de Payment and Delivery Reform Case Study: Cancer Care By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 09:52:00 -0400 Editor’s note: This post is adapted from a forthcoming full-length case study; the second in a series from the Engelberg Center’s Merkin Initiative on Physician Payment Reform and Clinical Leadership designed to support clinician leadership of health care delivery, payment, and financing reform. The case study will be presented during the Merkin Initiative’s “MEDTalk” event on July 9 from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM EDT, featuring live story-telling and knowledge-sharing from patients, providers, and policymakers. Oncology practices and hospitals across the nation struggle with providing sustainable, comprehensive, and coordinated cancer care. Clinical leaders with strategies and models to improve the quality and value of health care often don’t know how to navigate the landscape of payment and delivery reform options to sustain their innovations. We use a case study approach to investigate and tell the story of the New Mexico Cancer Center (NMCC), an independent cancer center that is experimenting with innovative ways to improve patient-centered oncology care. We identify challenges for creating sustainable and supportive payments models, and we share the broader strategic and policy lessons for adopting alternative payment models. The Clinical Scenario: Living With Cancer Vicky Bolton, a 58-year-old full-time medical legal coordinator from Albuquerque, has stage 4 adenocarcinoma lung cancer. She started chemotherapy in 2003 and has consistently received treatments over the last 11 years. Vicky is one of 13 million Americans currently living with cancer, with more than 1.6 million new diagnoses added each year. Although Vicky’s condition is currently stable, she is at high risk for venous thrombosis (blood clots), life-threatening infections, and other complications, which put her at high risk for repeated hospitalizations. In the past six months, she has taken advantage of “after hours” care on three occasions as an outpatient at NMCC. Fortunately, each of her providers and services — oncology, radiation therapy, labs, x-rays, and internal medicine — are centralized in a single location at NMCC, reducing the need for emergency room (ER) visits or hospitalizations for these episodes. The Challenge: Controlling Spending While Improving Patient-Centered Care Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. Forty-one percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer during their lives. Cancer care is also expensive, accounting for $125 billion of total health care spending annually. In 2011, Medicare alone spent nearly $35 billion in fee-for-service (FFS) payments for cancer care, representing 9 percent of all Medicare FFS payments. The high costs of cancer care are driven by issues that plague the entire health system: uncoordinated care delivery, duplication of services, fragmentation, and volume-based payments. A common impact of these drivers in oncology is the use of the ER to relieve symptoms associated with adverse effects of chemotherapy or other treatments that can also result in hospitalization. For example, research shows that the most common reasons for cancer patient ER admissions are pain, respiratory distress, nausea, and vomiting. More than half of the ER visits occurred on weekends or in the evening, and over 60 percent resulted in hospital admission. This suggests that if a patient’s symptoms could be managed at home or in the community, costly hospital admissions could be avoided. ER visits, where patients are exposed to germs and infections as they wait — often hours — to be admitted, can have catastrophic outcomes for patients that are actively in treatment since they have weakened immune systems and are more prone to infections. In addition to the inherent issues with fee-for-service (FFS) payments — with payments incentivizing volume of procedures rather than the value of care delivered — the current payment system further exacerbates problems: If a practice provides higher-value care to patients at a lower cost to the overall system (that is, they perform fewer services and have lower revenue), the financial winner is the payer who reimburses fewer services, not the practice (which merely has less revenue). This combination of the misaligned incentives of FFS and the lack of financial benefit for improving care while reducing costs means that many practices simply cannot afford to make the transformations needed without other funding mechanisms. The Real World: How Has An Independent Cancer Center Responded To These Challenges? NMCC delivers care to roughly 2,700 patients and provides care to one in three New Mexicans with cancer. The changes that the center has made have focused on reducing the impact of fragmentation of care on their patients (Table 1). A key innovation was enhancing comprehensive after-hours and weekend care on site and creating a telephone and urgent care triage program to avoid expensive emergency room and inpatient care, which NMCC termed the COME HOME model. As part of its redesign process in 2012, NMCC – along with six community oncology practices — secured a $20 million Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Health Care Innovation Award (HCIA), for a three-year period. The award has an explicit aim of reducing ER visits by 50 percent and hospitalizations by 20 percent to justify the program costs. Table 1: Care Redesign Elements Undertaken by NMCC The Key Levers: How Can COME HOME Be Sustained? On the heels of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and numerous quality and payment focused initiatives in the private sector, health care organizations need to enhance the competitiveness and efficiency of their systems in the marketplace. Alternative payment models (APMs) such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), bundled payments, and patient-centered oncology medical homes (PCOMH) are just a few of the initiatives supported by public and private payers to align care redesign and payment reform and encourage continuous improvement. (Clinical pathways, a strategy recently embraced by WellPoint, offer PCOMH-like incentives to encourage adherence to practice guidelines, a strategy primarily geared to encourage higher-value chemotherapy practice.) Broader or larger case-based payments may also provide stronger incentives to limit costs, to help assure that promising delivery reforms actually lead to cost reduction, but this exposes oncologists to greater levels of financial risk, as shown in Table 2. Consequently, implementing payment reforms that are viewed as feasible and desirable by both providers and payers is difficult. Table 2: Comparison of Alternative Payment Models for Oncology The Path Ahead: How Can These Models Assist NMCC? NMCC currently receives approximately $70,000 per month from the CMMI grant and has not yet identified a clear strategy to sustain the delivery reforms in the COME HOME care model past the end of the grant (July 2015). As for payment reform options, NMCC has been unable to contract as part of a comprehensive ACO due to local health care market conditions. Clinical pathways are geared primarily to guidelines and chemotherapy adherence, and are not designed to provide funding for after-hours care or triage programs that are intended to achieve offsetting savings through avoiding costly complications. Possible remaining options include: PCOMH: Using the data it gathers, NMCC intends to quantify the additional costs the COME HOME model requires, and the savings that it achieves. Based on that estimate, NMCC could suggest a per-member per-month (PMPM) payment from a private insurer to cover the costs of providing higher quality care. To encourage participation, NMCC could also enter into a risk-sharing agreement, in which overall costs of inpatient care and ER visits would be compared against a target. The PMPM payment could be at-risk if the targets are not achieved after a certain period of time. Bundled Payments: NMCC could potentially use the medical home approach with risk sharing (described above) as a first, interim step toward a bundled payment system, NMCC’s long-term preferred model. Computing actuarially sound expected costs for the bundled payments would require merging claims data with clinical data (for example, ICD-9 codes fail to distinguish between subtypes of breast cancer that have radically different treatments). A bundled payment pilot might be performed for high volume cancers, such as breast and lung. Lessons Learned The experience of innovative pioneers like NMCC can shed some light on potential barriers to conceptualizing and implementing sustainable clinical redesign. The lessons learned have been sorted into three main categories: relationships with payers and networks, payment model selection, and data collection and quality improvement considerations. Relationships with payers and networks. Though counterintuitive, merely demonstrating significant value from care design, perhaps from lower utilization of inpatient and emergency department utilization, does not automatically create a financial pathway for sustainable delivery reform. To do so, innovative providers should consider involving lead payer partners early on to help identify end-points of interest to payers and potential payment strategies that may emerge later. Providing support for health care delivery reforms requires new activities by payers towards aligning their payments with value, rather than volume and intensity of services. However, fragmented health care markets face the challenge of the “free rider” problem: payers may be unwilling to shoulder delivery transformation costs that may benefit other payers’ clients while they wait for CMS or others to make the financial investment, pay for the program evaluation, and enact policy change). Other challenges include payer inertia and long lag times between care redesign and subsequent data demonstrating results. Large ACOs and other integrated payer-provider plans, including those large enough to form Medicare Advantage plans, are moving forward on negotiating payment and delivery reforms. This may be more difficult for innovative, smaller practices, even if they can provide higher-value clinical services. In turn, this may have anti-competitive consequences, such as discouraging delivery innovation that leads to “demand destruction” of high-cost hospital-based services. Private and public payers should be particularly interested in developing models that enable smaller, specialized providers like oncology practices to undertake key delivery reforms. Sustainable Payment Model Selection. While substantial attention has been paid to primary care focused APMs, specialty-focused APMs are needed for practices like NMCC. Their development should be a high priority for public and private payers. Clinical transformation grants, such as those offered by CMMI, should include clear pathways for transitioning to APMs if initial cost savings targets or projections are met. Otherwise, delivery system innovations are at high risk of failure despite evidence of improved value. Data Collection and Quality Improvement Considerations. Timely sharing of actionable information from claims and other administrative data remains a major challenge, with complex and varied procedures for obtaining claims from payers; smaller practices are particularly challenged in interpreting the claims data. Some states, such as Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Colorado (among others) are proceeding with creating all-payer claims databases. (Maryland, for example, offers almost instantaneous provider feedback from claims through their CRISP database.) Others, such as Minnesota, are using “distributed” approaches in which multiple payers and systems produce measures in consistent ways. As NMCC’s early efforts illustrate, practices can produce more clinically sophisticated performance measures. Strategies to achieve consistent methods for sharing key data on cost and quality need to be expanded to encourage quality improvement and payment reform. Authors Mark B. McClellanDarshak SanghaviKavita PatelKate Samuels Publication: Health Affairs Blog Image Source: © Jim Young / Reuters Full Article
de The beginner's guide to new health care payment models By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 13:57:00 -0400 Payment reform in health care is confusing, but the goal is simple: How can health care providers change their economic incentives to encourage value over volume? If you've wondered about how these new payment models work, we’re here to help. And if you want to see Dr. Patrick Conway, the head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, talk about it more in depth at our most recent MEDTalk event about oncology care reform, click here. Where are we now? Fee-for-Service. Traditionally, health care providers are paid in a "Fee-for-Service" (FFS) model. This is exactly what it sounds like: every time you have a blood test, a doctor's visit, a CT scan, or any other service, you (and your insurance company) pay separately for what you have received. Over the course of a long treatment or a chronic condition, that can add up to a huge expense. The Fee-For-Service System It is well known that FFS is draining the entire health care system. When paying for volume, a sick patient is worth more than a healthy patient , and this status quo results in uncoordinated care, duplication of services, and fragmentation. After all, the more doctors and providers do, the more they get paid. Reformers hope to replace the traditional FFS model with something better, and they’ve come up with many different models of payment that could allow this to happen. (Note to reader: these are simplified explanations; policy enthusiasts can learn much more about them through the Engelberg Center’s Merkin Initiative). Here are four widely proposed and increasingly popular alternative payment models: Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are groups of providers across different settings– primary care, specialty physicians, hospitals, clinics, and others – who chose to come together to jointly share responsibility for overall quality, cost, and care for a large patient population. These providers recognize that poorly coordinated care from these entities can lead to increased costs from things like redundant tests and overlapping care. Accountable Care Organization Model Here’s how it works in basic terms: the ACO physicians bill the way they always do, but the total costs get compared to an overall target. Plus, they have to measure some of their patient outcomes, to prove that they hit certain quality benchmarks. If costs are higher than the target, the ACO may get penalized. In the end, if they are under the cost target and satisfy their quality measures, they get a share of the savings. By bringing all of these providers under the umbrella of an ACO, caregivers can all be on the same page, and the patients ideally receive coordinated care with a focus on prevention – since providers are encouraged to keep their patients healthy and not just earn more by doing more tests and procedures. Bundles: A health care bundle estimates the total cost of all of the services a patient would receive per episode over a set time period for a certain problem, like a knee replacement or heart surgery. For example, a payer such as Medicare or an insurance company could calculate that a hypothetical 30-day bundle for a knee replacement surgery costs $10,000. Without Bundled Payment... The payer reduces the total cost of the episode by 2-3%, and hands the bundle over to the provider – in the knee surgery example, that becomes $10,000 minus 2%, so $9,800. The provider is then responsible for all costs of treatment – whether or not it exceeds the amount of money they were originally given. This encourages the provider (collaborating with the entire care team) to help the patient avoid preventable complications like a hospital readmission by better managing a patient’s care. With a Bundled Payment... If the provider keeps costs low, they can keep the margin on the bundle, while the insurance company already saved by reducing the cost of the episode by a small percentage when they created the bundle. So, in our example, if the provider was able to meet quality benchmarks and the total cost of the 30-day episode was $9,000, they get to keep the extra $800. Patient-Centered Medical Homes set themselves apart by providing set monthly payments on top of existing funding models, in order to fund a highly coordinated team of primary care professionals, which may include, depending on the patient’s needs, physicians, nurse practitioners, medical assistants, nutritionists, psychologists, and possibly even specialists. The team works closely to build a strong relationship with each other,with their patients and their caregivers. Patient-Centered Medical Home Model... This extra money can be used to hire nurses or agencies to give special care and attention (by phone or home visits, for example) to high-risk patients, with the goals of reducing emergency room visits and other preventable problems in the long run. Other enhancements might include email communication with patients, more time to call and coordinate care between primary care doctors and specialists, and so on. In the end, the savings from better coordinated care make the extra monthly payments worthwhile. Pathways, an idea which has gained traction in oncology care, provides a system of choices and decision making tools for providers and patients in order to prescribe the most effective and least costly treatment. For example, let’s say there are two cancer drugs proven to have the same effectiveness, with no differentiation in side effects, but one of them costs less than the other. Same Effectiveness, Different Cost... Like the medical home, the pathways model uses a “per-patient” add on fee (often much larger than for medical homes focused on primary care, since cancer patients need intensive treatment) that might encourage the provider to prescribe the less expensive of two equally effective treatments. How Pathways Creat Savings... When this is implemented on a broad scale, the savings could add up for payers, and defray the cost of the add-on fees. Please feel free to use any of these images in your own work, presentations, or educational efforts, and to view and download the interactive versions here. The images should be attributed to The Merkin Initiative on Clinical Leadership and Payment Reform at Brookings. Authors Darshak SanghaviKate SamuelsMeaghan GeorgeRio Hart Full Article
de The State of Accountable Care: Evidence to Date and Next Steps By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 09:00:00 -0400 Event Information October 20, 20149:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDTFalk AuditoriumBrookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.Washington, DC 20036 Register for the Event Over the past few years, more than 600 Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have formed across the country, charged with the dual goals of improving health while also reducing health care costs. Increasingly, evidence on how public and private ACOs are progressing toward these goals is beginning to emerge. Based on these results, major regulatory changes are anticipated in the months ahead that will impact accountable care programs in Medicare, as well as future uptake within the private sector. On October 20, the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform hosted a half day forum to assess the latest evidence on accountable care, discuss strategies to overcome unique ACO challenges, and provide an overview of accountable care reforms. Sean Cavanaugh of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provided keynote remarks on the latest Medicare ACO results and potential changes to the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). Panel sessions featured leading experts in ACO research, implementation and health care policy. Join the conversation on Twitter using #ACOFuture or follow @BrookingsMed Video The Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP): Looking AheadBig Issues for ACOs Going ForwardACO Policy Issues and Solutions on the Horizon Audio The State of Accountable Care: Evidence to Date and Next Steps Transcript Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials ACO Public Event full deck FINAL102014_Accountable Care_Transcript Full Article
de Yemen’s civilians: Besieged on all sides By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:30:29 +0000 According to the United Nations, Yemen is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Approximately 80 percent of the population—24.1 million people—require humanitarian assistance, with half on the brink of starvation. Since March 2015, some 3.65 million have been internally displaced—80 percent of them for over a year. By 2019, it was estimated that fighting had claimed… Full Article
de Poll shows American views on Muslims and the Middle East are deeply polarized By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 27 Jul 2016 15:21:00 +0000 A recent public opinion survey conducted by Brookings non-resident senior fellow Shibley Telhami sparked headlines focused on its conclusion that American views of Muslims and Islam have become favorable. However, the survey offered another important finding that is particularly relevant in this political season: evidence that the cleavages between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively, on Muslims, Islam, and the Israeli-Palestinians peace process are much deeper than on most other issues. Full Article Uncategorized
de The U.S. needs a national prevention network to defeat ISIS By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:40:11 +0000 The recent release of a Congressional report highlighting that the United States is the “top target” of the Islamic State coincided with yet another gathering of members of the global coalition to counter ISIL to take stock of the effort. There, Defense Secretary Carter echoed the sentiments of an increasing number of political and military leaders when he said that military […] Full Article
de Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America's Older Industrial Cities By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400 With over 16 million people and nearly 8.6 million jobs, America's older industrial cities remain a vital-if undervalued-part of the economy, particularly in states where they are heavily concentrated, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. They also have a range of other physical, economic, and cultural assets that, if fully leveraged, can serve as a platform for their renewal. Read the Executive Summary »Across the country, cities today are becoming more attractive to certain segments of society. Meanwhile, economic trends-globalization, the demand for educated workers, the increasing role of universities-are providing cities with an unprecedented chance to capitalize upon their economic advantages and regain their competitive edge. Many cities have exploited these assets to their advantage; the moment is ripe for older industrial cities to follow suit. But to do so, these cities need thoughtful and broad-based approaches to foster prosperity. "Restoring Prosperity" aims to mobilize governors and legislative leaders, as well as local constituencies, behind an asset-oriented agenda for reinvigorating the market in the nation's older industrial cities. The report begins with identifications and descriptions of these cities-and the economic, demographic, and policy "drivers" behind their current condition-then makes a case for why the moment is ripe for advancing urban reform, and offers a five-part agenda and organizing plan to achieve it. Publications & PresentationsConnecticut State ProfileConnecticut State Presentation Michigan State ProfileMichigan State Presentation New Jersey State ProfileNew Jersey State Presentation New York State ProfileNew York State Presentation Ohio State ProfileOhio State PresentationOhio Revitalization SpeechPennsylvania State Profile Downloads Download Authors Jennifer S. Vey Full Article
de Five rising democracies By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Brookings Senior Fellow Ted Piccone speaks at a forum hosted by the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. He and Ambassadors Hardeep Singh Puri and Antonio de Aguiar discuss Ted's new book, Five Rising Democracies and the Fate of the International Liberal Order. Full Article
de Brazil and the international order: Getting back on track By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 18:00:00 +0000 Crisis seems to be the byword for Brazil today: political crisis, economic crisis, corruption crisis. Yet despite the steady drum beat of grim news, Brazil is more than likely to resume its upward trajectory within a few years. Full Article Uncategorized
de How instability and high turnover on the Trump staff hindered the response to COVID-19 By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 18:04:06 +0000 On Jan. 14, 2017, the Obama White House hosted 30 incoming staff members of the Trump team for a role-playing scenario. A readout of the event said, “The exercise provided a high-level perspective on a series of challenges that the next administration may face and introduced the key authorities, policies, capabilities, and structures that are… Full Article
de A once-in-a-century pandemic collides with a once-in-a-decade census By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 20:15:08 +0000 Amid the many plans and projects that have been set awry by the rampage of COVID-19, spare a thought for the world’s census takers. For the small community of demographers and statisticians that staff national statistical offices, 2020—now likely forever associated with coronavirus—was meant to be something else entirely: the peak year of the decennial… Full Article
de Class Notes: Harvard Discrimination, California’s Shelter-in-Place Order, and More By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:21:40 +0000 This week in Class Notes: California's shelter-in-place order was effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Asian Americans experience significant discrimination in the Harvard admissions process. The U.S. tax system is biased against labor in favor of capital, which has resulted in inefficiently high levels of automation. Our top chart shows that poor workers are much more likely to keep commuting in… Full Article
de The next COVID-19 relief bill must include massive aid to states, especially the hardest-hit areas By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:32:57 +0000 Amid rising layoffs and rampant uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a good thing that Democrats in the House of Representatives say they plan to move quickly to advance the next big coronavirus relief package. Especially important is the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) seems determined to build the next package around a generous infusion… Full Article
de Making sense of the monthly jobs report during the COVID-19 pandemic By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 05 May 2020 18:43:02 +0000 The monthly jobs report—the unemployment rate from one survey and the change in employer payrolls from another survey—is one of the most closely watched economic indicators, particularly at a time of an economic crisis like today. Here’s a look at how these data are collected and how to interpret them during the COVID-19 pandemic. What… Full Article
de Shifting Balance of Power: Has the U.S. Become the Largest Minority Shareholder in the Global Order? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:00:00 -0400 Event Information March 15, 20112:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDTFalk AuditoriumThe Brookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Ave., NWWashington, DC Register for the EventWhile the future impact of rising powers such as Brazil, Russia, India and China is uncertain and the shifting political landscape in the Arab world is still playing out, the influence of these emerging nations is a central fact of geopolitics. Already the global financial crisis, the Copenhagen climate negotiations, and the debate over Iran sanctions have illustrated the potential, the pitfalls, and above all the centrality of the relationship between American power and the influence of these rising actors and developing democracies. In a new paper, Senior Fellow Bruce Jones, director of the Managing Global Order Project at Brookings, argues the greatest risk lies not in a single peer competitor but in the erosion of cooperation on issues vital to U.S. interests and a stable world order. U.S. power is indispensible for that purpose but not sufficient. No longer the CEO of Free World Inc., the United States is now the largest minority shareholder in Global Order LLC.On March 15, the Brookings Institution and Foreign Policy magazine hosted the launch of Bruce Jones’s paper "Largest Minority Shareholder in Global Order LLC: The Changing Balance of Influence and U.S. Strategy." Panelists explored the prospects for cooperation on global finance and transnational threats; the need for new investments in global economic and energy diplomacy; and the case for new crisis management tools to help de-escalate inevitable tensions with emerging powers.Susan Glasser, editor in chief of Foreign Policy, moderated the discussion. After the presentations, panelists took audience questions. Video Relative Shift in U.S. Balance of PowerShifting Coalitions of ConsensusParadox of Power for U.S.U.S. Needs To Get Serious about Development and Energy Audio Shifting Balance of Power: Has the U.S. Become the Largest Minority Shareholder in the Global Order? Transcript Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials 20110315_global_order Full Article
de UNITED STATES — The Global Rebalancing and Growth Strategy Debate By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:20:00 -0400 Publication: Think Tank 20: Macroeconomic Policy Interdependence and the G-20 Full Article
de Global Leadership in Transition : Making the G20 More Effective and Responsive By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400 Brookings Institution Press with the Korean Development Institute 2011 353pp. Global Leadership in Transition calls for innovations that "institutionalize" or consolidate the G20, helping to make it the global economy’s steering committee. The emergence of the G20 as the world’s premier forum for international economic cooperation presents an opportunity to improve economic summitry and make global leadership more responsive and effective, a major improvement over the G8 era. The origin of Global Leadership in Transition—which contains contributions from three dozen top experts from all over the world—was a Brookings seminar on issues surrounding the 2010 Seoul G20 summit. That grew into a further conference in Washington and eventually a major symposium in Seoul. “Key contributors to this volume were well ahead of their time in advocating summit meetings of G20 leaders. In this book, they now offer a rich smorgasbord of creative ideas for transforming the G20 from a crisis-management committee to a steering group for the international system that deserves the attention of those who wish to shape the future of global governance.”—C. Randall Henning, American University and the Peterson Institute Contributors: Alan Beattie, Financial Times; Thomas Bernes, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI); Sergio Bitar, former Chilean minister of public works; Paul Blustein, Brookings Institution and CIGI; Barry Carin, CIGI and University of Victoria; Andrew F. Cooper, CIGI and University of Waterloo; Kemal Derviş, Brookings; Paul Heinbecker, CIGI and Laurier University Centre for Global Relations; Oh-Seok Hyun, Korea Development Institute (KDI); Jomo Kwame Sundaram, United Nations; Homi Kharas, Brookings; Hyeon Wook Kim, KDI; Sungmin Kim, Bank of Korea; John Kirton, University of Toronto; Johannes Linn, Brookings and Emerging Markets Forum; Pedro Malan, Itau Unibanco; Thomas Mann, Brookings; Paul Martin, former prime minister of Canada; Simon Maxwell, Overseas Development Institute and Climate and Development Knowledge Network; Jacques Mistral, Institut Français des Relations Internationales; Victor Murinde, University of Birmingham (UK); Pier Carlo Padoan, OECD Paris; Yung Chul Park, Korea University; Stewart Patrick, Council on Foreign Relations; Il SaKong, Presidential Committee for the G20 Summit; Wendy R. Sherman, Albright Stonebridge Group; Gordon Smith, Centre for Global Studies and CIGI; Bruce Stokes, German Marshall Fund; Ngaire Woods, Oxford Blavatnik School of Government; Lan Xue, Tsinghua University (Beijing); Yanbing Zhang, Tsinghua University. ABOUT THE EDITORS Colin I. Bradford Wonhyuk Lim Wonhyuk Lim is director of policy research at the Center for International Development within the Korea Development Institute. He was with the Presidential Transition Committee and the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asia after the 2002 election in Korea. A former fellow with Brookings’s Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, he has written extensively on development and corporate governance issues. Downloads Table of ContentsSample Chapter Ordering Information: {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 978-0-8157-2145-1, $29.95 Add to Cart Full Article
de Eurozone Crisis an Opportunity for G-20 Leaders in Cannes By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:18:00 -0400 Leaders from the world’s largest economies are gathering in Cannes, France for the second round of G-20 talks this year. The most pressing issue on the agenda is the ongoing sovereign debt crisis that is still looming despite a plan to help stabilize the fiscal free fall in Greece. The call from all quarters is for leaders to hammer out an action plan that spurs global growth, promotes investment and facilitates trade. Nonresident Senior Fellow Colin Bradford says dealing with the eurozone debt crisis presents an opportunity for leaders to make a serious commitment to a serious problem. Video 01 bradford g20 Full Article
de World Bank Leadership Should Reflect Emerging Economies By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:32:00 -0400 The U.S. nominee for the World Bank presidency, South Korean-born physician Jim Yong Kim, is one of three candidates for the post, along with Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo. According to Colin Bradford, the presence of several viable candidates—from different parts of the world—for the World Bank presidency means that the entire international community could have a say in selecting the next World Bank president, rather than the U.S. nominee being automatically confirmed. This change in the nominating process, says Bradford, is good for the Bank because it reflects growing demands for representation from emerging economies. Video Change World Bank Nominating Process Full Article
de What Should Sustainable Development Goals Look Like? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 02 May 2012 14:00:00 -0400 Event Information May 2, 20122:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDTSaul/Zilkha RoomsThe Brookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NWWashington, DC 20036 Register for the EventThe Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000 to encourage and monitor global social and economic developments through 2015. This frame has guided international development activities for the past decade and there is now a growing discussion on what the post-2015 international development framework should look like, and how economic, social and environmental pillars of development can be integrated. On May 2, Global Economy and Development at Brookings hosted a discussion on the purpose of new development goals, the trade-offs in selecting specific indicators and the difficulties in integrating alternative development concepts into a single framework. The discussion also examined how events like the Rio+20 conference in Brazil can be used to advance the U.S. global development agenda. Panelists included Andrew Steer, incoming president, World Resources Institute; David Steven, nonresident fellow, Center for International Cooperation, New York University; Richard Morgan, director of Policy, United Nations Children’s Fund; and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Colin Bradford. Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, deputy director of Global Economy and Development, moderated the discussion. Audio What Should Sustainable Development Goals Look Like? Transcript Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials 20120502_sustainable_development Full Article
de Governance innovations for implementing the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 09:00:00 -0400 Event Information March 30, 20159:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDTFalk AuditoriumBrookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Avenue NWWashington, DC 20036 2015 is a crucial year for the international community. For the first time, all nations will converge upon a new set of Sustainable Development Goals applicable to advanced countries, emerging market economies, and developing countries, with the experience of implementing the Millennium Development Goals to build upon. Implementation is the critical component. The Brookings Global Economy and Development program hosted a day-long private conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC on Monday, March 30 to focus on “Governance innovations for implementing the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda.” Hosted in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, this high-level conference drew on experiences from the North-South Helsinki Process on Globalization and Development carried out over the past 15 years. The Helsinki Process presaged many of the prerequisites for achieving accelerated progress by linking goal-setting to goal-implementation and by utilizing multistakeholder processes to mobilize society and financing for social and environmental goals to complement sound economic and financial policies. Download the conference agenda » Download the related report » Download the list of registrants » Download the conference statement » Brookings President Strobe Talbott shakes hands with Finland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Erkki Tuomioja after welcoming participants to the conference. Former President of Finland Tarja Halonen shares insights in the conference’s opening panel. Over 75 conference participants from governments, multilateral institutions, civil society, the private sector, and think tanks participated in a number of roundtable discussions throughout the day. President Halonen and Minister Tuomioja share lessons from the Helsinki process as conference participants consider paths forward for implementing the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Event Materials 330 PostReportFinalConference Agenda_FINALMarch 30 List of RegistrantsConference Statement Brookings Post2015 Implementation Full Article
de The role of multilateral development banks in supporting the post-2015 development agenda By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Sat, 18 Apr 2015 10:00:00 -0400 Event Information April 18, 201510:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDTFalk AuditoriumBrookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.Washington, DC 20036 The year 2015 will be a milestone year, with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda by world leaders in September; the Addis Ababa Accord on financing for development in July; and the conclusion of climate negotiations at COP21 in Paris in December. The draft Addis Ababa Accord, which focuses on the actions needed to attain the SDGs, highlights the key role envisaged for the multilateral development banks (MDBs) in the post-2015 agenda. Paragraph 65 of the draft accord notes: “We call on the international finance institutions to establish a process to examine the role, scale, and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda.” Against this backdrop, on April 18, 2015, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings held a private roundtable with the leaders of the MDBs and other key stakeholders to discuss the role of the MDBs in supporting the post-2015 development agenda. The meeting focused on four questions: What does the post-2015 development agenda and the ambitions of the Addis and Paris conferences imply for the MDBs? Given the ability of the MDBs to leverage shareholder resources, they can be efficient and effective mechanisms for scaling up development cooperation, particularly with respect to the agenda on investing in people and to the financing of sustainable infrastructure. New roles, instruments and partnerships might be needed. How can MDBs best take advantage of the political attention that is being paid to the various conferences in 2015? The World Bank and selected regional development banks have launched a series of initiatives to optimize their balance sheets, address other constraints and enhance their catalytic role in crowding in private finance. And new institutions and mechanisms are coming to the fore. But the responses are not coordinated to best take advantage of each MDB’s comparative advantage. What are the key impediments to scaling up the role and engagement of the MDBs? Views on constraints are likely to differ but discussions should cover policy dialogue, capacity building, capital, leverage, shareholder backing on volume, instruments on leverage and risk mitigation, safeguards, and governance. How should the MDBs respond to the proposal to establish a process to examine the role, scale and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda? A proactive response and engagement on the part of the MDBs would facilitate a better understanding of the contribution that the MDBs can make and greater support among shareholders for a coherent and stepped-up role. Event Materials Participant ListMDB PostEvent Summary Full Article
de Political decisions and institutional innovations required for systemic transformations envisioned in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 08 Sep 2015 11:04:00 -0400 2015 is a pivotal year. Three major workstreams among all the world’s nations are going forward this year under the auspices of the United Nations to develop goals, financing, and frameworks for the “post-2015 sustainable development agenda.” First, after two years of wide-ranging consultation, the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September will endorse a new set of global goals for 2030 to follow on from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that culminate this year. Second, to support this effort, a financing for development (FFD) conference took place in July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to identify innovative ways of mobilizing private and public resources for the massive investments necessary to achieve the new goals. And third, in Paris in December the final negotiating session will complete work on a global climate change framework. These three landmark summits will, with luck, provide the broad strategic vision, the specific goals, and the financing modalities for addressing the full range of systemic threats. Most of all, these three summit meetings will mobilize the relevant stakeholders and actors crucial for implementing the post-2015 agenda—governments, international organizations, business, finance, civil society, and parliaments—into a concerted effort to achieve transformational outcomes. Achieving systemic sustainability is a comprehensive, inclusive effort requiring all actors and all countries to be engaged. These three processes represent a potential historic turning point from “business-as-usual” practices and trends and to making the systemic transformations that are required to avoid transgressing planetary boundaries and critical tipping points. Missing from the global discourse so far is a realistic assessment of the political decisions and institutional innovations that would be required to implement the post-2015 sustainable development agenda (P2015). For 2015, it is necessary is to make sure that by the end of year the three workstreams have been welded together as a singular vision for global systemic transformation involving all countries, all domestic actors, and all international institutions. The worst outcome would be that the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 are seen as simply an extension of the 2015 MDGs—as only development goals exclusively involving developing countries. This outcome would abort the broader purposes of the P2015 agenda to achieve systemic sustainability and to involve all nations and reduce it to a development agenda for the developing world that by itself would be insufficient to make the transformations required. Systemic risks of financial instability, insufficient job-creating economic growth, increasing inequality, inadequate access to education, health, water and sanitation, and electricity, “breaking points” in planetary limits, and the stubborn prevalence of poverty along with widespread loss of confidence of people in leaders and institutions now require urgent attention and together signal the need for systemic transformation. As a result, several significant structural changes in institution arrangements and governance are needed as prerequisites for systemic transformation. These entail (i) political decisions by country leaders and parliaments to ensure societal engagement, (ii) institutional innovations in national government processes to coordinate implementation, (iii) strengthening the existing global system of international institutions to include all actors, (iv) the creation of an international monitoring mechanism to oversee systemic sustainability trajectories, and (v) realize the benefits that would accrue to the entire P2015 agenda by the engagement of the systemically important countries through fuller utilization of G20 leaders summits and finance ministers meetings as enhanced global steering mechanisms toward sustainable development. Each of these changes builds on and depends on each other. I. Each nation makes a domestic commitment to a new trajectory toward 2030 For global goal-setting to be implemented, it is essential that each nation go beyond a formal agreement at the international level to then embark on a national process of deliberation, debate, and decision-making that adapts the global goals to the domestic institutional and cultural context and commits the nation to them as a long-term trajectory around which to organize its own systemic transformation efforts. Such a process would be an explicitly political process involving national leaders, parliaments or rule-making bodies, societal leaders, business executives, and experts to increase public awareness and to guide the public conversation toward an intrinsically national decision which prioritizes the global goals in ways which fit domestic concerns and circumstances. This political process would avoid the “one-size-fits-all” approach and internalize and legitimate each national sustainability trajectory. So far, despite widespread consultation on the SDGs, very little attention has been focused on the follow-up to a formal international agreement on them at the U.N. General Assembly in September 2015. The first step in implementation of the SDGs and the P2015 agenda more broadly is to generate a national commitment to them through a process in which relevant domestic actors modify, adapt, and adopt a national trajectory the embodies the hopes, concerns and priorities of the people of each country. Without this step, it is unlikely that national systemic sustainability trajectories will diverge significantly enough from business-as-usual trends to make a difference. More attention needs to now be given to this crucial first step. And explicit mention of the need for it should appear in the UNGA decisions in New York in September. II. A national government institutional innovation for systemic transformation The key feature of systemic risks is that each risk generates spillover effects that go beyond the confines of the risk itself into other domains. This means that to manage any systemic risk requires broad, inter-disciplinary, multi-sectoral approaches. Most governments have ministries or departments that manage specific sectoral programs in agriculture, industry, energy, health, education, environment, and the like when most challenges now are inter-sectoral and hence inter-ministerial. Furthermore, spillover linkages create opportunities in which integrated approaches to problems can capture intrinsic synergies that generate higher-yield outcomes if sectoral strategies are simultaneous and coordinated. The consequence of spillovers and synergies for national governments is that “whole-of-government” coordinating committees are a necessary institutional innovation to manage effective strategies for systemic transformation. South Korea has used inter-ministerial cabinet level committees that include private business and financial executives as a means of addressing significant interconnected issues or problems requiring multi-sectoral approaches. The Korea Presidential Committee on Green Growth, which contained more than 20 ministers and agency heads with at least as many private sector leaders, proved to be an extremely effective means of implementing South Korea’s commitment to green growth. III. A single global system of international institutions The need for a single mechanism for coordinating the global system of international institutions to implement the P2015 agenda of systemic transformation is clear. However, there are a number of other larger reasons why the forging of such a mechanism is crucial now. The Brettons Woods era is over. It was over even before the initiative by China to establish the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Beijing and the New Development Bank (NDB) in Shanghai. It was over because of the proliferation in recent years of private and official agencies and actors in development cooperation and because of the massive growth in capital flows that not only dwarf official development assistance (concessional foreign aid) but also IMF resources in the global financial system. New donors are not just governments but charities, foundations, NGOs, celebrities, and wealthy individuals. New private sources of financing have mushroomed with new forms of sourcing and new technologies. The dominance of the IMF and the World Bank has declined because of these massive changes in the context. The emergence of China and other emerging market economies requires acknowledgement as a fact of life, not as a marginal change. China in particular deserves to be received into the world community as a constructive participant and have its institutions be part of the global system of international institutions, not apart from it. Indeed, China’s Premier, Li Keqiang, stated at the World Economic Forum in early 2015 that “the world order established after World War II must be maintained, not overturned.” The economic, social and environmental imperatives of this moment are that the world’s people and the P2015 agenda require that all international institutions of consequence be part of a single coordinated effort over the next 15 years to implement the post-2015 agenda for sustainable development. The geopolitical imperatives of this moment also require that China and China’s new institutions be thoroughly involved as full participants and leaders in the post-2015 era. If nothing else, the scale of global investment and effort to build and rebuild infrastructure requires it. It is also the case that the post-2015 era will require major replenishments in the World Bank and existing regional development banks, and significantly stronger coordination among them to address global infrastructure investment needs in which the AIIB and the NDB must now be fully involved. The American public and the U.S. Congress need to fully grasp the crucial importance for the United States, of the IMF quota increase and governance reform. These have been agreed to by most governments but their implementation is stalled in the U.S. Congress. To preserve the IMF’s role in the global financial system and the role of the U.S. in the international community, the IMF quota increase and IMF governance reform must be passed and put into practice. Congressional action becomes all the more necessary as the effort is made to reshape the global system of international institutions to accommodate new powers and new institutions within a single system rather than stumble into a fragmented, fractured, and fractious global order where differences prevail over common interests. The IMF cannot carry out its significant responsibility for global financial stability without more resources. Other countries cannot add to IMF resources proportionately without U.S. participation in the IMF quota increase. Without the US contribution, IMF members will have to fund the IMF outside the regular IMF quota system, which means de-facto going around the United States and reducing dramatically the influence of the U.S. in the leadership of the IMF. This is a self-inflicted wound on the U.S., which will damage U.S. credibility, weaken the IMF, and increase the risk of global financial instability. By blocking the IMF governance reforms in the IMF agreed to by the G-20 in 2010, the U.S. is single-handedly blocking the implementation of the enlargement of voting shares commensurate with increased emerging market economic weights. This failure to act is now widely acknowledged by American thought leaders to be encouraging divergence rather than convergence in the global system of institutions, damaging U.S. interests. IV. Toward a single monitoring mechanism for the global system of international institutions The P2015 agenda requires a big push toward institutionalizing a single mechanism for the coordination of the global system of international institutions. The international coordination arrangement today, is the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation created at the Busan High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2011. This arrangement, which recognizes the increasingly complex context and the heightened tensions between emerging donor countries and traditional western donors, created a loose network of country platforms, regional arrangements, building blocks and forums to pluralize the architecture to reflect the increasingly complex set of agents and actors. This was an artfully arranged compromise, responding to the contemporary force field four years ago. Now is a different moment. The issues facing the world are both systemic and urgent; they are not confined to the development of developing countries, and still less to foreign aid. Geopolitical tensions are, if anything, higher now than then. But they also create greater incentives to find areas of cooperation and consensus among major powers who have fundamentally different perspectives on other issues. Maximizing the sweet spots where agreement and common interest can prevail is now of geopolitical importance. Gaining agreement on institutional innovations to guide the global system of international institutions in the P2015 era would be vital for effective outcomes but also importantly ease geopolitical tensions. Measurement matters; monitoring and evaluation is a strategic necessity to implementing any agenda, and still more so, an agenda for systemic transformation. As a result, the monitoring and evaluation system that accompanies the P2015 SDGs will be crucial to guiding the implementation of them. The UN, the OECD, the World Bank, and the IMF all have participated in joint data gathering efforts under the IDGs in the 1990s and the MDGs in the 2000s. Each of these institutions has a crucial role to play, but they need to be brought together now under one umbrella to orchestrate their contributions to a comprehensive global data system and to help the G20 finance ministers coordinate their functional programs. The OECD has established a strong reputation in recent years for standard setting in a variety of dimensions of the global agenda. Given the strong role of the OECD in relation to the G20 and its broad outreach to “Key Partners” among the emerging market economies, the OECD could be expected to take a strong role in global benchmarking and monitoring and evaluation of the P2015 Agenda. The accession of China to the OECD Development Centre, which now has over fifty member countries, and the presence and public speech of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the OECD on July 1st, bolsters the outreach of the OECD and its global profile. But national reporting is the centerpiece and the critical dimension of monitoring and evaluation. To guide the national reporting systems and evaluate their results, a new institutional arrangement is needed that is based on national leaders with responsibility for implementation of the sustainable development agendas from each country and is undertaken within the parameters of the global SDGs and the P2015 benchmarks. V. Strengthening global governance and G20 roles G-20 leaders could make a significant contribution to providing the impetus toward advancing systemic sustainability by creating a G-20 Global Sustainable Development Council charged with pulling together the national statistical indicators and implementing benchmarks on the SDGs in G-20 countries. The G-20 Global Sustainable Development Council (G-20 GSDC) would consist of the heads of the presidential committees on sustainable development charged with coordinating P2015 implementation in G-20 countries. Representing systemically important countries, they would also be charged with assessing the degree to which national policies and domestic efforts by G20 countries generate positive or negative spillover effects for the rest of the world. This G-20 GSDC would also contribute to the setting of standards for the global monitoring effort, orchestrated perhaps by the OECD, drawing on national data bases from all countries using the capacities of the international institutions to generate understanding of global progress toward systemic sustainability. The UN is not in a position to coordinate the global system of international institutions in their functional roles in global sustainable development efforts. The G-20 itself could take steps through the meetings of G-20 Finance Ministers to guide the global system of international institutions in the implementation phase of the P2015 agenda to begin in 2016. The G-20 already has a track record in coordinating international institutions in the response to the global financial crisis in 2008 and its aftermath. The G-20 created the Financial Stability Board (FSB), enlarged the resources for the IMF, agreed to reform the IMF’s governance structure, orchestrated relations between the IMF and the FSB, brought the OECD into the mainstream of G-20 responsibilities and has bridged relations with the United Nations by bringing in finance ministers to the financing for development conference in Addis under Turkey’s G-20 leadership. There is a clear need to coordinate the financing efforts of the IMF, with the World Bank and the other regional multilateral development banks (RMDBs), with the AIIB and the BRICS NDB, and with other public and private sector funding sources, and to assess the global institutional effort as whole in relation to the P2015 SDG trajectories. The G-20 Finance Ministers grouping would seem to be uniquely positioned to be an effective and credible means of coordinating these otherwise disparate institutional efforts. The ECOSOC Development Cooperation Forum and the Busuan Global Partnership provide open inclusive space for knowledge sharing and consultation but need to be supplemented by smaller bodies capable of making decisions and providing strategic direction. Following the agreements reached in the three U.N. workstreams for 2015, the China G-20 could urge the creation of a formal institutionalized global monitoring and coordinating mechanism at the China G-20 Summit in September 2016. By having the G-20 create a G-20 Global Sustainable Development Council (G-20 GSDC), it could build on the national commitments to SDG trajectories to be made next year by U.N. members countries and on the newly formed national coordinating committees established by governments to implement the P2015 Agenda, giving the G-20 GSDC functional effectiveness, clout and credibility. Whereas there is a clear need to compensate for the sized-biased representation of the G20 with still more intensive G-20 outreach and inclusion, including perhaps eventually considering shifting to a constituency based membership, for now the need in this pivotal year is to use the momentum to make political decisions and institutional innovations which will crystallize the P2015 strategic vision toward systemic sustainability into mechanisms and means of implementation. By moving forward on these recommendations, the G-20 Leaders Summits would be strengthened by involving G-20 leaders in the people-centered P2015 Agenda, going beyond finance to issues closer to peoples’ homes and hearts. Systemically important countries would be seen as leading on systemically important issues. The G-20 Finance Ministers would be seen as playing an appropriate role by serving as the mobilizing and coordinating mechanism for the global system of international institutions for the P2015 Agenda. And the G-20 GSDC would become the effective focal point for assessing systemic sustainability not only within G20 countries but also in terms of their positive and negative spillover effects on systemic sustainability paths of other countries, contributing to standard setting and benchmarking for global monitoring and evaluation. These global governance innovations could re-energize the G20 and provide the international community with the leadership, the coordination and the monitoring capabilities that it needs to implement the P2015 Agenda. Conclusion As the MDGs culminate this year, as the three U.N. workstreams on SDGs, FFD, and UNFCC are completed, the world needs to think ahead to the implementation phase of the P2015 sustainable development agenda. Given the scale and scope of the P2015 agenda, these five governance innovations need to be focused on now so they can be put in place in 2016. These will ensure (i) that national political commitments and engagement by all countries are made by designing, adopting, and implementing their own sustainable development trajectories and action plans; (ii) that national presidential committees are established, composed of key ministers and private sector leaders to coordinate each country’s comprehensive integrated sustainability strategy; (iii) that all governments and international institutions are accepted by and participate in a single global system of international institutions; (iv) that a G-20 monitoring mechanism be created by the China G-20 in September 2016 that is comprised of the super-minister officials heading the national presidential coordinating committees implementing the P2015 agenda domestically in G-20 countries, as a first step; and (v) that the G-20 Summit leaders in Antalya in November 2015 and in China in September 2016 make clear their own commitment to the P2015 agenda and their responsibility for its adaption, adoption and implementation internally in their countries but also for assessing G-20 spillover impacts on the rest of the world, as well as for deploying their G-20 finance ministers to mobilize and coordinate the global system of international institutions toward achieving the P2015 agenda. Without these five structural changes, it will be more likely that most countries and actors will follow current trends rather than ratchet up to the transformational trajectories necessary to achieve systemic sustainability nationally and globally by 2030. References Ye Yu, Xue Lei and Zha Xiaogag, “The Role of Developing Countries in Global Economic Governance---With a Special Analysis on China’s Role”, UNDP, Second High-level Policy Forum on Global Governance: Scoping Papers, (Beijing: UNDP, October 2014). Zhang Haibing, “A Critique of the G-20’s Role in UN’s post-2015 Development Agenda”, in Catrina Schlager and Chen Dongxiao (eds), China and the G-20: The Interplay between an Emerging Power and an Emerging Institution, (Shanghai: Shanghai Institutes for International Studies [SIIS] and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung [FES], 2015) 290-208. Global Review, (Shanghai: SIIS, 2015,) 97-105. Colin I. Bradford, “Global Economic Governance and the Role International Institutions”, UNDP, Second High-level Policy Forum on Global Governance: Scoping Papers, (Beijing: UNDP, October 2014). Colin I. Bradford, “Action implications of focusing now on implementation of the post-2015 agenda.”, (Washington: The Brookings Institution, Global Economy and Development paper, September 2015). Colin I. Bradford, “Systemic Sustainability as the Strategic Imperative for the Future”, (Washington: The Bookings Institution, Global Economy and Development paper; September 2015). Wonhyuk Lim and Richard Carey, “Connecting Up Platforms and Processes for Global Development to 2015 and Beyond: What can the G-20 do to improve coordination and deliver development impact?”, (Paris: OECD Paper, February 2013). Xiaoyun Li and Richard Carey, “The BRICS and the International Development System: Challenge and Convergence”, (Sussex: Institute for Development Studies, Evidence Report No. 58, March 2014). Xu Jiajun and Richard Carey, “China’s Development Finance: Ambition, Impact and Transparency,” (Sussex : Institute for Development Studies, IDS Policy Brief, 2015). Soogil Young, “Domestic Actions for Implementing Integrated Comprehensive Strategies: Lessons from Korea’s Experience with Its Green Growth Strategy”, Washington: Paper for the Brookings conference on “Governance Innovations to Implement the Post-2015 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, March 30, 2015). Authors Colin I. BradfordHaibing Zhang Full Article
de Japan’s G-7 and China’s G-20 chairmanships: Bridges or stovepipes in leader summitry? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 10:00:00 -0400 Event Information April 18, 201610:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDTFalk AuditoriumBrookings Institution1775 Massachusetts Avenue NWWashington, DC 20036 Register for the EventIn an era of fluid geopolitics and geoeconomics, challenges to the global order abound: from ever-changing terrorism, to massive refugee flows, a stubbornly sluggish world economy, and the specter of global pandemics. Against this backdrop, the question of whether leader summitry—either the G-7 or G-20 incarnations—can supply needed international governance is all the more relevant. This question is particularly significant for East Asia this year as Japan and China, two economic giants that are sometimes perceived as political rivals, respectively host the G-7 and G-20 summits. On April 18, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and the Project on International Order and Strategy co-hosted a discussion on the continued relevancy and efficacy of the leader summit framework, Japan’s and China’s priorities as summit hosts, and whether these East Asian neighbors will hold parallel but completely separate summits or utilize these summits as an opportunity to cooperate on issues of mutual, and global, interest. Join the conversation on Twitter using #G7G20Asia Audio Japan’s G-7 and China’s G-20 chairmanships: Bridges or stovepipes in leader summitry? Transcript Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf) Event Materials 20160418_g7g20_transcript Full Article
de The Iran nuclear deal: Prelude to proliferation in the Middle East? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Robert Einhorn and Richard Nephew analyze the impact of the Iran deal on prospects for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East in their new monograph. Full Article
de What the U.S. can do to guard against a proliferation cascade in the Middle East By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 When Iran and the P5+1 signed a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program last July, members of Congress, Middle East analysts, and Arab Gulf governments all warned that the agreement would prompt Iran’s rivals in the region to race for the bomb. The likelihood of a proliferation cascade in the Middle East is fairly low, but not zero. Given that, here are steps that leaders in Washington should take to head off that possibility. Full Article Uncategorized
de Missile defense—Would the Kremlin pitch a deal? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Moscow is not happy about the newly operational missile interceptor site in Romania, nor the installation in progress in Poland. The Iran nuclear deal could open a possibility for reconsidering the SM-3 deployment plans. To get there, however, the Kremlin should offer something in the arms control field of interest to Washington and NATO. Full Article Uncategorized
de The Iran deal and regional nuclear proliferation risks, explained By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Was the Iran nuclear deal, signed last summer, a prelude to proliferation across the Middle East? This is a question that Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Einhorn and Non-resident Senior Fellow Richard Nephew explore in a new report. At an event to discuss their findings, Einhorn and Nephew argued that none of the Middle East’s “likely suspects” appears both inclined and able to acquire indigenous nuclear weapons capability in the foreseeable future. They also outlined policy options for the United States and other members of the P5+1. Full Article Uncategorized
de The Iran deal: Off to an encouraging start, but expect challenges By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 We can say the nuclear deal is off to a promising start, writes Bob Einhorn. Still, it is already clear that the path ahead will not always be smooth, the longevity of the deal cannot be taken for granted, and keeping it on track will require constant focus in Washington and other interested capitals. Full Article Uncategorized
de The Iran deal, one year out: What Brookings experts are saying By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 14 Jul 2016 13:54:00 +0000 How has the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—signed between the P5+1 and Iran one year ago—played out in practice? Several Brookings scholars, many of whom participated prominently in debates last year as the deal was reaching its final stages, offered their views. Full Article Uncategorized
de Macri’s macro: The meandering road to stability and growth By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 04:00:17 +0000 Summary Federico Sturzenegger reviews the various macroeconomic stabilization programs implemented under the Macri presidency, seeking to shed light on what went wrong and what monetary and fiscal policy lessons can be learned from the experience in Argentina. Citation Sturzenegger, Federico. 2019. "Macri's Macro: The meandering road to stability and growth" BPEA Conference Draft, Fall. Conflict… Full Article
de Inflation dynamics: Dead, dormant, or determined abroad? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 04:00:53 +0000 Summary Kristin Forbes explores whether growing globalization has played a role in inflation over the last decade, finding that its role in determining CPI inflation dynamics has increased since the financial crisis. Forbes argues that a better treatment of globalization in inflation models will help improve forecasts and could help explain the growing wedge between… Full Article
de Policies and payoffs to addressing America’s college graduation deficit By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 04:00:56 +0000 SUMMARY Christopher Avery, Jessica Howell, Matea Pender, and Bruce Sacerdote, analyze state policies to increase four-year college completion rates, concluding that increased spending at all public colleges and targeted elimination of tuition and fees at four-year public colleges for income-eligible students are the most cost-effective options, while free community college is the least effective—finding it… Full Article
de Declining worker power and American economic performance By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 19 Mar 2020 01:01:01 +0000 A decline in workers’ power, rather than an increase in corporations’ monopoly power, likely explains the co-existence of four significant trends in the U.S. economy since the early 1980s: a declining share of national income going to labor, increased market values of corporations, low average unemployment, and low inflation, says a paper to be discussed… Full Article
de Does the US tax code favor automation? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 19 Mar 2020 01:01:46 +0000 The U.S. tax code systematically favors investments in robots and software over investments in people, suggests, a paper to be discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity conference March 19. The result is too much automation that destroys jobs while only marginally improving efficiency. The paper—Does the U.S. Tax Code Favor Automation by Daron… Full Article
de Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 19:01:24 +0000 How Trump has used the federal government to promote conservative policies The presidency of Donald Trump has been unique in many respects—most obviously his flamboyant personal style and disregard for conventional niceties and factual information. But one area hasn’t received as much attention as it deserves: Trump’s use of the “administrative presidency,” including executive orders… Full Article
de In defense of centrists By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 15:35:29 +0000 In a recent New York Times column, Paul Krugman rightly charges Republicans with hypocrisy for espousing fiscal responsibility while adding trillions to the national debt, but adds “my anger isn’t mostly directed at Republicans; it’s directed at their enablers, professional centrists…” I rise to the defense of the centrists. I consider myself a moderate Democrat,… Full Article
de (De)stabilizing the ACA’s individual market: A view from the states By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 19:54:25 +0000 The Affordable Care Act (ACA), through the individual health insurance markets, provided coverage for millions of Americans who could not get health insurance coverage through their employer or public programs. However, recent actions taken by the federal government, including Congress’s repeal of the individual mandate penalty, have led to uncertainty about market conditions for 2019.… Full Article
de To unite a divided nation, we must tackle both vertical and horizontal inequality By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 05 Nov 2019 14:00:10 +0000 America was once a country defined by our confident self-perception that we sometimes called “American exceptionalism.” Our “can-do” spirit helped us win two world wars, land on the moon, invent much of the world’s economy, and create a working class that was the envy of the world. Now we wonder whether we are a nation… Full Article
de Divided We Fall By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 06 Feb 2018 17:22:11 +0000 Partisan warfare and gridlock in Washington threaten to squander America’s opportunity to show the world that democracy can solve serious economic problems and ensure widely shared prosperity. Instead of working together to meet the challenges ahead—an aging work force, exploding inequality, climate change, rising debt—our elected leaders are sabotaging our economic future by blaming and… Full Article
de Renovating democracy: Governing in the age of globalization and digital capitalism By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 18 Sep 2019 20:13:04 +0000 The rise of populism in the West and the rise of China in the East have stirred a debate about the role of democracy in the international system. The impact of globalization and digital capitalism is forcing worldwide attention to the starker divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” challenging how we think about the… Full Article
de The African leadership transitions tracker: A tool for assessing what leadership change means for development By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Editor's Note: In this blog, Vera Songwe introduces the African Leadership Transitions Tracker, a new interactive that aims to start a broader conversation about leadership transitions and what they mean for the region and beyond. On March 28, Nigerians voters will go to the polls to participate in their nation’s fifth election since the military… Full Article Uncategorized
de African Leadership Transitions Tracker By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 17:07:00 +0000 The African Leadership Transitions Tracker (ALTT) is an interactive feature that factually recounts and visually presents changes at the head of state level in every African country from independence or end of the colonial period to the present. The interactive application aims to start a broader conversation about leadership transitions and what they mean for… Full Article
de From father to son: Africa’s leadership transitions and lessons By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 Last week, Togo, a country of over 7 million people, voted for incumbent President Faure Gnassingbé for a third time. Gnassingbé is the son and immediate successor of Togo’s fifth president—Gnassingbé Eyadema—and, once he serves out his third term, his family will have run Togo for 48 years. In light of this latest development and… Full Article Uncategorized
de Dealing with a nuclear-armed North Korea By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 04 Oct 2016 16:13:17 +0000 Executive Summary Pyongyang’s latest nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests have underscored North Korea’s growing threat to the United States and its allies and have fueled a rising sense of urgency inside the Obama administration. Future nuclear and missile developments, together with North Korea’s threats to use these weapons, will soon present the next U.S. […] Full Article
de Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Promoting Public Service to America’s Youth By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: In the coming years, the federal government will need to hire more than 200,000 highly skilled workers for a range of critical jobs. In order to fill this hiring gap, young people, who have the right skills and background must be drawn into public service. The government is attracting many outstanding candidates, but the recruitment… Full Article
de Enterprise Leadership: The Essential Framework for Today’s Government Leaders By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Government leaders increasingly face complex problems that demand collaborative interagency solutions. Almost all of the major challenges confronting government today – from cyber security and food safety to veterans' homelessness and global climate change – require leaders at all levels that can coordinate resources beyond their immediate control. A new compilation of essays, Tackling Wicked Government Problems:… Full Article
de Shareholders get a louder voice By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Tue, 03 Mar 2015 09:00:00 -0500 Publicly traded companies in the U.S. provide their shareholders with a voice on who runs the company. But corporate governance is not like a political democracy where voters usually choose between two candidates. The company's slate of directors is typically the only one presented to its shareholders who have a limited choice - vote for the company's slate or withhold their votes. Recently, however, the director election process has begun to become more democratic. This is happening gradually on an individual company basis under Delaware law, and not by a federal rule applicable to all publicly traded companies. In the United States, the traditional rule is that a company's current board nominates its slate of directors for the next annual election. Then the company foots the bill to prepare and solicit proxies for this slate from all the company's shareholders, typically mailing them ballots. Although shareholders may nominate their own candidate to be a director, they must bear the entire expense of preparing and distributing proxy materials to all the company's shareholders. For large publicly traded companies, this expense is so high that it effectively prevents most shareholders from making director nominations (unless someone is waging a proxy fight for control). In an effort to help even the playing field, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2010 adopted the "proxy access" rule, which would have allowed certain shareholders to nominate less than a majority of a company's directors. Then these shareholder nominees would have to be included in the company's proxy materials along with its slate of proposed directors. However, the SEC rule was struck down by the DC Court of Appeals on procedural grounds. While the SEC has not proposed a revised proxy access rule, Delaware law now permits companies chartered in that state to adopt a bylaw authorizing shareholder nominations (the charters of most large American companies are registered in Delaware because of its favorable corporate laws). Thus, Delaware law now provides a mechanism for a large company to allow proxy access under conditions acceptable to that company and its shareholders. On February 6 of this year, General Electric led the way by adopting a bylaw allowing shareholders to nominate a few directors if these shareholders held at least 3 percent of the company's voting shares for at least three years. Given the size and prominence of General Electric, it is a signal event – many companies should follow suit. More broadly, this 3+3 approach of General Electric is being advocated by officials at New York City's pension plan (NYCers), which holds over $160 billion in assets. NYCers has submitted "advisory" shareholder resolutions to 75 public companies in which it holds shares. While these resolutions are not binding on the company, they carry significant weight if approved by a substantial majority of voting shareholders. In response, Whole Foods has proposed to allow director nominations by shareholders owning at least 9 percent of their shares for at least 5 years. After a series of complex legal moves, the SEC has declined to permit Whole Foods to exclude the 3+3 proposal because the company is making a different proposal on the same subject. The SEC's non-decision, together with General Electric's dramatic move, reopens the debate on the pros and cons of proxy access. Here are some of the key arguments and counterarguments. Company officials worry that proxy access will lead to special interest groups hijacking boards for their own purposes. But shareholder advocates say that the hijacking scenario is unlikely because of the 3 percent ownership threshold and the need to garner over 50 percent of shareholder votes for their nominees. Company officials believe that shareholders would be confused if there were more than one set of directors nominated in the same proxy materials. But shareholder advocates can show how proxy materials can be easily understood by clearly separating company and shareholder nominees. Shareholder advocates believe that proxy access is likely to increase constructive engagement between company directors and their large institutional shareholders. But company officials are concerned that proxy access will disrupt the election process and lead to dissension among directors. Shareholder advocates point out that in countries like Australia and United Kingdom that do have proxy access, it is used sparingly by large shareholders. But company officials emphasize that the U.S. is a much more adversarial society, with more aggressive tactics by activist hedge funds and others. We cannot resolve these arguments and counterarguments on proxy access in the abstract. Instead, though actions of companies like General Electric and shareholders like the New York City pension plan, we will be able to examine the actual effects of various methods and conditions for shareholders to nominate directors. Let’s see what happens on the ground. Authors Robert C. Pozen Full Article
de Is Business Experience Enough to Be President? By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Thu, 14 May 2015 11:30:00 -0400 How to react to presidential candidates who are running, in part or wholly, on their experience in private business? It’s impossible for anyone to come into the White House with all the skills required to be a good president. We can know that key traits include intelligence, both cognitive and emotional; self-confidence; and decisiveness. Also needed are the ability to communicate; to listen and learn; to delegate; to recognize problems–and a sense of humor and humility. Candidates’ stands on the issues are critical in primaries and in the general election, but I suspect that the views of many independent voters–whose ranks are growing–may not be as intensely held as those of partisan voters. Given Americans’ widespread frustration with traditional politicians, it is understandable why a few candidates with at least some business experience have entered the fray. Having run a business exposes one to how government affects the private sector, which is the engine of economic growth and drives improvements in living standards. But running a private-sector business is very different from heading a federal government that employs millions, and that takes in and spends trillions, while also dealing with a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues, many of which demand immediate attention. These things require dexterity–and the combined challenges are ones that no business ever comes close to dealing with. (Probably the closest experience to the presidency is running a large state. But even then, no governor has had to confront the range of foreign policy challenges facing the president.) A critical difference between running a business and government is that CEOs can usually make sure that their orders are carried out; and if they’re not, those who didn’t do their jobs can be fired. Imagine a president tried working with Congress that way. “My way or the highway” won’t cut it. One might think that military leaders would face the same problem, but successful generals, especially in recent times, have had to develop and hone political skills as well as knowing how to fight. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower is now regarded as a good president not only because of his military experience but because he also was a politician-administrator while commanding allied forces during World War II. George Washington had both a military and business background, but he was a politician too–and the government he oversaw wasn’t much larger than his (substantial) private business. Some 2016 voters will cast ballots based on particular issues. But for others, particularly those who believe this country is on the wrong track, a candidate running on his or her business background in an effort to stand out from the pack is not likely to have the qualifications most important to being a successful president. Authors Robert E. Litan Publication: The Wall Street Journal Image Source: © Reuters Photographer / Reuters Full Article
de What must corporate directors do? Maximizing shareholder value versus creating value through team production By webfeeds.brookings.edu Published On :: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400 In our latest 21st Century Capitalism initiative paper, "What must corporate directors do? Maximizing shareholder value versus creating value through team production," author Margaret M. Blair explores how the share value maximization norm (or the “short-termism” malady) came to dominate, why it is wrong, and why the “team production” approach provides a better basis for governing corporations over the long term. Blair reviews the legal and economic theories behind the share-value maximization norm, and then lays out a theory of corporate law building on the economics of team production. Blair demonstrates how the team production theory recognizes that creating wealth for society as a whole requires recognizing the importance of all of the participants in a corporate enterprise, and making sure that all share in the expanding pie so that they continue to collaborate to create wealth. Arguing that the corporate form itself helps solve the team production problem, Blair details five features which distinguish corporations from other organizational forms: Legal personality Limited liability Transferable shares Management under a Board of Directors Indefinite existence Blair concludes that these five characteristics are all problematic from a principal-agent point of view where shareholders are principals. However, the team production theory makes sense out of these arrangements. This theory provides a rationale for the role of corporate directors consistent with the role that boards of directors historically understood themselves to play: balancing competing interests so the whole organization stays productive. Downloads Download the paper Authors Margaret M. Blair Full Article