Fom @rachelbnfield and me:

Fact-checking Elon's claims about USAID Here's the link to the post: cgdev.org/blog/no-90-per…

Apologies, this one is a little dark.

1/ From 2013 to 2016, the World Bank's private sector arm, IFC, invested $13.5m in Bridge International Academies, a chain of for-profit schools in Kenya owned by a US parent company, NewGlobe.

2/

New from me:

“How economists got Africa’s AIDS epidemic wrong”

In the '00s, cost-effectiveness analysis said sending HIV drugs to low-income countries was a bad use of money--drugs that ended up saving millions of lives. Have we learned our lesson?

cgdev.org/blog/how-econo…

1/ GW Bush asked Congress for $15B for HIV drugs for Africa and the Caribbean in 2003. After just a few years, the decline in total adult mortality across a dozen countries was striking. The National Academy of Sciences says the program, PEPFAR, has saved *millions* of lives.

2/

Most U.S. foreign aid doesn't go to foreigners -- at least not directly.

I dig into the numbers on how USAID can change that.

1/n

cgdev.org/blog/usaid-loc… Of America's $35b annual non-military aid budget, foreign governments receive less than $1b, and foreign NGOs and companies about $2.3b.

American companies and NGOs absorb about $10b.

2/n

Average schooling levels in Ghana by 2010 were a bit higher than Great Britain's when Ghana won independence.

Per capita income not so much. Very similar picture for Cote d'Ivoire and France.

By 2010, CIV's schooling levels had surpassed France's 1960 levels. PPP income was about 25% France's 1960 level.

There is a weird quirk of American politics whereby only Republicans get to do global development, precisely because their party generally opposes it.

1/ Bush II got to do PEPFAR -- the only significant increase in US foreign aid in half a century -- because the GOP would've killed it if any Democrat had proposed it. But Dems happily (and thankfully) went along.

2/

Congrats to three outstanding CGD colleagues recently promoted to fellow/senior fellow!

@rsilv_dc @scepticalranil @RachaelCalleja

1/n @rsilv_dc @scepticalranil @RachaelCalleja Listen to @rsilv_dc, newly minted CGD senior fellow, on The Weeds podcast talking about the global scourge of lead poisoning.

2/n

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

Welcome to our newest @CGDev fellow — really excited to have Eeshani join us full time in Jan.!

https://twitter.com/eeshani_kandpal/status/1587864916404363265

@CGDev Some samples of Eeshani's work I really like:

1. The disappointing performance of performance pay in health:

https://twitter.com/JustinSandefur/status/1519432456612552709?s=20&t=7KLbYQ93B7B9pRlXjbGdWA

New GLOBAL POVERTY projections from the World Bank are officially out today:

- 9.3% global poverty in 2020, up from 8.4% in 2019, meaning 70m new poor.

- Poverty reduction likely stalling again in 2022.

openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/hand…

1/ Unsurprisingly, fiscal policy did a lot less to protect people in lower-middle and low-income countries.

"Feed all the kids, and let them go to school for free"

No, really.

Our new @CGDev report on the economics of achieving universal education in low- and lower-middle income countries.

cgdev.org/blog/feed-all-… @CGDev 25 contributors offer diverse reactions on 6 topics:

1. What actually works at scale?
2. Universal school meals
3. The case for free secondary
4. How much should govs spend on teachers?
5. What PPPs can & can’t do
6. Finance: Ambition meets reality

cgdev.org/publication/sc…

2/

The Great Indian Poverty Debate, 2.0

A new World Bank paper says Indian poverty has fallen, but is higher than we thought. A rival study from India's IMF rep says India, like China, is approaching zero poverty.

I tried to parse the debate:
cgdev.org/blog/great-ind…

1/ In the original "Great Indian Poverty Debate", as Deaton called it, economists were really debating India's 1990 liberalization. This time, the implicit topic is Modi's economic management.

2/

Remember the Doing Business index?

Yes, it died. Mostly due to the Kristalina Georgieva cooking the books for China thing.

But data manipulation aside, was DB actually good for development?

🧵 Today the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group issued a long-awaited report tackling that question.

The recommendations were, I suspect (?), partially known to WB management when they killed DB -- and could shape DB 2.0 coming in 2023.

ieg.worldbankgroup.org/sites/default/…

What have school closures done to learning levels in developing countries?

Uganda is an important test case, with the longest school closure in the world.

So I spent a while digging into @UwezoUganda's new data on learning outcomes.

1/

cgdev.org/blog/ugandas-r… @UwezoUganda First the unsurprising / depressing part:

The share of kids who can do the most basic things, like recognize letters and numbers, is down by ~10 percentage points, concentrated among younger kids.

2/

Outsourcing schools, 5 years later:

Nice FT piece by @davidpilling on what we learned from Liberia's experience -- including our RCT w/ @marome1 & @wsandholtz.
ft.com/content/35ebb4… @davidpilling @marome1 @wsandholtz not to jinx it, but our 3-year follow-up study should be forthcoming in a journal near you very soon. Working paper version is here:
cgdev.org/sites/default/…

Lord Stern has entered the chat

https://twitter.com/lordstern1/status/1442108739813736448

Seems like there's a coordinated push to get civil society folks to speak up in defense of Georgieva.

For the past several months, I've participated in an 'External Review Panel' commissioned by the World Bank to look at the methodology behind Doing Business.

We submitted our final report Sept 1st.

The World Bank has finally released it today:
worldbank.org/content/dam/do…

1/ In some sense, our report has been overtaken by events.

On Thursday, the WB announced it would discontinue Doing Business after the release of the WilmerHale investigation into data manipulation. The details of which are, wow, incredibly damning.
thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/84a922c…

2/

The US spends ~1% of the federal budget on foreign aid.

In polls, Americans consistently think it's ~25%.

And that it should be more like 5-10%.

brookings.edu/research/ameri… This isn't news. Just kinda funny how those of us in the development industry have tried to spin this as evidence for popular *support* for aid. Seems quite ambiguous!

How many people have died in India during the pandemic?

There's no truly satisfactory answer. @abhishekecon @arvindsubraman and I have a new paper presenting 3 alternative estimates from 3 different sources, and discussing flaws of each.
cgdev.org/sites/default/…

1/ @abhishekecon @arvindsubraman The Indian gov's official death toll is ~400k.

India has a population of ~1.4 billion. WHO-AIIMS surveys earlier this year put the national seroprevalence rate at 58% (!). 400k is not a credible number.

2/

Some people like cute titles for econ papers, others hate them. Some prefer detailed, explanatory titles. But we all know the real power move is a 1-word title.

🧵 My favorite:

Highly anticipated World Bank audit report is out.

Finding: 9 of 15 staff members on the Doing Business team say management pressured them to manipulate data.

8 complied.

worldbank.org/en/news/statem…

(1/n) This seemingly petty crime -- especially the manipulation of Saudi data -- looks a lot worse in context.

(2/n)

This statement from Mnuchin is pretty infuriating.

https://twitter.com/AlterIgoe/status/1317094237473771521

The poorest developing countries are confronting a huge rise in extreme poverty and hunger, alongside a looming debt crisis that limits their ability to do much fiscal stimulus.

But Mnuchin has no interest in any additional aid.