[Kathleen Hays] Wonderful to see this room so full. I just feel the energy, I feel the excitement. We've got such a terrific panel. We've got so many people speaking today, tomorrow, and I am thrilled to be here. I am so honored to have been invited by the World Bank, by Ajay and his team to be here with you this morning. World Bank Headquarters Washington, DC, beautiful weather. I mean, we're so glad we get to stay inside and sit in front of our air conditioner. So anyway, 35th Annual Conference on Global Development Economics. I love the ABCDE 2024. I just feel like that could be line from an old rock song or something. I think one of you guys, we maybe have a contest there in the audience, start working on it. Anyway, very important. We're streaming live on the World Bank social media channels. You can follow us at #ABCDE2024. Again, put that rock tune in your head. You won't forget it. So today, a very important topic, complexities, challenges of global development. How you get clarity when there's growing incoherence that has clouded all our debates. There's just so many things on the table, so many things the global economy has gone through. And now let's try to put it all together and move forward. So, we've got, trillions of dollars to mobilize for climate change. We've got to enhance health and education. And then, the very important question, how do you rebuild nations who are affected by conflict, particularly when in so many parts of the world those conflicts continue? I want to introduce myself. I'm Kathleen Hays. I'm Founder and Editor in Chief of Central Bank Central. I'm the former global economics and policy editor for Bloomberg TV and radio, and before that, CNN and CNBC, I could go on and on. I've been doing this for a long time and again recently doing a lot more work with the World Bank, which is something, again, I appreciate very much. So, we're going to be looking at setting the stage for the discussions, and who is better to do that than Mister Ajay Banga? Please, come to the stage, sir, and get us going. [Applause]
[Ajay Banga] If I get rid of your notes, just be careful. I have the dirty habit of picking up things and throwing them around, so… But thank you for having me. Larry [Summers], I'm sorry that you're not here personally. I was looking forward to catching up again. I just think having Larry here with us as well, given his role as Chair of the CGD, but frankly, also the G20 Expert Framework. And from the day I got nominated, he and Masood [Ahmed] have been extremely, extremely helpful to me. Having the two of them involved with this, now Rachel [Glennerster] in a new role, congratulations. I'm looking forward to building this partnership with you and Danny [Quah]. Thank you for being here and for sharing your views. I know we've got terrific speakers over the coming couple of days. I want to take my time to walk you through what's in my head about this topic, and the one thing I would tell you, the topic of incoherence, I get. I don't completely agree with the stagnation part of it, but that's just me. I believe that. That I'm not ready to declare yet, but I do believe that no matter whether there's growth or stagnation, we've actually got growth and stagnation in the title together, which is fascinating. Only an economist can find a way to talk about two things at the same time, and you guys have done that successfully in the meet, so that's very clever. But I'm not in the stagnation camp, but I am in the issue of we have big challenges, we have intertwined challenges. We have challenges that between climate, healthcare, pandemics, fragility, conflict and violence, not to forget poverty, which is where this all started from, the intertwined nature of these is at a level that isn't quite easy to manage when economic circumstances are difficult for many countries around the world, particularly those who are the most challenged. And you add to that the debt overhang in those countries where they end up spending much more on debt repayments than they can on the same things we are talking about, which is growth and development. So when you put that picture together, it's an unattractive picture. Many of you will speak to the numbers. I'm not going to speak to those numbers, but one thing I will speak to the level of money required if you believe that the SDGs have eight years to go. The level of money required if you believe anybody's estimates are trillions, 30 trillion. The number keeps changing every alternate day because it's not a stagnant situation. Now it's a couple of trillion dollars a year that we need for renewable energy, 5600 billion a year for health care, 4500 billion a year for education. There're all kinds of numbers going there. What I do know is it's not the absolute quantum of the number. It's the reality of that number being much larger than anything the world has had to deal with over the last few years. And so, doing things the old way will not make the future come true. That's the issue that we are dealing with. When I first came here a year or so ago, and having heard the feedback from many of our clients in donor countries about what they expected the Bank to do, I tried to break it down into bite sized chunks. The first chunk was, what can we do better as an institution? The second chunk was, how can we raise more money, both for the institution, but for others like us, and the third, and to put it into productive use after that because I think people only talk about the supply side, as in money, but as all of us know, there's a demand side, which is the quality of bankable projects on the ground that can be executed in a reasonable timeframe, with focus, with impact, with measurement of output, not just input. So, that's the second part. And the third part really would be, what else can we do to get to this large resource gap? Typically, the answer has been, can we mobilize the private sector or not? I'm going to try and talk to you a little bit in those three buckets. So, the first bucket, as you can see, these are my notes. I kind of threw the speech away because I wanted to talk about what's in my mind. The first bucket is about what we can do better, and I kind of break that into three portions. The first portion is to focus on the Bank's plumbing. People think that a Bank President talking about plumbing is not the lofty heights that speeches are made of, and I'm not here to make lofty speeches. I'm here to make the Bank work better for our clients and our shareholders. And the plumbing, to me, is critical, because you can keep building new houses on poor plumbing, and that house will not sell well, but if you fix the plumbing, the taps work and the plumbing work, and then you build a new architecture on top, you get a really strong location. I think our plumbing needs fi xing for a few reasons. One has to do with speed. I'm not blaming the Bank alone. This is a composite of what's happened over the years, but the speed it takes between 19… It used to take 19 months from the time we started a project discussion to the time it got approved by the Board. We're now down to 15 or 16 months. We are headed to 12. I still think 12 is too much. I pulled 12 just like that. I had no science to choose 12 as a number, but all my life I've tried to work for a number and then try and work for another number. The reason I think 12 is too long is most democracies are four to five year elections. If you spend a year getting a project through its approval process, and then you spend typically another year before the first dollar goes out the door because local parliaments, local congresses, local institutions need to develop their ability to execute that project. Well, then it's two years, and in a four to five year term, the moment it's the second or third year of that term, how many people do you think at the other end will be interested in what we're doing? And so, our lives have changed in a way that does not allow us the luxury of this longer period of approval and then a longer period of go to market. Now, it's very difficult to fix it. There are some amazing people in this institution with their experience, and their knowledge, and their ability, and their on-ground knowledge, we're all struggling to find a way to fix this. Like I said, 19 is at 15, 16. We'd like to get to 12. I think 12 is still too much. I don't yet know how to get beyond the 12, let alone figure it out for the future, but to me, that's one big part of speed. Another big part is simplicity. We are different institutions in this institution. We were created for very good reason, for very good focus reasons. Unfortunately, for our clients, who have already got a lack of capacity, dealing with an institution that comes with silos makes it even harder for them. And so, here we talk about public-private partnership. Everybody, all of us in the development world, has one set of words. But the problem is the public part of our public is IBRD and IDA. The private part of our private is mostly IFC and MIGA. And frankly, if you talk public-private partnership, if those four things don't work well together, who are we to lecture somebody else about a partnership? And so, we have to fix that, and fix that without organizational nonsense getting in the way. That's hard, because these are people who have built these institutions with great love and affection and care, and they're very successful at what they do. The problem is the world around us is moving, and so we need to work with it. And I think that challenge is being embraced by our people to kill some of these silos. So, to give you small examples, in 20 countries, as of now, we have combined the management teams across these institutions to have one single person lead the World Bank Group in that country. Now, that's 20 countries. Believe me, this is not a pilot. This is only the beginning, because then I'll do 20 more, and then 20 more, so we can start fi xing the structure on the ground so that our client doesn't see our silos. We need some of those silos because our subject matter expertise is different in those different institutions. We need them to deliver well, but we need them for us, not for them. You know what I mean? That's not what they should be seeing. That is our magic mantra in trying to fix some of these silos. Look at the guarantee platform which will come up again in the conversation with the private sector investment lab. The guarantee platform had guarantees being done at MIGA, which are the experts in doing this, but the World Bank, as in the IBRD and IDA were also doing guarantees, IFC was doing its own guarantees. As of the 1 July, all those have got put together in one platform under MIGA. We are now busy working our way through simplifying the product set and the pricing so that all these range of guarantees can be put forward to a client by anybody in our institution, whether they be an IBRD, IDA, IFC or MIGA individual. That simplifies work for the client. We then have to reduce the number of due diligences they go to. We have to combine standards across these. This is all work which doesn't yet address the big incoherence, but to keep asking for money when you can't use it smart is not the world's best answer. So, what I'm first trying to do is to make sure that our institution solves for these criticisms that came our way on speed, on simplicity, or working with other MDBs, where today we have a co-financing platform digitally launched, 74 projects are on it from all the Multilateral Banks where now we can all bid together on projects and not compete with each other for our client. All these are things that I call plumbing. Plumbing is an unfortunate word, but it's a very appropriate word, as I said. So, this is important work. It makes this institution more capable of turning with speed, simplicity and cooperation with other MDBs, but at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is to do this to use our people and their ability and their knowledge. And not only do this with speed and simplicity, but to do it with decency and caring, and a sense of urgency. That's the culture that we have to build, and build upon. That's the first part. The second part is our knowledge bank. I believe we are as much valued for our money bank as we are for our knowledge bank. And so, as of the 1 July, that knowledge bank has five verticals, people, planet, prosperity, infrastructure, and digital. They're obvious names for the obvious things to be done, but the more important thing is there will be the corporate scorecard has come to 20 odd items from 150. They are aimed at the output measurement as compared to only input. Input is projects and dollars. That is important. But output would be how many girls went to school because of a project we put in, how many people got a better job because of a skilling institute, how many carbon emissions we may have avoided. So, I want to measure both input and output through this corporate scorecard. It will take us a couple of years to get all of that rolled out, but the work is out the door, and some measures are already ready, others are coming their way. That's the second big part. That knowledge bank not only has to produce thought leadership pieces, but it has to help with build capacity in countries, those bankable projects we were talking about, help to create a country partnership framework that is focused on a few of things in that country that make a difference, that can move the needle, and then help to get bankable projects on the ground, help to get them implemented while also being thought leaders in the space of these five verticals. That's where our knowledge bank is head. So that's the second part of our story. The third part of our internal story has to do with scale and impact. I talked about these country-partnership frameworks. That is the basic document, along with the CCDR, our Country Climate and Development Report, that allow us to engage with the country and its governance teams to enable focus on what we want to work on. There has to be focus. There has to be three to five things we're trying to get done with that country, not 27. If we do 27, our envelope, limited envelope in every country, no matter how big we think it is, it is limited to the needs of that country, gets dissipated into many small things. Trying to focus them on a few is what we're trying to get to. You will see some of the outcomes of all of this discussion and some of the bigger commitments we are making over the last few months. At COP28, we made some commitments on climate that 45% of our financing by 2025 would go into climate related financing, roughly half for mitigation, roughly half for adaptation. I don't know if we'll get to half and half. The only reason I said half and half is to make sure that the Global South does not feel that climate finance is equal to only energy emission management, but that climate finance is also equal to dealing with the consequences of the manner in which our energy has been consumed over the past 30, 40 years. So, if I don't get to 50, but I get to 40 this year and 45 next year and 50 the next year, in terms of half-half of mitigation and adaptation, that's okay, but it tells you where we're going. So, 45% of our financing for climate, roughly a half-half by 2025, is what we want to do. We made commitments on methane, we made commitments on trying to manage through carbon, voluntary carbon credits for forestry projects that we are involved. We made commitments on trying to work our way through climate resilient debt clauses, which, by the way, is kicking in right now for Grenada and St. Vincent and others. And that's all part of what we're trying to do. Not perfect, but it's where they're going with some larger commitments on climate. Then the Spring Meeting, we made a commitment on 300 billion people in Africa, 250 with us, 50 with the African Development Bank. Both of us working together to try and connect 300 million people out of the 600 in Africa who do not have access to electricity. I believe that you cannot have development without electricity. And I believe that our biggest issue coming forward from all this, which I'm going to come to in a minute, is the issue of young people and women, but let's hold on that for a minute. So, electricity, then healthcare, one and a half billion people connected to better universal healthcare or primary healthcare by 2030. These are big targets. I want to make a big target in October on gender. We've got a few things we're trying to focus on. Why these? You heard us add livable planet into our vision. And that's because of these intertwined challenges, but we also put in a focus in the mission on women and young people. Women is an obvious one. It's half the people in the world, it's not a minority. It shouldn't need to be mentioned actually, it should be an obvious, but it's not. It's not even in the developed world, let alone in the developing world. The reality is there's higher unemployment in that group, there's less availability of equity capital to open businesses, there's less access to financial inclusion and credit, there's challenges with gender-based violence, there's less representation of women in leadership. So, to me, that one unlocking the productivity of our future means women have to come in to what we're doing. Second, young people, 1.2 billion young people in the Global South will become eligible for a job in the coming ten years. Currently, those same countries are on a pathway to generate 400 million jobs. Another 400 out of the 800 million left over will be in some form of schooling or education, but they will then graduate. We have a problem. You know, “Houston, we have a problem”? We do. The problem is, and this is a room full of economists, so pardon me for this again, but forecasts are not destiny. If you want to change something, we have to work on this jobs’ issue really hard over the coming ten years to change this trajectory. All the other things we are working on, if you do not give young people clean air, clean water, healthcare and education when they are growing up, and the chance to have the dignity of a job, which all of you do. When you're a grown up, you will have social unrest, migration and all kinds of challenges to deal with. So, if you think today's problems are challenging, wait ten years, when this 1.2 billion come through the pipe looking for hope and optimism and not getting it. Why am I saying all this to you? I actually think the issue of those trillions obfuscates the things that we really need to work on to get change going. It's not just about climate for the sake of climate, although that's important. Clean air, clean water. It's not just for healthcare and education, although that's important as a way for young people to grow up with the same opportunity they deserve to get. What's finally important is young people and women must get a fair shake in life. I think that's the orientation of our objectives, that's the orientation of where we are trying to announce these ambitious plans that we have of caring with speed, simplicity, and also doing so with decency and caring. We're not there. We have a lot of work to do, but this is where we're going, and I can show you milestones of progress along the way. Now, having said all this, we've done a lot of work on our internal balance sheet restructuring. So, let's talk about resources and yes, with loan to equity ratios, and hybrid capital, and portfolio guarantees and so on, 100, 130 billion dollars more of lending capacity will come through. This is IBRD. At the same time, we've got our IBRD Board to agree to 50-year loans for projects with cross border and global implications. Essentially, a 50-year loan gives it, as you know, a much better discount as a result. We've also set up the Livable Planet Fund to help to fund performance against results in these middle-income countries on these global projects. That Fund needs funding. Some of it will do from our own resources, but it's also open to governments and philanthropy. If you guys know a few, please help us get some of that. When you get past this, that's the middle-income countries. Then there's IDA, for the 75 poorest countries. We're going through an IDA Replenishment Cycle right now. 21 is the cycle. It ends at the end of this year. There's a lot of work going into it, and you have to be cautiously optimistic always that you will get to the right place, but the reality is both IBRD and IDA, every dollar we get from our donors gets leveraged. In the case of IBRD, six to eight to ten times. In the case of IDA, four times. IDA is lower for various reasons, but included in that is the fact that we use a large amount of IDA money as grants. If you use them as grants for the poorest countries, you reduce the denominator on which you can leverage with the bond markets to raise more local capital. Those are all work we're doing. The reality is, even if you do all this well, we're going to need to think about capital increases in these institutions over time. Larry made that point very eloquently in the G20 Expert Group, so he can speak to it when he does, but the harsh reality of that is how do you get from here to there? It's not as though the richer countries are currently got lots of fiscal headroom to be able to do this. So, there is a whole discussion to be had. One good piece of news in this is that next year we have our capital shareholding review, which comes up in 2025. We're going to work hard on it and use that as the opportunity to create a conversation about the need for greater capital inputs into an institution like ours and other MDBs. Third point is the private sector because even with all this, even if we get money into our institution, that's interesting, we still don't get to those trillion. A lot of people feel the only sustainable way then is the private sector. The issue really is we set up this lab with 15 CEOs and asset managers and the like, and we concluded with them a bunch of ideas and thoughts as to tell me, if solar and wind are now per unit cheaper to produce than fossil fuel-based energy on the most part, then why is it that trillions are not rushing in, as people once said they would, into these middle-income countries? Forget the lower income countries. Into the middle-income countries. Why are the trillions not rushing in? Well, there's a few things, and the first one is lack of regulatory clarity. If you were an investor and you have the chance to invest in five different countries, and you get greater clarity on policy and tariffs in two out of the five, where would you put your money is the issue. And so, I think getting regulatory policy clarity, not always in a form that only suits the private sector, but also provides for social guardrails, is important. Our 300 million people to be connected in Africa provides us a chance to work with the private sector and others to create a list in some of the bigger countries, or what kind of regulatory policy clarity would make a difference, and work with those countries between now and sometime next year. We want to hold an energy summit with the African Heads of State next year, and try and get to a better place with them with the African Development Bank. We've also enlisted GEAPP and the Rockefeller Fund and Damilola [Ogunbiyi] on the ground in Africa to help us with this exercise because I don't think we can do it by ourselves. So, that's the kind of thing that comes across from the private sector lab. Second thing that comes across, even if I get regulatory policy, I need political risk guarantees. That's why the reform of MIGA and the guarantee system, and I'm certain we can double, treble our numbers over the next few years. To be real, last year we were at six, seven billion. We closed this last fiscal year at ten, getting to 20, which is what we originally set up. We should do. We should be getting to much more than that. That's what that guarantee platform should be capable of doing. We'll see, we've got a lot of work to do between here and there, but it's doable. If you do all that, they come to FX, and foreign exchange risk as the third issue. Obviously, you're investing in dollars, yens and euros, and you're getting exposure in local currency, in projects that typically take 20 to 30 years for you to pay back the money that you're putting in at the beginning. So, how do you square that circle? The reality of that is, that's really hard, because in these middle-income countries, there is not a foreign currency hedging market for 20, 30 years in even the Indian rupee, which today would count as one of the strongest economies in the middle-income sector. Frankly, there isn't a 30-year hedge in the euro, just to be clear. So, how do you manage to square that circle? I think there's two or three intelligent ways to do it. We're trying to find our way through raising local currency financing through the surplus liquidity in a number of local banks in some of these bigger countries. We're trying to find a way to create a multilevel risk sharing facility with some of these countries where the private investor knows the currency depreciates by a certain amount, takes that, and then the local government takes a certain amount, we take the tail risk and convert that into a 50-year loan to that country. Things like that. I don't know if you'll get anywhere. FX to me, I came out of banking for some years before I went to Mastercard, and I will tell you that anybody who tells you they know how to solve FX, you should normally run in the opposite direction, but it's a tough problem. But It's interesting, in the private sector lab, it didn't come up as problem one, or two, or even three. I'm giving it to you as the third one. It actually came up as the fourth one. So, the fourth one is that IFC, can IFC be a better catalyzer of private capital mobilization by being willing to take junior equity of first loss positions in projects that otherwise would not have got financed but for that? That sounds perfectly logical. Until you realize that if you actually realize that loss, then we have to go back to our shareholders to get a capitalization. And last you heard, that sounded a little complicated. So, how do we square that circle? I'm trying to figure out a way to create the right funded IFC, like Livable Planet funded IBRD, where we could replenish with our earnings in good years, but also with other sources, philanthropies and donors, to help us take some of the appetite for this first loss, junior equity position. That actually comes across pretty well. And the last one, to me is the most interesting, but the longest term. And that is, can we help create an asset class, a securitizable asset class in the space, in this case, of renewable energy? But then you could extend that to water and others. The question there really is, if I went to Larry Fink today, the other Larry, and I said to him, “Hey, I don't want exposure on water in Africa,” he would say yes. And then I would tell him, “Let me give you these 21 different projects, 22 million here, 100 million there, 40 million there, 30 million there, 72 million there, and they've all got different governance, different terms, different repayment schedules, different legal terms.” He's going to have to underwrite all those 20 loans to get to 2 billion. 2 billion doesn't move the needle for Larry, having to underwrite 20 loans makes it even harder. By the time he finishes all that, it doesn't become a scalable proposition in the way that pension funds and asset managers, if you really believe that their money should come to these markets, this is not the way to get it. This is throwing peanuts, and when you throw peanuts, you get monkeys. We don't want that. We want large scale investment. And so, that requires a change in the way that these loans need to be originated, built, constructed, covenanted, and brought to market. The IFC has constructed a warehouse enabled securitization program with BlackRock with the other Larry. We're just beginning work on it. I think it's the first step towards a much bigger idea. These things take three to five, six years to get going, but if you don't do it, I think we really find it hard to square the circle in all these big numbers. So, why am I saying all this? We have to do what we do better, simpler, faster, decency, speed, urgency, work with other MDBs, all that. We have to do what we can with our capital, adequacy measures, our balance sheet, loan to equity ratios, callable capital, all the stuff that everyone's talking about. And there's work underway on that. But I assure you, even with that, we fall much short of these trillions, obviously. Then the question is, can we get capitalization for these institutions beyond that? Which is Larry's point in his G20 framework. Yes, let's assume we get that over the coming years. Let's assume we get that. Even then, we'll fall short. We have to find a way to get this private sector money to move in. In the cases where it makes sense, it doesn't make sense in every sector, it doesn't make sense without the right guardrails, but where it does, we have to find ways to make it work. And there are these four or five things we're learning from our lab to try and make them work. This is all interesting work. It's what I want to make my life's work, and that's why I'm here. So, I'm looking forward to your ideas, your suggestions, your contributions, and all that you will do for us together. Thank you very much for listening to me, and good luck. Thank you. [Applause]
[Kathleen Hays] Well, wow, wow. Thank you so much. Ajay, that was an incredible speech, and you covered so much ground. When you were listening, if you were taking notes, where did you stop? There're so many smart, clever things that ring in my mind, things you said that, obviously, you've thought about, you've said this over and over, you're spreading a very big, important message. And I think we're all so fortunate to be here in the room with you, and of course, everyone who is listening and watching online. I want to remind everybody that you can go to the World Bank website. You'll see various social media suggestions, and there's always the hashtag #ABCDE2024. Now we're going to move on to our keynote speaker, and that would be somebody who almost doesn't need an introduction. And of course, I'm talking about Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary, you know, President Emeritus at Harvard University. He has been on so many important, not just important government positions, but on so many important issues. I just have to remind everybody, if you think back, I'll never forget it, February, it was 1999 when the cover of Time Magazine had Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers. So, Larry, I'm not going to say anything more except to welcome you, and we're so looking forward to hearing your remarks.
[Lawrence H. Summers] Thank you very much. Kathleen. It's a real privilege to have an opportunity to be part of this important conference. Of course, it's impolite to criticize the person who introduces you, but on this occasion, I think I have to point out that you left out what is surely the most important thing I have done in my life, which is having the opportunity to serve for two wonderful years as the Chief Economist of the World Bank between 1991 and the beginning of 1993. It is a great privilege to follow and to be educated by my good friend, Ajay Banga. The first sustained time that Ajay and I spent together was at a meeting of a US-China group where we were seated next to each other at the head table. I still remember having the experience of having learned more from an on the ground business person in those 90 minutes than I had from many other CEOs in a period of weeks. Ajay, I've been learning a little bit about your background, and I've concluded that we, N.K. [Singh] and I and our colleagues, were way insufficiently ambitious in proposing a tripling agenda. What I learned is that when you arrived at Microsoft, its market value was below 20 billion dollars, and ten years later, when you left, its market value was above 360 billion dollars. And that was a reflection of the fact that it was doing nearly 18 times more in terms of accomplishing its mission that it had when you arrived. So, I am adjusting my aspiration for you at the World Bank in that direction. I know I speak for many in saying how glad we are that you left a comfortable life in the private sector to take on this immensely important mission of leading the World Bank. I am glad to be back at the World Bank's ABCDE Conference. That Conference was initiated 35 years ago by my predecessor as Chief Economist of the World Bank, Stanley Fischer. It was my privilege to give my first major speech after becoming the World Bank's Chief Economist at the ABCDE Conference in 1991. And so, it seemed natural when returning to that Conference for the first time, to reread what I said. It's interesting to be old enough to reread things that you said half a lifetime ago because when you read them there's a slight sense of familiarity but almost no memory. It's almost as if you're reading words that were written and then said by a stranger. What was my reaction when I read what I had written? I think I was first struck that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Speaking in 1991, two years after the Berlin Wall fell, I was seized with the idea that a new world order was coming into being, that the world had gotten it largely wrong after the First World War, had gotten it largely right after the Second World War, and was now being tested again at the end of the Cold War. And I think it's a fascinating historical question to reflect, did we do well or did we do poorly? And I think the honest answer has to be we did vastly better than the world did after the First World War; but one would have to say, despite huge triumphs and progress in the developing world, despite huge improvements in health status and literacy and life expectancy in reducing poverty, that not all the hopes that we had in 1991 have been attained, and indeed, the degree of optimism that one has to bring today is perhaps less than it might have been 15 years ago. I was struck that in 1991 it seemed important to stress that there were going to be limits and constraints on the availability of resources from the industrial world to support development, that a great deal was going to have to come from the initiative of developing countries. I was struck, given that that is a time of emphasis on the Washington Consensus, by how much I was led to stress that it was important to remove the emergency brake and the other brakes, but that a car would not go unless you pushed the accelerator. And that was the job of government, and especially the job of government in the vitally important social sectors. I was struck that picking up the zeitgeist of that moment, I found myself emphasizing the importance of rigorous analysis and project evaluation. Indeed, I referred to the importance of double-blind trials in evaluating drugs and suggested the need for social experiments in involving different categories of investment. So, there was a great deal that seemed right then that seems familiar, or once again, right today. At the same time, there were things that seem central to thinking today that I did not touch on in what was a fairly wide-ranging speech talking about development priorities, and particularly priorities for development thinking in the years ahead. Neither the word “global climate change” nor the word “global public good” passed my lips. Somehow, I did not think to use the word “digital” in describing anything that was going on in the world at that time. While I certainly was aware and referred to the East-Asian miracle countries, the sense that the world was going to be transformed by what was going to happen in subsequent decades in China that was going to change the entire nature of thinking about world order was not something that I anticipated. Where are we today? What are our priorities as we look forward? I am going to leave you to read the reports that N.K. and I have been engaged in preparing under the auspices of the G20 on detailed recommendations for the MDB system. I was gratified to hear how many of the priorities that we touched on, Ajay picked up on in his very specific and focused remarks. I would preview the thought that I will develop in a few moments that it will be essential both to accomplish many specific things. And I think, if confidence in our institutions is to be maintained, to project a broad sense of bold transformation in being fit for purpose in a world that has profoundly changed. Let me offer four observations. First, I believe that with quite high probability, we are at the technological frontier of the world economy, entering into a period of very rapid change and progress beyond that, which we have become used to. I had the great privilege of welcoming into the world my first granddaughter a month ago. Since she was born, I have been thinking about the world that she is going to live in, the world that I have lived in, and the world that my grandmother lived in. My grandmother came to the United States as a one-year-old in 1901. She died in 1974. What did she see? She saw a transition from outdoor to indoor plumbing, from horse driven transportation to internal combustion driven transportation, from candlelight to electric light to electric appliances of all sorts. She saw the development of the telephone and then the radio, and then the black and white television, and then the color television. She saw it become possible to get from New York City to Europe not in six or 16 days, but in six hours on an airplane. She saw that which was possible for people be transformed. Perhaps most profoundly, she saw the United States change from a place where almost everybody had lost a child, or lost a niece, or a nephew, to a place where childhood death was very much a rarity. And then, I thought about my lifetime. I was born in 1954, and certainly the world is a very different place than it was then. But my family, middle class family, took for granted indoor plumbing, electricity, an automobile, a second car, flying on airplanes. Yes, it is true that when, for the first time in 1988, I found myself in a car with a telephone, I called everybody I knew because it was so interesting to be in a car with a telephone. And yes, we now have the Internet, and you can take pictures with your camera, but if I contrast the profundity of the change that took place during my grandmother's lifetime and the profundity of the change that took place during my lifetime, I have to say it feels like it is much less. I suspect, during my granddaughter's life, the change may be closer to what it was during my grandmother's life. I think we will see electricity become ubiquitous and universally available at almost no cost. And that will make all kinds of things. Think of desalinization of water as just one example, possible that we don't think about today. We will see profound changes in our operational understanding of biology. We are likely to see cures become available for what have traditionally been the great curses of mankind. I think it is reasonable to aspire to making the kind of progress against chronic disease during my granddaughter's lifetime that we made against infectious disease during my grandmother's lifetime. I think what is potentially most profound is what digital technology and Artificial Intelligence will make possible. No one can know, and one forecasts with great humility, and Dornbusch's law applied to financial crisis surely applies to technology as well. Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could. But I would suggest to you that the wheel was a profound technology, but having a wheel did not produce more and better wheels. Electricity was a profound technology, but having electricity did not produce more, or cheaper, or higher quality electricity. In contrast, Artificial Intelligence, developed to a certain point, becomes able to improve Artificial Intelligence, creating a self-perpetuating cycle with enormous potential. So, for all of us, as we think about development, I think we need to reckon with what I suspect will be the central shaper of the generations ahead, a revolutionary increase in technological progress. it is, I think, the nature of the world today, that the capacity for the movement of that technological progress from its frontier to the entire world is much more rapid than it has been historically. Now, I am not a pollyanna about any of this. It is also true that I was fortunate not to live through World Wars, not to live through a great depression, as my grandmother did, and that her opportunity, her living through that, was not unrelated to the political forces set off by a force, technical change, and all that came in its wake. And so, I hope, as we think about our Institution, we think about shaping our world, we never lose sight of these profound technological changes that are likely to come. Second observation that I would make, and my next three will be more brief, is that as remarkable as the progress that we seem to be able to look to in the technological sphere, the development of our institutions, the quality of our polities, the harmonies of our society, internally and externally, have not kept pace. This is not the place for any nuanced political commentary on what is happening in the United States this year. What has happened in any number of countries in Europe. I would just record that a year when more people were involved in elections than any year in human history seems also to be a year in which populism is being driven faster forward in more places than in any year in human history. And that is something that I think all of us need to contemplate. Dare I say it must be a particular area of contemplation for the Bretton Woods Institutions. If any set of institutions represent an elite project, it is surely the Bretton Woods Institutions. They were conceived in idealism designed by elites, international cosmopolitan elites, away in a location chosen for being away from the hurly burly of the political process, carefully designed to be insulated from what were seen as excessive and effective political pressures, and with a staffing model born of elite civil service traditions. And so, I think it vitally important that these institutions think about their role and think about how you will assure legitimacy and continued support in what appears to be an increasingly populous. Third observation that I would make is, as N.K. and I have said and written before, the world is on fire. Conflicts, high interest rates, challenging commodity prices, debt overhangs, increased militarization, decreased budget support for foreign assistance. This is a moment of great challenge for developing countries. I had taken it almost for granted during the time that I was Chief Economist of the World Bank that while there would be excesses and failures, while there would be a range of different individual country experiences, that the dominant pattern would be catchup, would be convergence between poorer and richer countries, as long as poorer countries were reasonably well governed and reasonably well managed, as long as the world stayed at peace, and as long as there was acceptance of the greater openness that would come with technology.
[Kathleen Hays] Professor Summers, I just want to thank you. I also want to thank you for correcting me at the beginning, because when I first was looking again at your bio, getting introduced to you, I never knew, I never realized that you started your career at the World Bank just doing all that, Bates scholar, brightest economist under age 40 while you were at Harvard, coming to the World Bank. I just… It made me understand you in a way I never really quite understood you before. I thank you so much for sharing your thoughts today. What a great day. We started with Ajay Banga. What a terrific speech. You know him, no notes, no written words, and now you. Same thing. Thank you so much for sharing all the aspects of the fact you've got your first granddaughter, talking to us about your grandma. All of this has been so helpful. And again, I think this… Yes, congratulations. [Applause]
[Kathleen Hays] Thank you so very much, keynote speaker today, and just another example of what an event this is. And again, we look forward to seeing you again soon, me in particular. So, thank you very much.
[Lawrence H. Summers] Thank you.
[Kathleen Hays] Okay, so again, I'm telling you, what a morning. In fact, it's been such a morning that you know what we're going to do? We just got such momentum now. We've got such a start here. We're not going to do a formal coffee break. Okay? What we're going to do, the coffee is right outside. Coffee's right outside. So, feel free. No one's going to look at you funny. If you get up, get your coffee, you can bring the coffee back in, drink it here. I'm not going to ask you to bring me one. I'm going to wait till after our plenary panel. So again, feel free. We just have to keep going here and getting on with our program. I don't know how we can get better, but I know we're going to maintain this level. And now we're going to welcome Professor Danny Quah. He's the Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He's worked on so many things, Danny has, income inequality, economic growth, international economic relations, and he keeps building and building on this. And in particular, Danny, we want to welcome up to the stage now to maybe even comment on some of the things that Professor Summer said and give us your view of what we're talking about here today as we talk about global incoherence. So, let's welcome Danny Quah. [Applause]
[Danny Quah] Thank you, Kathleen, and thank you, World Bank, for allowing me to address you in response to what Ajay and Larry Summers have said. Both of them have given us a picture that's both sobering and inspiring. The canvas on which they have sketched for us an understanding of developments is truly astounding. I have been Larry Summers’ student for almost the last five decades, and every time I listen to him, I am completely in awe of the man. What I want to do is take a few minutes to provide a reflection on what Larry has said. It is a reflection that I am leveraging on a platform where I have lived a lot of my adult life, professionally in the West, but I now live in Asia, in the East. And that perspective has given me a somewhat different take on the global economy. When Larry began and spoke about 1991, what came to my mind in the midst of his description were three other points. A first is that that was the era of Frank Fukuyama's end of history. Fukuyama predicted that history had resolved all conflict and all uncertainty and convergence, both economic and political, was already set. A second idea that came to me was something that Larry himself described, that John Williamson, here in Washington, DC, had articulated the principles of the Washington Consensus, and that that was a way by which we could run the economic side of things. World order from then, my third point, had indeed converged on two grand themes. The first was economic efficiency. We knew how economies operate. The second was comparative advantage. We knew how economies operated not just internally, but across the world. We knew how they, in an international relations way, connected with each other. So, I want to end these reflections by providing three additional observations that touch on the theme of this wonderful conference that the World Bank has put together, and that touch on the themes that Indermit and different members of his team have worked so hard on. There are two dimensions of mismatch relative to the world of 1991 that I just described for you, and relative to the things that need to be done today. One element of mismatch is what our report refers to as the difference between international policy advocacy and research-based solutions. We move in a world where there's now much greater uncertainty and confidence in the tools that we use to manipulate our environment. The second element of mismatch, the second piece of the great incoherence is a mismatch between demand and supply. Now, for the economic purists among us in the room, you might think that I am going into a dangerous piece of territory because there can be no mismatch between demand and supply. Let me tell you what the mismatch that I see articulated in the reports that are being unveiled today. The first is that there's a rising demand in the resources that we need for tackling climate change, for improving health and education, and for rebuilding war torn nations. There's a rise in demand for good ideas, and there's a rise in demand for good governance and good policies. The question that I want to pose in terms of the great incoherence is, do we see a matching rise in supply? Because, just to begin, what we see is a falling supply from where the resources will come, that we need to fix the world. That falling supply comes from decelerating economic growth and investment, challenging levels of public debt, as Larry referred to, and thirdly, a theme that had been running in what I described of the decades from 1991 until today, the sacrifice of multilateral cooperation on the altar of national security priorities. We no longer have a world that's unified about the things that we need to do. And that is, even if we did not have this great discordance in ideas, without economic growth in the world, without investment, without multilateral cooperation somewhere in the world, we will not be improving health and education, and tackling climate change anywhere in the world. That, for me, is an element of the great incoherence. I hope that over the next couple of days, and in fact, perhaps even in the next panel, we will get to elaborate on this. Let me conclude by mentioning two other ideas. I said that we see a rising demand and a falling supply. I sat at the feet of Larry Summers at Harvard. I cut my teeth on technical economics at the University of Minnesota. I am a firm believer in the workings of economic markets. But I see no obvious market here for repairing this mismatch between a rising demand and falling supply, a rising demand for resources that we need to do good works, a rising demand for good ideas and good governance, and a falling away of supply on all three of these dimensions. There are different reasons why this is happening. The rise of geopolitics, once again in the domain of international relations and international economics, is surely one of them. All of us today have heard of the great Greek historian Thucydides, because Graham Allison at Harvard has written about the Thucydides trap, where it talks about how a rising power engages in friction and potential conflict with the incumbent superpower. I want to cite a different Thucydides to you in my conclusions. Thucydides did write about great power conflict, but he also said “The great powers do what they will. The rest of us suffer what we must.” The world does not have an equilibrating mechanism between the supply of resources and the supply of good ideas from the advanced economies and the great powers to meet the rising demand for resources and the need for good governance in the emerging economies. We are caught in a great incoherence. Let me conclude with my last point. What is the way out? I have some thoughts on this, none of which have obviously been fully worked out, because that's what we're here to try and do. But here's a thought, we need to come up with how we have a narrative that goes from the good works that we want to do, repairing climate, improving health and education, rebuilding war torn territories. We need a narrative that goes from those micro interventions to a growth strategy for the world that both developed nations and developing nations can sign on to. We need a world where state incited improvement policies like industrial policy, investment and trade, inspection and regulation, governmental direction of technological change, new energy vehicles, clean energy improvements, do not come into conflict. Do not become beggar thy neighbor, weapons of economic statecraft, which is what I fear is happening a lot in the world out there today. We need to move into a world that's actually livable for all of us. Thank you all very much for your attention. [Applause]
[Kathleen Hays] You know, I love to take notes. The only problem is I have such a hard time reading them after I take them. I've got to get a perpetual tape recorder going, but thank you. A world that is livable for every... Danny Quah, livable for everyone, I should say. Definitely something to work toward. And again, all the speakers, all of you here who are part of this, let's just remain optimistic that with people like you at it, we're going to get there. And so, now we're going to get ready for our plenary panel. Before I say that, I also want to remind you, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, all our virtual audience, thank you for joining us. I'm so happy that so many people can hear this. And remember, you can join us at live.worldbank.org. and you can follow discussion using the hashtag #ABCDE2024. So, now we're going to take this issue of the great incoherence, the various issues that have already been discussed, bring more to the table with our panel. And first, I want to welcome Indermit Gill. He is a Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. He's Senior Vice President for Development Economics. Joining him is Rachel Glennerster. She's the incoming President of the Center for Global Development, distinguished career in international development, academia, public service. I mean, she has attacked this from every angle to find the kind of solutions, policies that are going to move everyone forward. And in particular, I'd just like to note she's an influential figure in the application of randomized trials to development policy. Wow. And in fact, she's improved policy insights on health, education, women's empowerment and more. Danny Quah is going to come back to the stage as well. So, as you two come up and take your seats, Indermit is going to set the stage for this whole discussion of the great incoherence. And of course, he's done a lot of work, essays, blogs, etcetera, explaining this concept in the various interesting angles. Indermit. [Applause]
[Indermit Gill] Thank you, Kathleen, and thanks to Larry, David and especially to Danny for starting us off so well. So, I'm going to actually develop a few of the thoughts that Danny laid out right before that. Let me thank Masood Ahmed and his colleagues at the center for Global Development for their partnership in organizing this conference. ABCDE, as Larry said, was started by Stan Fischer back in the late eighties. And the person who was instrumental for that is Shekhar Shah. He's actually online, I think, today. So, like Shekhar Shah, ABCDE was also getting a little long in the tooth. We've actually been thinking about changing his format, and what you sort of see today is the first attempt at the new format. So, Masood actually, who's also long in the truth, so he's been helping us do that. But fortunately, the conference is actually the work of a young team led by two young economists. The first is Kenan Karakulah at the World Bank, and the other one is Eeshani Kandpal at the Center for Global Development. We are fortunate also in having Rachel Glennerster, both succeed Masood in the job as President at CGD, and in her being here today, so she can see what a great group she is joining. Okay, so actually, Masood and I have been drafting a note on this great incoherence, but I could not make it coherent enough and finish it in time. So, we'll post it on the website afterwards. Meanwhile, actually, without implicating Masood, I'm going to show you a few slides. These slides have facts that are not facts that I accumulated, but the interpretation is entirely my own. And I'm sure that Michael Krake sitting in the front seat will not like it. Okay. All right, so here is what I think are the main inconsistencies. Right? So you can put them in other ways, but I think that you'll agree that these contradictions are mainly the consequence of ambition in development goals clashing with economic, ecological and geopolitical realities, along the lines of what Danny was talking about. Now, there's actually nothing wrong in being ambitious. Actually, good things inevitably come from being ambitious, but when ambition becomes more talk than action, when demands are not backed by a willingness to pay, when governments respond to tightening budgets by expecting the private sector to do their job, this will lead to frustration and to resentment. And you see a bit of both around, actually, a lot of both around. I'm going to be discussing these contradictions, and I will exaggerate, but not too much. I once actually heard Larry Summers say that if you don't have an edge, you don't have a point. I will try to be both a little edgy and to try to make a few points. Now, the first slide, actually, the first slide is encapsulated in this fact, essentially that basically what you see is that growth in emerging markets and developing economies, which is where most of the people in the world live, now is the lowest since the 1990s, since the time that Larry was chief economist over here. If you look at this, you actually find that just around the time that the world scaled up its goals by moving from the MDGs, which ended in 2014, to the SDGs, which started in 2015, just around that time, you sort of see a falling off of global growth. Okay, so global growth in the 2000s was about 3.5%. In the 2010s it fell to 2.7%. In the 2020s, starting with the coronavirus, followed by inflation and monetary tightening that Larry talked about, and then by conflict in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the growth is now set to be about 2%. And the slowdown is in advanced economies and in developing countries, and it is in pretty much every part of the world. If you look at the World Bank regions, you see this slowdown massively. That golden line is the average potential growth rate between 2021 and what you see is that pretty much every part of the world you see this going down. The part of the world that should worry us a lot is sub-Saharan Africa, where global growth, essentially potential growth, has gone down, but it has gone down not that much, but it's gone down from very, very low levels. And if you start to sort of look not at GDP growth, but at per capita income growth, these are very worrying numbers. These charts, by the way, are from a really good book done by the World Bank Deputy Chief Economist Ayhan Kose and his co-author, Franziska [Ohnsorge]. It's called “Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects.” Now, some of this is because of the onset of aging, and some of it is because of poor policy responses, but whatever the cause, it is silly to expect progress in development without economic growth going up again. Now, basically what this means is that there's less money for development and less money for climate action, just as Danny said. But the thing that you see is that the ambition is being scaled up, not down. So, that is an inconsistency, and that is a recipe for frustration. Economic growth does a lot of good things, but it requires structural change. And the only structural change that you hear of today is the energy transition. You hear a drumbeat about that, but there's a lot of other structures that these countries have to improve. Last year, for example, the number of reforms recorded by our 2024 Women, Business and the Law report, that number was the lowest since we started keeping count. I don't think that's a coincidence. There's only so much room in people's heads, there's only so much of an attention span we have. And I think that most of that, correctly or incorrectly, I'm not making any value judgments, is being taken up by… Now, this actually leads. This actually leads to some contradictions in financing as well. I wish Larry was still connected, because what I did was, I knew that he would mention the Summers-Singh report, which was the Export Group report that was sponsored by the G20 presidency. Larry and N.K. Singh of the government of India, two very, very practical people, they came up with the report. I've tried to sort of summarize it into one slide. So, you can look at this and you can look at the slides and pretend that you've read the report next time you talk to Larry. Now, its conclusions are a bit surprising. So, basically, the main points of the Singh-Summers report are the world needs an additional 3 trillion dollars every year to finance development and climate action. Number one. Number two, the developing world. The developing world must raise 2 trillion of this. Number three, the international community will have to come up with 1 trillion. Those are the things that Ajay was talking about, it’s trying to come up with that 1 trillion. So, half of it will come from the MDBs and bilateral agencies, and the other half will come from the private sector. Start to think about all of their problems with these numbers. And then, number four, two thirds of the additional 3 trillion would be spent on climate change, and one third would be spent on development. Two thirds would be raised by developing countries. One third would be spent on development. One third would be raised by the international community. Two thirds would be spent on climate action. All right. I think the report reflects the state of the world that the Global North is trying to decide things about spending that then they no longer want to or cannot finance. Now, then you say, “Well, no, you know what? Climate action is very important. It has to be done right away. And there's no inconsistency between climate action and development.” So the first thing you have to sort of look is actually, there is no inconsistency between a big chunk of development action, which is increasing the resilience of these countries to climate change. That has already happened. That part is mostly about development. It's about making people, it's about making the structures that we have and so on. Forhad Shilpi is over here and she's actually coming out with a new policy research report on resilience. And you’ll see that a large part of this is very consistent with development. Thats where the problem starts because when you look at global climate finance, you actually see over the last, at least between 2017 and 2020, these are from a MIGA report that was led by Dilip Ratha and his team. What you see is 90% of global climate finance is for mitigation, not for resilience. Then you sort of say, does this take away from other things? And for that, you have to look at this chart, which is, I think, the most serious chart produced by the World Bank in the last six months or two years. Do you really want to invest in the future? Do you really want to invest into this? This is a chart from a report, a regular report that is put out by Harry Patrinos and his team. And what you see over here is that, roughly speaking, you will actually find here that upper middle-income countries spend in a year what rich countries spend every month on K through 12 education. Low middle income countries spend in a year what rich countries spend every week. And low-income countries spend about 50 dollars per student per year. That is less than what high income governments spend on K through 12 schooling in a day. In a school day. Now, but you actually find that a lot of experts would take a look at this chart and still say that these countries should raise more money through taxes and they should spend more of it on fighting climate change than on fighting functional illiteracy. That's what this is. You can have a similar chart for health. Now, Jeff Sachs actually makes a really good point, he says, “Because we have to blame too at the World Bank for things, because what we say is, no, no, no, you have to improve the quality of spending.” And what we say is that, “Look, these countries already spending the same ratios of their GDP on education that richer countries spend.” And Sachs makes a very simple point. I mean, he says that the benchmarks for public spending on education that international organizations use are abysmally inappropriate. Since high income countries spend about 4.5% of per capita income. Development organizations often apply the same benchmark to poor countries. It should be two or three times as much for two simple reasons. One is because poor countries have younger populations, and the second one is that qualified teachers are relatively expensive because qualified teachers have many more years of education than the typical average workers. So, combining these two things, the cost of providing universal primary and secondary education in low-income countries and low middle income countries should be at least three times, that ratio should be about at least twice, like 10% to 15% of GDP in budgetary outlays. And when you look at that, you find these countries cannot afford that. They simply cannot, given the debt. Now, to add injury to these insults, donors also insist that low-income countries spend more on social welfare, despite little or no evidence that these programs provide better returns than education and health. This is from the “Poverty and Shared Prosperity” report from last year. And basically, what it shows is that if you look at deworming, if you look at preprimary education, preprimary and low income, and compare that with cash transfers and so on, you find much higher returns for this. And actually investing, those who want to invest in the future would invest up there rather than down there. I hope the people who are here today have some questions for Professor Michael Kremer when he talks this afternoon, since he may well be responsible for some of these bad ideas. [Laughter] [Indermit Gill] Now, I think that this inconsistency can actually be resolved if it's recognized that there is a problem if the main climate related issue in poor countries is low resilience to climate change, and the main prescription by international organizations like our own is more mitigation. Now you pick up pretty much any development policy loan document, and I did, especially for a desperate economy in fiscal distress, chances are that you'll read something like this. Climate change is a major risk that exacerbates the country's existing vulnerabilities, emphasizing the need to wait for this transition to a low carbon development. It's completely non sequitur and I'm not making this up the way. So, there's actually a big difference between mitigation and resilience. There's inevitably a tradeoff between mitigation and immediate development priorities, while investments in resilience overlap considerably with these development priorities. Forhad’s report will prove that rigorously. No pressure, Forhad. I'll say one more thing and then I'll stop. I won't go through all of those, but the other part basically has to do with this. That you must be now familiar with this term, “overcapacity.” So this, actually, I presented this first at a conference that Danny organized. And so, I don't think overcapacity is an economic term, actually, this is the first time I ever heard it. I think basically it means that this chart essentially shows that China has a lot of green intermediates. The aim of the world should be to lower the cost of mitigation because climate change is an existential threat. And then, what you see here is that instead you actually find you have talk about overcapacity and you have that there's capacity or overcapacity should be put to use. Now, the reason why it isn't is because advanced economies are worried that there's going to be a loss in jobs, a loss in… That there's going to be harm to communities as a result of this, that there are other concerns besides just climate action. This is something that other countries also think, also say. Now, I mean, here's the thing though. If you actually look at this, you actually find the argument for freer trade, at least in green intermediates, is very great. If you look at global supply chains, global supply chain, globalized supply chains for solar panels result in much faster learning, much faster or drops in cost. Then if you look, for example, if you look at EVs right, you actually sort of see is that international trade and technology flows bring forward by years the point at which EVs reach parity with internal combustion engines. So, these are all things that World Bank people have done and so on. Lots of evidence on this one. I'm going to fast forward and just get to the last point, which is essentially that coherence lies within. But I think it's very important that the world, to actually paraphrase Clint Eastwood, “You've got to know your limitations.” The world has to know its limitations. I think that what we've done is that we've organized a conference in a way that we actually go down each one of these inconsistencies, both here and in the CGD campus over the next couple of days. And once you understand these things, once you look at the contradictions within these things and resolve them, you start to sort of get a better handle on the incoherence. Let me stop. [Applause]
[Kathleen Hays] Okay. I think… Is my? Yeah, I. It's on. Right, great. Okay. I love hand mics, handheld mics. Thank you, Indermit. I can hardly wait to read the finished paper, and I think we've gotten a nice preview of all the things we can expect to see, even more detailed and more ideas. But you certainly did a nice job of helping us get the panel started today. And as we now take a look at the great incoherence. I just love that phrase. That's pretty catchy. It could be a Netflix series, I think. [Indermit Gill] Masood’s. [Kathleen Hays] Well, Masood, congratulations. Great title. But today I want to start with Rachel as you take over at the Center for Global Development. Boy, I bet this just relaxed you. And you thought, “Oh, boy, I'm just going to sit back and drive the car.” But you're driving quite a car, aren't you? And there's a lot of things on that road and on the side and ahead. So, when you look at what part of all of this do you take away as you start this important job?
[Rachel Glennerster] Thanks. Yeah. And great set off to this discussion, I think… So what do I take away? I completely agree that we are not on track to reach our climate or SDG goals, and that the growth and debt and fiscal constraints that we face are going to make it a lot harder to reach them, but where do we go from here, I think, is what I want to focus on. I mean, we certainly should continue to argue for more resources for development and climate, but I think you've made a very good case that that is not all we can be doing. And I think I'd like to talk about two areas where I think we can make progress in the face of these constraints. One is that we need to focus on spending our money more efficiently, and you had some criticisms of that on education, but I'll come back to that in a minute. The second is to shape the innovation that is coming because as Larry talked about, this is a huge driver of growth and change in people's lives. We need to shape that so that innovation is working towards the needs of people, because that is not a given, but let me come back to spending money more efficiently. Whatever the level of resources we have, we have enormous scope to get more impact out of those resources. It's hard to double the amount of spend on education, to raise twice as much money for education, but there are things that we can do on education that have two, five, seven times more impact on learning than business as usual. In fact, a lot of the business-as-usual education spending is on things like inputs that have virtually no impact on learning. I think, yes, I would love more money on education, but I think there's huge scope to increase the impact from what we have. Let me give an example from climate. You see these huge commitments from the EU to plant billions of trees. The UK has made similar commitments, and they make those commitments in the EU and in the UK. And from an economist perspective, that makes kind of no sense because they're committing to preserve forests in places with high labor costs and high land costs. And if you look at the numbers, if you spend the same budget on protecting forests in Uganda, you get ten times as much reduction in carbon as if you spend the same amount of money on protecting forests in California. So, we can stretch our budget on climate, the equivalent of spending ten times more on climate, just by being sensible about where we take these mitigation investments. Danny talked about the importance of having a narrative between the micro and the macro. Let me try and talk you through that, because sometimes you hear the criticism that these investments in improving education, for example, how does that link through into macro? Well, look at Vietnam. Vietnam gets 50% more learning in a year than Peru out of one year of schooling, and twice as much as India, despite spending about the same amount as money as Peru. It would be hard to argue that the growth in Vietnam is not unrelated to an incredibly productive human capital sector. They're extremely good at turning inputs into human capital output. All our models of growth suggest that human capital is an extremely important input into growth. So, I think that's the story for how you take these improvements on more effective investments in education, to getting more out, to having more human capital that then leads to growth. And then, let me just turn to innovation, because everyone has talked about innovation as being a huge driver of growth. It's also how we get more improvement in health and education and welfare. You look at how much healthier and how much better lives are now at much lower levels of income than in the past. That is almost entirely due to improvements in technologies and getting those technologies out, but without shaping the incentives for innovation, we do not automatically get innovation that leads to improvements in welfare and lives of the poor in particular. Very little incentive for innovations for the poor. A long time ago, I wrote a book about how the incentives for pharmaceuticals are to produce improvements in medication for rich countries and very little for innovations for vaccines or diseases for the poor, and that's still the case. But in climate, we similarly see a huge gap in the innovation that we need to tackle climate issues in poor countries. Take the fact that crops in sub-Saharan Africa are going to be hit by climate change very severely, and yet there's virtually no innovation going into making sorghum heat resilient. Millions of people across Africa rely on sorghum. A lot of money is going to improve crops in Europe and the US, but the crops that Africa grows are very different and there's very little incentive to innovate there. So, we need to take things, the innovations that are coming out of labs in rich countries and work them into develop technologies that meet the needs of those in low-income countries. And that's one of the ways we can take that incredible innovation that's coming and tie it to improved welfare and we can make progress against our goals. I don't want to say meet our goals, because I completely agree with Indermit that we are missing... There's a massive gap between rhetoric and reality, and that is causing quite a lot of policy and coherence, which maybe we can come back to.
[Kathleen Hays] Let's let Danny respond. I'd also like to add that in February, at the Fragility, Conflict and Violence event that I was part of, there's a man who was going to NYU. He's a very famous restaurateur now from West Africa. He started out as a washing the dishes or something, then he fell in love with restaurants, but he has started a business which is doing just that. And it's a private sector step where they’ve developed one of the grains that's very indigenous, and they're doing it in such a way that European and US companies can't jump in and do the same thing. I think it's fascinating, but I just want to put that on the table to think about. And Danny, Rachel gave you a lot to look at.
[Danny Quah] Thank you, Kathleen, and thank you, Rachel, for pointing the big guns at me to try and respond. Let me say a couple of things. First is, as we talk through these different global policies, we need to be not tone deaf to the responses of either the donors or those that we're spending the money on. I love it that in a social planning, macro way, we can move resources from California to Uganda, school resources from Hertfordshire in England to small towns in Tanzania, but the reality is, when we talk about development and finance in that way, we are tone deaf to what the people in these different locations perceive. And we need to be thinking about a narrative, if you like, that attempts to square how everyone feels in these different parts of the world. Let me speak to just the second point, and I'll hand back to you, Kathleen, the challenge that I threw out earlier about how we need to, as development professionals, as academics, construct a narrative that goes from the improvement at the individual level to growth, not just at the national level, but at the global level because the great incoherence that we're talking about today has to do with resources being moved from one part of the world that's rich and advanced, and has a certain set of priorities to different parts of the world that are not rich and advanced and have a different set of priorities. Now, you and I can sit on this stage and say, “Well, look, climate change is a huge global public goods problem, anybody sensible would realize that we're trying to do the right thing.” The reality on the ground is that they don't realize that. They see a narrative that is not sensitive to the needs and imperatives of their society, of their group of identity. We have for years debated just transition. We have for years talked about how unless the emerging countries make it in the move towards clean energy, none of us will make it. Does that make the advanced world more inclined towards supporting clean energy initiatives in other parts of the world that they consider their geopolitical rivals? Not at all. So, we are caught in this terrible bind. We know what the right answer is, as academics, as theorists, as writers on development, but our translation of that into a narrative that people can come along with us on is not always there. And let me just end with what two economists that I deeply respect said about development in Vietnam and development elsewhere. Incidentally, at my school, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, part of our mission is precisely to bring high quality education to the different parts of the region. We are hugely involved, integrated in the development of Vietnam's education initiatives. Dani Rodrik and Mike Spence both said efficiency gains do not make a growth strategy. You need to connect the dots between doing what we do at the micro level and making the entire economy, the entire global economy come around to your side. I don't think we're doing that particularly well. Thank you.
[Kathleen Hays] And I just want to… Oh, I forgot to say, we're going to leave some time for audience questions. So, if you've got one, keep it in your head and we'll come around, and we'll see how many we can get to because I often find that audiences ask the questions that I'm not thinking of and it brings a lot to the table. But, your turn again, Indermit and all. I can keep thinking of… When you talk about so many aspects of this and especially when it comes to climate change and who's spending what, those are very powerful numbers because you go to Africa, what are their financing costs? They're crazy. And, you know, you said that people are spending so much on financing, they can't pay for health and education. This is such an important part of this. And again, listening to all the voices, all the voices at the table, I'm in a poor country. What's my voice worth and what are my needs really and truly right now? Please, comment on what they've said and add your own.
[Indermit Gill] Right. So actually, I agree with what Rachel and what Danny have said. So, I have no beef with them. I actually completely agree with them. But there are lots of other bad ideas that one can sort of criticize. And I went to the University of Chicago at the time that Professor [unintelligible], who was there, and I learned from him and from others that even if you can't come up with good ideas, I learned a long time back that I couldn't come up with good ideas, you can still be very productive as an economist because the industry that produces bad ideas is very, very prolific. So, you can just think. One bad idea is this whole idea about developing without fossil fuels. That essentially that the high-income countries today, they have a good life and so on, but they made a big mistake. They used fossil fuels, but these other countries shouldn't do it. But the thing that you immediately say is, look, if the climate crisis is being caused by high emissions, then why are you focusing on… Why don't you focus on how much emissions are being reduced rather than how they're being reduced? That's a first order problem. Now, this obsession with fossil fuels, it becomes an obsession. It actually leads to three problems. The first is that you end up treating all fossil fuels the same coal, oil and gas. The second one is you start to exaggerate the potential of renewables and you start to put things into renewables that really are not that, at least when it comes to emissions, you put in things like wood chips and biomass and so on. You want to burn that and you say, “I'm using renewables, right?” And Europe is really good at that. Then the third one is, of course you underemphasize the potential of greater energy efficiency. And like you said, nowhere is this expectation more jarring than in sub-Saharan Africa. They will have 20% of the world's population in 2030 or so. And even if it triples its consumption of oil, coal, gas, between now and then, it'll have less than 2% of global GHG emissions. And if you look, I mean, take a look at this very nice foreign affairs article by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of Nigeria and it’s really a clear argument about it, right? But there's another contradiction here. All of the countries, by the way, the first contradiction is rich countries still have oil, gas and coal as part of their long-term strategies for energy. But there's another contradiction which is when you treat oil and gas and coal. So, when coal fired power plants or petrol-powered cars are being discussed, the health costs of pollution are cited as a reason for moving away from them. It's a good reason, right? It's a very good reason. Outdoor or ambient pollution actually causes 4 million premature deaths every year. And with good reason organizations like the World Bank are financing the phase out from coal and considering ways to encourage EVs, but when you ask experts about the deaths from pollution, they talk also of indoor pollution. And that comes from using firewood and coal and oil for heating and cooking, and 2.6 billion people cook on open fires or stoves using kerosene, coal, wood and human waste. Coincidentally, indoor pollution also causes nearly 4 million premature deaths every year. Pretty much the same, more deaths than those from TB, malaria and HIV combined. And most of these health us are actually born by women and girls because they have to work indoors much more. Now, it turns out that there's a pretty simple answer to this. It's called liquid petroleum gas. You can cut, you can do a lot just with that, but if you start to treat oil equals to gas equals to coal, you look past these things or you don't emphasize enough. With 4.5 billion a year, you can end this problem of this 2.6 billion people thing, the amount of money that's on hand, 130 million a year.
[Kathleen Hays] Well, natural gas is a fossil fuel. It's clean. I think there's concern about how it comes out of the ground, what that can mean, the fracking, etcetera. It's interesting that Bill Gates, how much has he just invested in nuclear power? A billion. I mean, also clean. A lot of people think, “Oh my God, you can't have nuclear power.” It's very different than it used to be when you built the… I grew up in Washington state, the whoops that, you know, kind of exploded. But it's very, very different now. This, and it's right to ask you guys about generally with the great incoherence and with organizations like the World Bank and governments, when you talk about how much is that, how do you look at the challenge of getting past narrative, getting past what everybody knows is true, what you can think about differently, but not speak about differently with your colleagues? How does that… I mean, that's kind of an existential question. But when you are, your idea of getting more bank for the buck, is that a popular idea? Or as an institution, should you just kind of keep asking for more money? I think it was in one of the aspects, one of the versions of your paper you talked about, when the money is going to always be there, it makes it tougher, for example, for a treasury secretary to say, “Oh, wait, we better look at our finances, oh, but we're going to get more money.” And I would think that there's so many things that are challenges now, how do you deal with that? You are now you're dealing with this every day and you're trying to get through this thicket, this complex of all these things going on.
[Rachel Glennerster] Yeah. So, let me just come back as you say, I've been advocating for spending more money efficiently, and how do you get that through? How do people respond to that? I was Chief Economist at DFID, the UK aid agency, and then to the merged FCDO. And it was really interesting. It went down extremely well, actually. We had a conservative government who was very concerned with getting the most out of the aid budget, and we went through a process of looking at each sector and asking what are, just as guidelines for our investments, what is the most cost-effective thing that you could do to improve growth, to increase education, to increase health? How do we get to all of our different objectives? And we ranked things and we put numbers on it, and actually, for the senior officials and ministers to see how much they could get. So, you can get seven years of Singaporean equivalent levels of learning for 100 bucks in some of these strategies. And it really made people sit up and kind of want to think about the investment. So, I think you get a lot of traction when you can explain it in very clear ways of what you can actually get for the investments, but I completely agree that we have a narrative problem about fossil fuels. I mean, I had many ministers come through. It was a time of a lot of change in the UK government, and they were all incredibly attracted to the idea of, they'd come in and say, “Oh, well, we could ban fossil fuels from our aid budget.” And every time you kind of sat them down and walked them through this. Well, you know, yes, but we're talking about countries that have very little use of very few emissions. Are we really saying we can't use, you know, cars to get around? And, like, that involves fossil fuels, we can't fly to these countries, and gas is actually a lot more. So, the problem is with these, you've got to knock down the bad ideas constantly and you just need one to get through once, and you've panned fossil fuels in the aid budget. It's an incredibly challenging issue. I want to pick up on your indoor air pollution because I think it's an example of where when you try and stimulate innovation and you don't do it well, you can get some bad results. For decades, we tried to tackle indoor air pollution with cleaner cook stoves and we paid people to work on cleaner cookstoves, but it was all being done in a lab without input from... Without the private sector incentive to design something that people actually wanted to use. And so, we invented all these cook stoves that people couldn't make work in their homes and didn't like and didn't use. But, you know… It’d be better if we tied to… If we said we would subsidize our cookstove that people would use, which now we have, I agree with the gas stoves, you get much more efficient way of stimulating innovation. So, I think indoor cookstoves are a great example of how not to stimulate innovation, and there are much better ways to do it.
[Kathleen Hays] Okay, is there anybody right now? I can speak really loud, but anybody got a question? Okay, first. And, oh, someone's back there in the middle and I think you're going to have to just… Here comes the mic. Keep your question nice and short. Okay? Because I like to get a few, and you can either address it to one of the panelists or you and get a comment from everyone. But nice short question, please.
[Manpreet Juneja] Sure. I'm Manpreet Juneja, infrastructure specialist. I have been an economist throughout. A very fundamental question and ABCDE of economics. So, welfare economics by definition is utility maximization given resources. And I think there's a lot of discussion at the low end of the spectrum, but data proves that most of the carbon footprint is higher on the high end of the spectrum. I want to know what we are doing at high end of the spectrum. What's the plan? And then, I think it relates to the overall theoretical economics we're talking about of transferring funds from where they have less impact to where they have more impact, but my question mainly is, what is the plan on high end of the spectrum? I think there's also incoherence in thinking excessively just about low end of this spectrum.
[Kathleen Hays] Okay, who wants to jump in here? Panel. [Indermit Gill] The question is for a professor, not for me. [Kathleen Hays] Danny Quah, it's all on you. [Danny Quah] Okay. While I'm thinking of an answer, should we collect a few questions? [Kathleen Hays] What a great idea. Okay, now there's a. There's a person. I'm just going drawn to the middle. Okay, sir. And stand up. And nice quick question.
[Man 1] Yeah, it's pretty quick. I have the explanation for the slowing down of growth over the last 20 years. Global oil production peaked 20 years ago. Now, you may find that remarkable if you know how much global oil production is today. But what I'm referring to is production by conventional means. Most of the oil we get today comes from unconventional means. Hydraulic fracturing, horizontal lines. This is more expensive than the old days when you poke a hole in the ground and the oil comes out.
[Kathleen Hays] Okay. All right, so, what is your question?
[Man 1] Well, I'm going to be interested to hear what the gentleman Gill, Mister Gill, has to say in it. But the thing we… And I would ask him, do you know of a reliable estimate of energy returned on energy invested? You're familiar with that term, I'm sure. [Indermit Gill] Yeah.
[Kathleen Hays] Okay, let's see another question. Hand up over there, young lady. And she's, sir, right here. Stand up and then he'll see you better. There you go. Good question. All good questions so far. Let's keep going.
[Oyebola Okunogbe] Hi, my name is Oyebola Okunogbe from the development research group. And my question is, directed to you, Professor Danny Quah. Your idea about how this narrative does not resonate with people in lower income countries. I was just trying to think, what might be some tools from economics that we could use in trying to change this narrative and communicate better? Thank you.
[Kathleen Hays] Oh, love that question. Okay, we can take one more, right in the back. There you go. On the aisle. You have to really run down there now. You get all kinds of exercise just doing that.
[Man 2] Thank you. Apologies if this was discussed, has been discussed because I missed the last five minutes. But, Rachel, you emphasized efficiency of education spending. In the meat, you emphasize quantity of education spending, and both of you would agree both are important. It ‘d be great if you have both. But presumably there's a tradeoff. And so, how do you realistically think about the trade off in terms of where funding goes, how much research is done, and then how do you bridge the gap between research and policy? Yeah. How do you think of those tradeoffs?
[Kathleen Hays] Excellent. Okay, shall we start with those and maybe in order? I think your question was, what's at the high end versus low end? What's the plan at the high end? I believe so. And by the way, you got a lot of good stuff in that question. Who wants to jump in here? Go ahead.
[Rachel Glennerster] I can take that first one. I mean, one of the things that I've been working on, on the high end is innovation for carbon removal. So permanent carbon removal in most of the projections we’ll need to be taking carbon out of the atmosphere. There's a lot of interesting innovations, a huge range of different things that we could do to be pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. I think this is something that high income countries can be working on and should be investing in. It's their comparative advantage. It's highly capital intensive. I think we have to think about comparative advantage on the different things that we need to reach our goals, but, a lot could be, obviously, carbon border adjustment, taxes, ta xing carbon, carbon markets, several things which we are and should be doing more of at the high end.
[Kathleen Hays] So, that kind of leads into question number two. Well done, sir, about oil, how it comes out of the ground, how much it costs, what the methods are? I think it was, for you, Indermit.
[Indermit Gill] No, we actually looked at the sources of growth or the sources of potential growth across the world, advanced economies, low-income countries, everyone. Essentially, you can break it down into three parts. It could either be because of investment or slowing investment. The second one is it could be because of slowing population growth or actually a decrease in the number of educated, a decrease in the number of prime age working people. And then, the third one, of course, it could be because of slowing productivity growth. Now, you could actually probably see some of the oil related factors in the third part, but I think one of the obvious ones has to do with the fact that you have had in the developing world as well as elsewhere, especially in East Asia, you've had essentially demographic changes that have led to a slowing population growth, even declining populations. That would be the first thing to look at. I think that at least in South Asia, you do have counters to this in the sense that you have India and you have relatively low female labor force participation rates. We're going to have a really good discussion at CGD with Professor Raghu [Raghuram] Rajan about India, and he'll tell you that when people say that India cannot grow at the same rates that China did, because the global economy is different now, it's not nearly as conducive to growth. He talks about the internal factors in India actually being very, very conducive to how higher growth. So, India is in some sense at peak potential right now. It probably can actually grow a bit higher if it does things well, especially on issues related to the employment of girls and youth.
[Kathleen Hays] His book, “Breaking the Mold” is great. Very lots of good ideas there. So now the question about economics and tools. And Danny, you're a professor. Why don't you just hop right in on that one?
[Danny Quah] Okay, I'm happy to try. These are extremely difficult questions. What we need more than anything else is narrative that resonates with everyone, not just with high-income countries and not low-income ones or vice versa. The difficulty is twofold, it seems to me. One is that there is, in many parts of the world, a deep sense of historical injustice. One part of the world looks at the other part of the world and says, you've messed up the world, now you want us to pay you for cleaning it up. There is a lot of resistance built along those lines. So, what's the solution? One of the solutions I've seen, and this is my second point, and ending, when I visited different parts of the world, east Asia in particular, is that you put all that to one side and you think, “What are the things here that make for business opportunity? What are the things here that will make people go wild thinking that they're going to make money out of this?” You align incentives. You don't harp on how this is going to save the world. You say, this is going to make you money. That's how we're going to solve the problem. Thank you.
[Kathleen Hays] All right, question four, which was one that any one of you can jump in on. [Indermit Gill] I can only count to three. [Laughter] [Kathleen Hays] Do you want to rephrase your question? I think having. I should have stopped at three. A brain can only hold. Oh, do you have something to say, Rach? Rachel?
[Rachel Glennerster] Yeah, I mean, I think you were talking about is there a tradeoff between raising more money for education versus spending it more wisely? I mean, I actually think there's not a tradeoff there because one of the ways in which you get people excited about spending more money on education is to show that you're actually delivering results. So, if you talk to the education community, they will often say, well, we haven't had an ability measure our output in the same way as there is in health. And that's led us to not be able to make a convincing case about why we should get more money. Certainly, when I talk to ministers of finance, they want to know what are you getting out of an increase in expenditure in education or elsewhere. I think actually they're compliments. If we can convince people that you're actually getting real outcomes from your additional expenditure, we not only make more impact from a given budget, but we actually make the case for a higher budget.
[Kathleen Hays] Danny, I can tell you there's something you want to say. You're not? Okay
[Indermit Gill] No, actually a very good question. I just wanted to... [Kathleen Hays] Yes, do. Please, do. [Indermit Gill] I think the first thing is that you have to distinguish about these tradeoffs between high-income and middle-income and low-income countries. In low-income countries, what you sort of see is that when you ask them to raise more money for education spending or health spending or other things like social protection spending and so on, you have to remember that especially when it comes to social protection spending, this money is raised in a regressive way, generally through indirect taxes, and then it's spent in a pretty regressive way because they can't target their transfers well. So, as a result of it, you have to keep that in mind and say the tradeoff is really between education and health, and public infrastructure on the one hand, and the social transfers on the other. So, if you really want to sort of look at that, I would actually say even during bad times like COVID and so on, you have to maintain, in these countries, you have to maintain spending on education and health rather than try to raise more money, or try to borrow more and then have to repay that with taxes, which are going to be regressive for sure.
[Kathleen Hays] Okay. I know we're going a little over time, but I want to give each panelist a chance now to say to you and to our online audience, virtual audience, what's the one thing, as we wrap up this first morning of the great incoherence, growth in human development and era of stagnation. We heard from Ajay Banga. We heard from Larry Summers. We've been hearing from all of you. So, what's the one, just one statement, one thing that you hope everyone gets from this, or that you think is the important issue that has to be addressed? Okay. Danny, you could start.
[Danny Quah] Okay. So the one thing is we need to be not shy about encouraging macroeconomic growth. That one idea builds on sharing of technology and multilateral cooperation. We have to strain every nerve to get these things back on the global agenda. Thank you.
[Kathleen Hays] Rachel.
[Rachel Glennerster] I want to follow that by saying we need to work on innovation because it's the key driver of growth and change, but we need to work on shaping it to make it work for the needs of the population.
[Indermit Gill] The returns to financial re-engineering are not that high anymore. I think one has to look at fundamental reforms and make the investment climate for things better, especially in middle-income countries. And what's really important is for you to read the next report. The World Development report on the middle-income trap and also on our work, on the work that assesses the quality of the business environment is called the B-READY report, which has just been circulated for review to you. We also have another report coming out on the international debt report that's called the International Debt report. You should try to get your hands on these reports and to resolve this great incoherence. I'm going to spend my next two days listening to everybody who will be speaking over here, and I urge you guys to do the same.
[Kathleen Hays] Great lineup and a great audience. You were here, you were with us. This was great. I think I felt it. Thank you for joining us in person. And again, thank you for everybody who's online. Stay tuned. We're going to break for lunch and then a great afternoon ahead and a great day tomorrow. So, thank you very much. I'm Kathleen Hays. I'm the Editor in Chief of Central Bank Central. You know all these lovely guests, and you can find all of them online. Thank you.
