The dramatic global convergence between rich and poor
"There has been more convergence between poor people in poor countries and rich people in rich countries over the last generation than in any generation in human history. The dramatic way to say it is that between the time of Pericles and London in 1800, standards of living rose about 75 percent in 2,300 years. They called it the Industrial Revolution because for the first time in human history, standards of living were visibly and 2 meaningfully different at the end of a human lifespan than they had been at the beginning of a human lifespan, perhaps 50 percent higher during the Industrial Revolution. Fifty percent is the growth that has been achieved in a variety of six-year periods in China over the last generation and in many other countries, as well. And so if you look at material standards of living, we have seen more progress for more people and more catching up than ever before. That is not simply about things that are material and things that are reflected in GDP. ... [I]f current trends continue, with significant effort from the global community, it is reasonable to hope that in 2035 the global child mortality rate will be lower than the US child mortality rate was when my children were born in 1990. That is a staggering human achievement. It is already the case that in large parts of China, life expectancy is greater than it is in large parts of the United States."
The marginal benefit of development aid is what is enabled, not what is funded
"I remember as a young economist who was going to be the chief economist of the World Bank sitting and talking with Stan Fischer, who was my predecessor as the chief economist of the World Bank. And we were talking, and I was new to all this. I had never done anything in the official sector. And I said, "Stan, I don't get it. If a country has five infrastructure projects and the World Bank can fund two of them, and the World Bank is going to cost-benefit analyze and the World Bank is going to do all its stuff, I would assume what the country does is show the World Bank its two best infrastructure projects, because that will be easiest, and if it gets money from the World Bank, then it does one more project, but what the World Bank is actually buying is not the project it is being shown, it is the marginal product that it is enabling. And so why do we make such a fuss of evaluating the particular quality of our projects?" And Stan listened to me. And he looked at me. He's a very wise man. And he said, "Larry, you know, it is really interesting. When I first got to the bank, I always asked questions like that." "But now I've been here for two years, and I don't ask questions like that. I just kind of think about the projects, because it is kind of too hard and too painful to ask questions like that."Funds from the developing world governments and multilateral institutions have much less power
"[O]ur money—and I mean by that our assistance and the assistance of the multilateral institutions in which we have great leverage—is much less significant than it once was. Perhaps the best way to convey that is with a story. In 1991, when I was new to all of this, I was working as the chief economist of the World Bank, and the first really important situation in which I had any visibility at all was the Indian financial crisis that took place in the summer of 1991. And at that point, India was near the brink. It was so near the brink that, at least as I recall the story, $1 billion of gold was with great secrecy put on a ship by the Indians to be transported to London, where it could be collateral for an emergency loan that would permit the Indian government to meet its payroll at the end of the month. And at that moment, the World Bank was in a position over the next year to lend India $3 billion in conjunction with its economic reform program. And the United States had an important role in shaping the World Bank's strategy. Well, that $3 billion was hugely important to the destiny of a sixth of humanity. Today, the World Bank would have the capacity to lend India in a year $6 billion or $7 billion. But India has $380 billion—$380 billion—in reserves dominantly invested in Treasury bills earning 1 percent. And India itself has a foreign aid budget of $5 billion or $6 billion. And so the relevance of the kind of flows that we are in a position to provide officially to major countries is simply not what it once was."Protecting the world from pandemic flu vs. the salary of a college football coach
"[T]he current WHO budget for pandemic flu is less than the salary of the University of Michigan's football coach—not to mention any number of people who work in hedge funds. And that seems manifestly inappropriate. And we do not yet have any settled consensus on how we are going to deal with global public goods and how that is going to be funded."