CID Research Spotlight

CID Speaker Series

Originally recorded on March 12, 2021

Alix Zwane, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Innovation Fund, continued the discussion after a virtual CID Speaker Series event held on March 12, 2021 exploring their work further with CID Student Ambassador Sama Kubba.

Successfully meeting international development goals in the post pandemic era calls for a renewed commitment to honesty both on a micro level and a macro level about what development assistance can and should seek to achieve. The debate about official assistance is often bookended by, at best, misplaced good intent and, at worst, falsehoods told to reinforce the status quo. Supporting innovation and R&D is at the heart of both an honest development agenda and the clearest path toward pushing decision-making more locally while still being true to our values around environmental, social, and governance standards such as gender equity and climate resilience.

Alix Peterson Zwane is Chief Executive Officer of the Global Innovation Fund. She has 20 years of experience advancing the agenda of evidence-based aid and international development as an investor, a social entrepreneur, and an innovator herself.

Alix has worked at the intersection of the evidence and innovation agendas from a diverse set of posts. She was the first employee and Executive Director at Evidence Action, a non-profit that develops service delivery models to scale evidence-based programs. Under Alix's leadership, Evidence Action catalyzed school-based deworming for hundreds of millions of children around the world, and safe drinking water for millions of people in four countries. Alix launched Evidence Action Beta, an incubator for innovations in development. Alix has also advocated for evidence-based philanthropy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.org, where she set strategy and made investments to support new public service models that work for the poor and developed models for outcome-based grant-making. She began her career in management consulting and was a member of the faculty of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at University of California, Berkeley.


Alix has published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and elsewhere. She previously served on the board of directors of Innovations for Poverty Action, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and Evidence Action. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University and is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Born and raised in Colorado, she divides her time between Washington, D.C. and London.

The Honesty Agenda: Effective Assistance, Women’s Empowerment, and the SDGs in a Post-Covid World

Originally recorded on March 26, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring Sarah Rose and Erin Collinson from the Center for Global Development and Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Asim I. Khwaja & Dani Rodrik, and moderated by Professor Rema Hanna.

Sarah Rose, Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development, continued the conversation after her appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event held on March 26, 2021, where she discussed incorporating evidence in US development policy and programming.

As the Biden Administration underscores its priority in utilizing evidence to inform policy, how can development practitioners practically do so? How can USAID and other development officials promote and ensure the collection of accurate and timely evidence, and how can they ensure the use of evidence to inform development policy and programming. During the panel, experts will provide their advice and insights on how to ensure evidence informs US development policy.

Incorporating Evidence in U.S. Development Policy and Programming: Advice and Insights

Originally recorded on April 9, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring Priyadarshani Joshi, Senior Project Officer of Research with the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. 

Priyadarshani Joshi continued the conversation with CID Student Ambassador after her appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where she shared insights from her recent work on understanding how countries are coping with COVID-19 .

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a historic disruption of education systems around the world. The Global Education Monitoring Report is an independent team housed at UNESCO analyses and contributes to the global discussion around educational progress in the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda through authoritative, evidence-based analyses; and by convening perspectives from a range of national and global experts. This presentation focuses on select recent contributions made by the GEM Report team (and others) on understanding how countries are coping with COVID-19 currently, the growing evidence base on financing, equity and systemic concerns, and what strategies are in place to try and recover from the pandemic.

The Effects of COVID-19 on Education Systems: Insights from the Global Education Monitoring Report

The views expressed by the speakers are their own and do not reflect the views of the World Bank Group.

Originally recorded on April 23, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring ​Paul Corral, Nandini Krishan, Daniel Gerszon Mahler, and Tara Vishwanath, The World Bank. The guests continued the conversation with CID Student Ambassador Ana Alvarez, after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where they shared insights from a new report, “Fragility and Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Poverty.”

Globally, the prevalence of fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) continues to rise. The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has more than doubled since 2012, exceeding 74 million in 2018. A new report estimates that by 2030 up to two-thirds of the global extreme poor may be living in FCS, making it evident that without intensified action, the global poverty goals will not be met. 

The new report, “Fragility and Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Poverty,” notes that the 43 countries in the world with the highest poverty rates are in FCS and/or Sub-Saharan Africa.  Economies facing chronic fragility and conflict have had poverty rates stuck at over 40 percent in the past decade, while countries that have escaped FCS have cut their poverty rates by more than half. Today, a person living in an economy facing chronic fragility and conflict is 10 times more likely to be poor than a person living in a country that hasn’t been in conflict or fragility in the past 20 years. The authors of this new report will joined us for the CID Speaker Series to discuss their findings.

Live-tweet thread:
https://twitter.com/HarvardCID/status/1385625931725873152?s=20
YouTube recording:
https://youtu.be/TzvfcnOLY9s

Fragility & Conflict: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Poverty

Originally recorded on April 30, 2021 for the CID Speaker Series, featuring ​Kate Raworth,  Economist & Co-Founder of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab. Raworth continued the conversation with our CID Student Ambassador after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event where they shared insights from her research and book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist.

Doughnut Economics starts with the goal of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. Achieving this calls for economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. What would it look like to put this into practice at the level of the city? Kate Raworth will present the core ideas of Doughnut Economics and share stories of how the idea is being put into action in cities and places worldwide. 

Kate Raworth is an economist focused on making economics fit for the 21st century. Her book Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist is an international bestseller that has been translated into 20 languages, and was long-listed for the 2017 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. She is co-founder of Doughnut Economics Ac+on Lab, working with cities, businesses, communities, governments and educators to turn Doughnut Economics from a radical idea into transformation. She teaches at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and is Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

When the Doughnut Meets the City: Can We Create Regenerative and Distributive Local Economies?

Originally recorded on June 9, 2021, after CID's Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) Faculty Director Rema Hanna's appearance at the HKS Faculty Webcast Series where she moderated a panel on making data-driven policy decisions in uncertain times. Hanna sat down with Sarah Lattrell, CID's Communications and Events Manager, to continue the discussion.

Watch the original panel: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/node/305111

Rema Hanna, faculty chair of Leading Smart Policy Design: A Multisectoral Approach to Economic Decisions and CID's Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) Faculty Director, moderated a panel of Harvard faculty in "Using Data to Create Effective Policy in Uncertain Times". The panel featured Matthew Andrews, Asim I. Khwaja, and Karen Dynan addressing questions about how to use data effectively in making policy decisions and how data can inform policies aimed towards COVID recovery.

Using Data to Create Effective Policy in Uncertain Times

CID Student Ambassador Alexandra Gonzalez interviews Ricardo Hausmann, Director of CID and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ricardo discusses how he became CID’s director, our current work throughout the world, and what you can expect from future research. 
// www.cid.harvard.edu //
Interview recorded on April 23rd, 2018.

About Ricardo Hausmann: Ricardo Hausmann is Director of the Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at Harvard University.

Previously, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee.

Hausmann was Professor of Economics at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA) (1985-1991) in Caracas, where he founded the Center for Public Policy. His research interests include issues of growth, macroeconomic stability, international finance, and the social dimensions of development. He holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University.

For contact and course information, visit Professor Hausmann's HKS faculty directory page. For publications, teaching, media, visit Professor Hausmann's personal website

Revolutionizing the World of Development Practice at CID: An Interview with Ricardo Hausmann

For over ten years, Venezuela has been plagued with a deep economic and political crisis that has also recently transpired into a humanitarian issue. In the past five years, GDP has gone down over 50% and hyperinflation is forecasted by the IMF to reach over 1,000,000% for this year, 2018. The economic downfall has also led to shortages in food, medical supplies, and other commodities nationwide. 

In their latest research paper: “Fool’s Gold: On the Impact of Venezuelan Devaluations in Multinational Stock Prices” Miguel Angel Santos, Dany Bahar, and Carlos Alberto Molina analyze how multinational companies with subsidiaries in Venezuela have been impacted by currency devaluations as the economic crisis worsened.

Today on CID’s Research Spotlight podcast, Camila Lobo, CID Events & Outreach Manager, interviews one of the co-authors of this research paper, Miguel Angel Santos, who provides insight on the current economic crisis in Venezuela and what motivated them to delve into this research. 

Miguel Angel Santos is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University. 

Read the paper: 
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/publications/fellow-graduate-student-working-papers/currency-devaluations-venezuela 

Interview recorded on August 2, 2018.

About Miguel Angel Santos: Miguel Angel Santos is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University.

At CID, he has been involved in various research projects aimed at helping governments to rethink their development strategies, both at the national and sub-national levels. Since he joined CID in August 2014, he has been involved in projects at the national level in Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, and at the sub-national level in Mexico in the states of Chiapas, Baja California, Tabasco and Campeche; and the city of Hermosillo at Sonora state. He has also performed as project manager in the projects leading to the build-up of the Mexican Atlas of Economic Complexity, and the Peruvian Atlas of Economic Complexity.

Before joining the field of international development, Miguel worked for ten years in corporate finance and business development in Latin America, performing as Director of Finance for the Cisneros Group of Companies (1997-2003), Head of Corporate Finance for Mercantil Servicios Financieros (2005-2007), and Business Vice-President for Sony Pictures and Entertainment Latin America (2008-2009). At that point, he decided to switch tracks and get involved in development economics.

He holds two Master of Science degrees in International Finance and Trade (2011) and Economics (2012) from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University (2014), and a Ph.D. in Economics at Universidad de Barcelona (2016). He was the head of the Macroeconomic Policy Team for presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski in the Venezuelan elections of 2012.

Fool's Gold: On the Impact of Venezuelan Devaluations in Multinational Stock Prices

Today on CID’s Research Spotlight podcast, Ghazi Mirza, graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, interviews Professor Asim Khwaja, Co-Director of Evidence for Policy Design, who provides further insight on the work that he and EPoD are conducting, their “theory of change”, and the use of both quantitative and qualitative data to enrich their findings. 

// www.epod.cid.harvard.edu //
Interview recorded on October 22, 2018.

About Asim Khwaja: Asim Ijaz Khwaja is the Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Co-Director of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) and co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP). His areas of interest include economic development, finance, education, political economy, institutions, and contract theory/mechanism design. His research combines extensive fieldwork, rigorous empirical analysis, and microeconomic theory to answer questions that are motivated by and engage with policy.

He has been published in leading economics journals, such as the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has received coverage in numerous media outlets, such as The Economist, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and CNN.

His recent work ranges from understanding market failures in emerging financial markets to examining the private education market in low-income countries. He was selected as a Carnegie Scholar in 2009 to pursue research on how religious institutions impact individual beliefs.

Khwaja received BS degrees in economics and in mathematics with computer science from MIT, and a PhD in economics from Harvard. A Pakistani, U.K., and U.S. citizen, he was born in London, U.K., lived for eight years in Kano, Nigeria, the next eight in Lahore, Pakistan, and the past eighteen years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He continues to enjoy interacting with people around the globe.

Khwaja also serves as the faculty co-chair of a week-long executive education program, "Rethinking Financial Inclusion: Smart Design for Policy and Practice," aimed primarily at professionals involved in the design and regulation of financial products and services for low-income populations.

Using Economic Evidence to Drive Policy Improvement: A Conversation with Professor Asim Khwaja

Practitioners face many challenges when diagnosing growth constraints and setting a country on a path to greater prosperity - including navigating the political context and getting good policy ideas implemented. Miguel Angel Santos, Douglas Barrios and Tim O’Brien are seasoned researchers at the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab that have worked in Jordan, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and other countries, developing growth strategies on both national and sub-national levels.

Today on CID’s Research Spotlight podcast, Friederike Strub, Masters in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Miguel, Douglas, and Tim, who share their experiences with Growth Diagnostics in the broader context of the global sustainable development agenda, exploring how they take into account inequality and social inclusion, as well as environmental sustainability, when designing macroeconomic policy solutions.

// www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu //
Interview recorded on October 30, 2018.

The Challenges of Driving Prosperity: Growth Diagnostics and Sustainable Development

Between 1999 and 2009, Jordan experienced a huge growth acceleration, tripling its exports and increasing income per capita by 38%. Since then, its economy has been thrown off balance, impacted by a number of external shocks that include the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian Civil War. For the past year, CID has been working in the country with the goal of understanding what is hindering income growth per capita and drafting a roadmap to help Jordan get back on a sustainable growth track.

This week on CID’s Research Spotlight podcast, we talk to CID fellows and project managers Miguel Angel Santos and Tim O’Brien on the methodologies and findings of this research project. 

To read the full paper: bit.ly/2FNNBtY 
Interview recorded on March 18, 2019.

About Miguel Angel Santos: Miguel Angel Santos is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Director of Applied Research at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University.

At CID, he has been involved in various research projects aimed at helping governments to rethink their development strategies, both at the national and sub-national levels. Since he joined CID in August 2014, he has been involved in projects at the national level in Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, and at the sub-national level in Mexico in the states of Chiapas, Baja California, Tabasco and Campeche; and the city of Hermosillo at Sonora state. He has also performed as project manager in the projects leading to the build-up of the Mexican Atlas of Economic Complexity, and the Peruvian Atlas of Economic Complexity.

Before joining the field of international development, Miguel worked for ten years in corporate finance and business development in Latin America, performing as Director of Finance for the Cisneros Group of Companies (1997-2003), Head of Corporate Finance for Mercantil Servicios Financieros (2005-2007), and Business Vice-President for Sony Pictures and Entertainment Latin America (2008-2009). At that point, he decided to switch tracks and get involved in development economics.

He holds two Master of Science degrees in International Finance and Trade (2011) and Economics (2012) from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University (2014), and a Ph.D. in Economics at Universidad de Barcelona (2016). He was the head of the Macroeconomic Policy Team for presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski in the Venezuelan elections of 2012.

About Tim O’Brien: Tim O’Brien joined CID in 2015 and has worked on both Growth Lab and Building State Capability projects. 

He has led growth diagnostic research in Albania and Sri Lanka. 

Tim holds a Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University. 

Tim served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 2008-2010 and has experience working with the World Bank and in environmental engineering. 

Tim’s research interests center on the challenges of economic transformation and adapting to climate change in developing countries and vulnerable communities.

View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-Jordan-elements%20of%20a%20growth%20strategy.pdf

Jordan: The Elements of a Growth Strategy

Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work.

The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more.

At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.

Using Data to Create Effective Policy in Uncertain Times

Harvard Center for International Development