Owen Barder

Here is the evidence I gave (audio, plus part video) to the House of Commons International Development Committee. I argue for greater use of multilateral aid and against setting up a new UK development bank.

The New York Times covers Development Impact Bonds and early results from the Peterborough Prison Social Impact Bonds suggest that this is a business model worth trying in development.

The agenda for action to tackle illicit financial flows has passed an important threshold. While the G-8 meeting did not agree everything that had been hoped, there was tangible progress in two out of the three main areas.

The new “Development Tracker” website launched in beta by DFID is disruptive in two important ways: one which will appeal especially to open data geeks, and one which will appeal to development geeks. (I am proud to call myself both.)

The Center for Global Development and our partner Social Finance has just published a big new report on Development Impact Bonds. The Working Group invites comments on the draft report over the next six weeks.

One thing that the public knows, which many development experts apparently do not, is that poor countries are poor because they are badly governed and have institutions which prevent growth and permit a small elite to capture the nation’s wealth. According to Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoğlu and Jim Robinson, the public is (as usual) basically right.

In January, David Cameron nailed his colours to the mast with a speech in Davos that set out the three Ts agenda for the UK’s chairing of the June G8 meeting: taxes, trade and transparency. There have also been some raised eyebrows among the cognoscenti about a fourth T: turf.  Some worry that a Cameron-led G8 effort might step on the toes of the G20 and its existing working groups, perhaps stimulating production of “not invented here” antibodies that would make it hard for the initiative to gain global traction.

The President of the World Bank says, “For the first time ever, we have a real opportunity to end extreme poverty within a generation.”  We have said this many times before.

This blog post first appeared on Views from the Center. Richard Manning was a highly respected chair of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) – the development committee of the OECD, the rich countries’ think-tank. So we should pay attention when he says in the FT that the OECD is encouraging Read more…

The 300 richest people on the planet have the same wealth as the bottom 3 billion, according to this video.