Blog - Center for International Private Enterprise

With More People Than Ever Online, Internet Freedom Continues to Decline

Out of the three billion internet users today around the world, most live in countries where the internet is not free. According to Freedom House's latest report, Freedom on the Net 2015, which examined internet freedom in 65 countries, global internet freedom has declined for the fifth year in a ...

Benchmarking Public Procurement

Did you know that public procurement -- goods and services bought by governments -- accounts for around one-fifth of global GDP? Or that in most high-income economies public procurement takes up a third of total public spending, and in developing countries even more – about half? These figures ...

Ready or Not? Assessing Change Readiness is Crucial for Implementation of the SDGs

By Stephanie Bandyk and Laura Van Voorhees As the U.N. General Assembly delegates return to their countries after setting the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda, members now face the task of making this ambitious set of goals a reality. Despite the rigor put into crafting the goals a...

The Voice of Youth in Economic Policymaking

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of presenting at the 2015 Global Youth Economic Summit in Washington, DC, where over 450 leaders and practitioners from 50 countries came together. The theme of the overall summit was “Scale in Practice,” and it examined how best to design youth ec...

Property Rights are Human Rights: How Land Titles Support Self-Determination for Indigenous People

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Okanagan Aboriginal Leader and President of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, was photographed with a broad smile on his face the day of the unanimous Canadian Supreme Court ruling granting the Tsilhqot’in First Nation in Canada title to 1,700-square-ki...

The Real Problem for Intra-African Trade

This post is continuation of a previous article on regional integration in Africa. Reducing tariffs is a great start for increasing trade within Africa, but important non-tariff barriers (NTBs) must also be reduced in order to boost trade both within and outside of the continent. In fact, the Unite...

Can Regional Integration Help Africa Reach Its Economic Potential?

Much of the discussion at last year's landmark U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, DC, focused on transatlantic trade and investment between the U.S. and African countries – for example, the need to renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which aims to promote trade with the U.S. by ...

Tunisia’s Nobel Peace Prize: Keeping the Boat Sailing

When I heard about the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Tunisia, my first reaction was happiness – they deserve it. Not just the members of the Quartet who were the recipients, but every Tunisian participating in this grand democracy experiment. I have worked in places that never got this far, desp...

Carrots Before Sticks

This post originally appeared on the SCCE Compliance & Ethics blog. I was truly honored to attend this year's Compliance and Ethics Institute (CEI) in Las Vegas, and to present with my colleague Frank Brown, CIPE's experience with motivating mid-sized businesses in emerging markets to launch ...

Will Argentina’s First-Ever Presidential Debate Help Change Politics for the Better?

When the lights went down and the countdown to going live on the air began, everyone in the room knew they were witnessing history — the first ever debate among presidential candidates in Argentina. It was a long, hard negotiation process that brought the candidates to the debate table. The deb...