June 2014
Featured Article
Which way will Ukraine turn? With Russia's recent military aggression taking so much of the spotlight, it's easy to forget that Ukraine's political unrest this year began with domestic protests over a question key to the future of its 45 million people: whether to tie their fortunes more closely to Russia, or to Western Europe. To Western observers and analysts, the choice of Europe might seem obvious. But making such a pivot is never easy, and a close look at Ukraine's economy shows that such a decision may be far harder, and more costly, than most political commentators tend to allow. In this feature for the Boston Globe, Marcela Escobari applies CID's economic complexity theories and the Atlas online to show the risks facing Ukraine and its complex industries. Read more >>
Featured Publication
Is it what you look like or what you do that matters most? We often forget that governments exist to do and not just to be. This bias leads to governance indicators and reforms that emphasize perfection of "being," often failing to make a connection to the ends or even clarifying which final products matter. To address the fact that different ends might warrant different means in each country context, Matt Andrews offers an approach, which begins by asking what governments do rather than how they do it. He promotes the idea of using comparative, benchmarked dashboards and narratives instead of misleading stand-alone indicators. This approach of looking at the multi-dimensional nature of governance is timely given the push to include a governance indicator in the post 2015 development goals. Read more >>
Featured Book
In spite of all the research on the causes of economic growth, we still have a long way to go in understanding why growth changes so much over time, and why only a handful of developing countries have seen their incomes reach the levels observed in developed countries. To understand the causes, we first need to grasp what growth is. Authors Sabyasachi Kar, Lant Pritchett, Selim Raihan and Kunal Sen present visually the dynamics of the growth experiences of 125 countries. They also identify the timing and magnitude of breaks, episodes and regime transitions for all 125 countries. The graphs highlight a key point - economic growth is dynamic and episodic and that countries have gone through very different growth phases. Read more >>


Why do we need a Typology?

An analytical typology can help you answer the question - building capability to do what? Lant Pritchett delves into the question in this short video. 

Why Distributed End Users Often Limit Public Financial Management Reform Success

Matt Andrews

Population Exchange and its Impact on Literacy, Occupation and Gender  

Asim Khwaja et al 

Q&A on the Colombian Economy

Ricardo Hausmann - Portafolio

Is Brazil ready for the World Cup?

Raphael Martins, Research Fellow in HuffPost Live

Poverty Under the Microscope

Lant Pritchett - Chronicle of Higher Education

The Fight against Fake Drugs

David Yanigizawa-Drott - New York Times

Piketty's Missing Knowhow

Ricardo Hausmann - Project Syndicate

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The Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University is a university-wide center that works to advance the understanding of development challenges and offer viable solutions to problems of global poverty.