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161. No Longer Poor: Ghana's New Income Status and Implications of Graduation from IDA

Author:
Todd Moss and Stephanie Majerowicz
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
Ghana's largest and most important creditor for the past three decades has been the International Development Association (IDA), the soft loan window of the World Bank. That will soon come to an end. The combination of Ghana's rapid economic growth and the recent GDP rebasing exercise means that Ghana suddenly finds itself above the income limit for IDA eligibility. Formal graduation is imminent and comes with significant implications for access to concessional finance, debt, and relations with other creditors. This paper considers the specific questions related to Ghana's relationship with the World Bank, as well as the broader questions about the country's new middle-income status.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Poverty, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
Africa

162. Escaping Capability Traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)

Author:
Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do. In addition, the flow of development resources and legitimacy without demonstrated improvements in performance undermines the impetus for effective action to build state capability or improve performance. This dynamic facilitates “capability traps” in which state capability stagnates, or even deteriorates, over long periods of time even though governments remain engaged in developmental rhetoric and continue to receive development resources. How can countries escape capability traps? We propose an approach, Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), based on four core principles, each of which stands in sharp contrast with the standard approaches. First, PDIA focuses on solving locally nominated and defined problems in performance (as opposed to transplanting preconceived and packaged “best practice” solutions). Second, it seeks to create an authorizing environment for decision-making that encourages positive deviance and experimentation (as opposed to designing projects and programs and then requiring agents to implement them exactly as designed). Third, it embeds this experimentation in tight feedback loops that facilitate rapid experiential learning (as opposed to enduring long lag times in learning from ex post “evaluation”). Fourth, it actively engages broad sets of agents to ensure that reforms are viable, legitimate, relevant, and supportable (as opposed to a narrow set of external experts promoting the top-down diffusion of innovation).
Topic:
Development, Economics, Political Economy, Foreign Aid, Foreign Direct Investment, and Governance

163. Assessing the Quality of Aid for Agriculture

Author:
Kimberly Elliott and Edward Collins
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
New international initiatives signal strong commitment to agriculture and food security in the face of growing demand and climate-change challenges. But aid to agriculture still represents just five percent of total official development assistance. With donor budgets under intense pressure, making aid effective is more important than ever, but we still know relatively little about the quality of aid in general and of agricultural aid in particular.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Development, Foreign Aid, and Food

164. A Commitment to Vaccination Index: Measuring Government Progress toward Global Immunization

Author:
Amanda Glassman, Denizhan Duran, and Juan Ignacio Zoloa
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
Vaccination is among the most cost-effective health interventions and has attracted ever greater levels of investment from public and private funders. However, some countries, mainly populous lower-middle-income countries, are lagging behind in vaccination financing and performance.
Topic:
Development, Foreign Aid, and Health Care Policy

165. The Evolution of India's UID Program: Lessons Learned and Implications for Other Developing Countries

Author:
Frances Zelazny
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
India has embarked on an ambitious new program to provide its citizens and residents a unique, official identity. The UID (Universal ID) program aims to improve the delivery of government services, reduce fraud and corruption, facilitate robust voting processes, and improve security. It is by far the largest application of biometric identification technology to date and will have far-reaching implications for other developing countries that are looking to adopt national ID programs to further social and economic development. This paper discusses the evolution of the UID program, the innovative organization and pathbreaking technology behind it, how it is being rolled out, and how robust ID is beginning to be used.
Topic:
Corruption, Crime, Democratization, Development, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
India

166. Priority-Setting in Health: Building Institutions for Smarter Public Spending

Author:
Amanda Glassman and Kalipso Chalkidou
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
Health donors, policymakers, and practitioners continuously make life-and-death decisions about which type of patients receive what interventions, when, and at what cost. These decisions—as consequential as they are—often result from ad hoc, nontransparent processes driven more by inertia and interest groups than by science, ethics, and the public interest. The result is perverse priorities, wasted money, and needless death and illness. Examples abound: In India, only 44 percent of children 1 to 2 years old are fully vaccinated, yet open-heart surgery is subsidized in national public hospitals. In Colombia, 58 percent of children are fully vaccinated, but public monies subsidize treating breast cancer with Avastin, a brand-name medicine considered ineffective and unsafe for this purpose in the United States.
Topic:
Development, Health, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
United States, India, and Colombia

167. Quantifying the Quality of Health Aid: Health QuODA

Author:
Amanda Glassman and Denizhan Duran
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
Health is one of the largest and most complex sectors of foreign aid: in recent years, about 15 cents of every aid dollar went to global health. While health is often cited as one of the few undisputed aid success stories, there is little quantitative analysis of the quality of health aid, and some studies suggest that health aid does not necessarily improve health outcomes.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, Health, Foreign Aid, and Health Care Policy

168. How Can the World Bank Group Improve Its Private Sector Projects in African Fragile States?

Author:
Vijaya Ramachandran, Benjamin Leo, and Ross Thuotte
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
In recent years, the World Bank Group has made increasingly strong and explicit commitments to fragile and conflict-affected states, putting them at the top of the development policy agenda. These commitments are promising, but give rise to significant operational challenges for the various arms of the World Bank Group, including the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). The bank also faces steady pressure from shareholders to scale up involvement in fragile states while also improving absorptive capacity and project effectiveness.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Markets, Foreign Aid, and World Bank
Political Geography:
Africa

169. Energy+ Country Performance Ratings, 2001–2010

Author:
David Wheeler
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
This paper introduces ƐCPR, country performance ratings that support Norway's Energy+ initiative by monitoring the progress of 153 countries in reducing the CO2 emissions intensity of energy consumption. It develops annual ƐCPR ratings for the period from 2001 to 2010.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Energy Policy, and Foreign Aid

170. Where Will the World's Poor Live? An Update on Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion

Author:
Andy Sumner
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
This paper updates the distribution of global poverty data and makes projections up to 2020. The paper asks the following question: Do the world's extreme poor live in poor countries? It is argued that many of the world's extreme poor already live in countries where the total cost of ending extreme poverty is not prohibitively high as a percentage of GDP. And in the not-too-distant future, most of the world's poor will live in countries that do have the domestic financial scope to end at least extreme poverty. This would imply a reframing of global poverty as largely a matter of domestic distribution.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty