Nancy Birdsall, Andy Sumner, Arvind Subramanian and Lant Pritchett were featured in Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers list.
This list was also featured in PR Newswire and The Washington Post's ThinkTanked blog.
From the List
Foreign Policy presents a unique portrait of 2011's global marketplace of ideas and the thinkers who make them.
Nancy Birdsall
It may not be surprising to learn that Nancy Birdsall, founder of the increasingly influential Washington-based think tank Center for Global Development, agrees with critics of foreign aid that the system is broken: poorly administered from afar based on donor priorities, damaging to local institutions, and a sap on motivation. Unlike most critics, though, Birdsall -- an economist by training who spent years at the World Bank and working on Latin American economic development -- has an answer. Send money, she says, but pay only for results. In their 2010 book, Cash on Delivery, she and co-author William Savedoff argued that foreign aid should be based on a contract system in which aid is only disbursed after certain agreed-upon goals are met. This year, COD is catching on, with Britain's Department for International Development sponsoring pilot programs in Ethiopia and India. Cash on Delivery now has a chance to deliver.