How Nancy Birdsall’s time at Yale Economic Growth Center helped her rethink global development
In the 1970s, Birdsall arrived at EGC as an untraditional economics student. Driven by a commitment to independent, policy-based research, she would go on to change how rich countries and the powerful institutions they control approach global development.
The world’s most powerful players in international development should be accountable – but to whom? Whom do they actually serve?
In 2001, Nancy Birdsall (PhD ’79) sought to address these questions when she co-founded the Center for Global Development. Under her leadership, the think tank became a leading authority on economic development, helping reform large multilateral organizations, shaping US development and aid policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and measuring and reporting on other rich country development programs – from aid to trade, migration, and climate policies.
Beyond founding CGD, Birdsall is known widely for her contributions to the field of international development, calling attention to the reality of asymmetric economic growth among countries and its implication of increased global inequality; introducing Cash-on-Delivery (or outcomes-based) foreign aid; and analyzing the successes and shortcomings of the Washington Consensus, a set of market-oriented economic principles widely adopted throughout Latin America in the 1980s and 90s following the debt crisis.
Yet, despite her mainstream success, Birdsall began her career as an economist on an unconventional path. After a liberal arts education (a BA in American Studies and an MA in international affairs), she became interested in economics while working at the Smithsonian Institution. Specifically, her work there was in a USAID-funded program supporting developing country scholars working on population issues. She then honed her quantitative skills as a Ph.D. student at Yale and the Economic Growth Center (EGC).
During her time at Yale, she witnessed a transformative era for the field of economic development. The traditional approach of studying national accounts and the structure of economies was expanding to bring both newly available household data and an emphasis on econometric methods to analyses of microeconomic topics like household decision-making.
It was here Birdsall gained an appreciation for the independent and unbiased policy-based research that would feature heavily in nearly every aspect of her career, from her time at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to founding the Center for Global Development.