather than inhibit trade.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Poverty, and United Nations

360. Countering Drug Resistance in the Developing World: An Assessment of Incentives across the Value Chain and Recommendations for Policy Interventions

Author:
Prashant Yadav
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The emergence and spread of drug resistance is draining available resources and threatening our ability to treat infectious diseases in developing countries. Countering drug resistance requires pharmaceutical companies, government regulators, doctors, and patients to make difficult choices about drug treatment in order to balance efficacy, cost, safety, and sustainability of drugs. These complex tradeoffs are faced along the drug supply chain from the development of new products, procurement of drugs for donor and government distribution, distribution steps to ensure treatment heterogeneity along with quality and availability, and dispensing and use that requires affordability, patient adherence and rational use of drugs and diagnostics. An analysis of the incentives and risks in the drug supply chain reflects that many stakeholders who can influence optimal prescribing of existing drugs; affect higher patient compliance; and ensure the quality of drugs have weak incentives to carry out these activities optimally. This implies a high potential for drug resistance to accelerate. This paper recommends specific measures to better align the incentives of these stakeholders with resistance- countering activities.
Topic:
Development, Health, Human Welfare, and Third World