HKS Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government

In 2000, Sub-Saharan Africa was deemed to be too risky for many to invest in. Today, the continent has entered the investment mainstream. Africa's growth is increasingly broad-based and domestically driven. Around a third of GDP growth is generated in the natural resources sector, with the rest coming from a range of other sectors such as manufacturing, construction and services. Growing domestic consumption and a burgeoning middle class are creating a boom across the retail, technology and financial services sectors, further enabling economic diversification, job creation and growth.

As policy makers and businesses intensify their focus on encouraging more inclusive and sustainable growth across the region, a growing number of businesses are moving beyond traditional philanthropic and social investment approaches to doing their core business in ways that directly benefit both the poor and their own strategic and competitive business goals.

The evidence is clear and compelling. Supporting women's economic empowerment is one of the best investments we can make. It improves development outcomes. It strengthens the quality of policy making. And it makes good business sense to harness the potential of women as directors, executives, employees, entrepreneurs and consumers. Yet, in most countries women remain under-represented and inadequately empowered as economic actors who have equal voices, choices and opportunities with men.

This report is written on the occasion of the second annual Mobile Money Summit, held June 23-24, 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. The Summit provided an opportunity to take stock of the industry in the year since the inaugural Mobile Money Summit held in May 2008 in Cairo, Egypt. It is clear that, in this time, the industry has grown significantly in scope and sophistication. While the number of deployed mobile money initiatives more than doubled in the last year, reaching more than 120, the challenges of realizing mobile money's full potential - as a market opportunity and as a poverty alleviation tool - have also become better understood.

On 20-21 November 2008, the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and Oxfam American jointly hosted a consultation entitled: 'Access to Remedies for Corporate Human Rights Impacts: Improving Non-judicial Mechanisms'. The consultation was a contribution to the work on access to remedy of the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie and follows two previous consultations on non-judicial grievance mechanisms in 2007. (Work on access to remedy through judicial mechanisms is the subject of separate work under the mandate.)

The forty participants at the event included individuals from a broad range of backgrounds with some expertise in the issues under discussion. They came from academic institutions, international organisations, business, NGOs, government, ADR organisations and law firms. The list of participants is attached. Discussions were conducted under the Chatham House Rule requiring that comments not be attributed to specific speakers. The hosts are endebted to Foley Hoag for providing the venue and refreshments for the event in Boston and to the UK Government for funding NGO participation.

While rapid advances in generative AI (GenAI) present significant opportunities for productivity and growth, they also risk displacing workers and deepening income inequality, particularly by increasing the relative returns to capital compared to labor. In this paper, we review current policy proposals to address these risks, noting their potential benefits as well as fiscal and implementation challenges. We complement this review with simulations estimating the fiscal impact of GenAI across OECD countries, under various unemployment and growth scenarios. We then propose a complementary policy approach: enhancing individual capital income through increased household savings and targeted financial tools. We argue that this approach can help workers manage economic transitions, reduce fiscal pressures, and promote a more equitable distribution of AI-driven capital gains. Using comparative data from OECD countries, we identify nations likely to benefit most from such policies—especially those with low household savings, limited social protection, and aging populations. We also highlight key target populations, including workers with limited access to welfare, such as the self-employed in certain countries.

As Prime Coalition nears a decade of investment activity, it is a critical moment in time for the organization to reflect on its unique position in the catalytic capital climate investing space, assess its impact to date and re-commit to a bold ambition to contribute to a sustainable and inclusive future.

Thoughtful catalytic capital deployment will be key in mitigating emissions and facilitating adaptation to climate change. However, it also has a critical role to play in addressing the disparate burdens caused by climate change on vulnerable communities and considering opportunities to reduce social disparities. At a unique moment in time in which climate action is more critical than ever and where an increasing number of players are allocating funds to support the climate transition, catalytic capital funds deploying resources toward climate solutions have an opportunity to wrestle with issues of climate justice and equity more comprehensively as they implement their impact mandate.

For Prime Coalition, an optimal strategy balances people and planet and goes beyond solely considering GHG emissions reductions to incorporate equity considerations. Only with this dual focus and mandate will the transition toward a sustainable future bring about more inclusive and just societies. This research analysis puts forth four key interventions that Prime Coalition can undertake to better embed an equity lens in its catalytic capital deployment process. These are:

1. Update Prime Coalition’s Mission to fully commit to both people and planet.

2. Reimagine the diligence process and expand evaluation considerations.

3. Adopt a governance framework for portfolio companies.

4. Continue Prime Coalition’s contribution to impact measurement to advance the field.

The recommendations made in this report are the outcome of the following analyses. First, the report offers an examination of the catalytic capital climate investing space in the United States and seeks to understand its intersection with and approach to equity. It includes an examination of trends and common misconceptions that emerge as both barriers and opportunities to drive progress. Following, the report then provides an examination and assessment of how to think about advancing equity through catalytic capital investments, introducing an “equity in” and “equity out” framework and examining potential areas of intervention along the different stages within the investment process. Lastly, the report then explores a set of initiatives across three levels of intervention, mainly, the company level, the ecosystem level and the regulatory level, analyzes the potential interventions against a set of criteria and makes a set of recommendations for Prime Coalition to adopt moving forward.

Overall, this report hopes to examine a rapidly emerging and critical field within climate investing for catalytic capital and provide a tactical set of recommendations to ensure that capital allocation decisions in this space can contribute to building a more inclusive and sustainable society, limit the potential for harm to systematically marginalized communities and address past inequities.

The possibility of sovereign debt legislation at the state level has been an underexplored area in sovereign debt policy—that is until the New York State Legislature became the center of serious contention over three proposed bills during the last two legislative sessions. The bills pitted social activists seeking to help relieve sovereign debts against bond-market organizations claiming that the bills would drive business out of New York State and raise the cost of financing for developing countries. Rhetoric flew and lobbying was intense. Yet a constructive outcome was achieved: two of the bills were dropped while the New York Senate passed the third bill after incorporating significant changes required by the market. The purpose of this working paper is to recount the legislative history of these three bills and to use their differing features—and outcomes—to draw policy rules regarding the appropriate scope of sovereign debt reforms carried out at the state level.

Civil society and increasingly businesses are using their voices and influence to drive the policies needed to achieve the SDGs The SDGs represent a complex systemic challenge. Governments must take the lead but face significant constraints: Governments must establish policies that address inequalities and protect the environment, commit resources and create frameworks for action that enables all sectors to play their part in the achievement of the SDGs. Governments though face significant challenges, including fiscal constraints, political divisions, state fragility, corruption and institutional failures. Moreover, they are often under pressure to deliver short-term results, whereas many of the complex systemic challenges being addressed through the SDGs require long-term integrated policy reforms that need to be pursued far beyond most government and electoral lifecycles.

7:00 AM, the alarm goes off. 8:00 AM, you have a cup of coffee, scan the news, and check your email on your phone. During that single hour you have interacted with artificial intelligence (AI) numerous times. The coffee beans were likely harvested based on an AI algorithm. The news feed…curated by AI. The ads that came with the news…AI. The facial recognition to open your phone…AI. And more. AI is everywhere in your personal life. It is also increasingly used by your government.

From the RMV to the IRS to the TSA to the FDA, government agencies seek to provide quality services to its constituents, efficiently and with equity. Analytical tools have been introduced over the past 50 years to facilitate achieving this objective. These tools support an array of government functions from benefits distribution to public safety and security to financial policy. Based on the success of these efforts and the rapid development of AI technology, agencies are turning to AI to accelerate creating value for the public.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the news topic of the 2020s. From ChatGPT writing essays to chatbots answering questions to algorithms identifying cancers, AI is impacting and often disrupting how we live our lives. AI is proposed or in place in every domain and touches every function. In government, AI is relevant for departments from education and transportation to national security and public safety. Within these organizations, AI can facilitate the hiring of new employees, providing interactive responses with constituents, planning workloads, identifying anomalies, and forecasting natural disasters, to name a few applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the administration of justice is growing at rapid pace. This is driven by widespread recognition of AI justice’s undeniable advantages, despite the risks it presents to the integrity of legal systems.

AI justice may, for example, lower the administrative burden of cases. The Crown Courts in England and Wales ended 2022 with a near-record load of over 60,000 outstanding cases. AI can dramatically increase court efficiency and reduce backlogs, providing standardised outcomes faster and at lower cost. After all, AI judges do not need to rest. At the same time, AI-driven judicial decision-making could make justice more accessible to the large segments of society that cannot afford human lawyers.

Proponents also argue algorithms could improve the fairness of judgements because “AI judges strictly follow precedents, restrict improper judicial discretion, prevent personal biases and preferences of individual judges, handle large amounts of information, complete complicated calculative balances, and discover statistical representations of variations of fact patterns and legal factors”. Even where AI tools assist human judges, these tools can push relevant legal provisions through comprehensive data retrieval. This in turn can improve judges’ understanding of cases, helping them avoid one-sided access to data and information.

At this point, it is important to clarify the different ways in which AI is being deployed in the courtroom. At a foundation level, AI may be used for auxiliary administrative functions. This includes communication between judicial personnel, allocation of resources and cases, and ensuring the anonymisation of judicial decisions, documents, or data. These activities may ostensibly appear separate from the core of judicial decision-making but carry subtler implications. For instance, the allocation of a case to a specific judge, given their unique expertise or biases, could indirectly influence the outcome. These nuances notwithstanding, the primary objective of these AI-driven tasks remain administrative in nature, aiming to streamline the judicial process rather than directly determine case outcomes.

Discussions of US foreign policy have become intensely politicized. Especially in an election year, few safe havens remain for reasoned discourse that seeks to reflect on current and past practice solely to draw lessons for the future. I am pleased to be in such a venue today, and am immensely grateful to Goldman Sachs for enabling us to exchange views on issues of national and global concern - and to honor, thereby, the memory of Michael Mortara.

My subject today is American unilateralism and its relation to the world of global governance. I am not interested in routine unilateral acts, which are a universal practice of states. By unilateralism I refer to the currently held doctrinal belief that the use of American power abroad is self-legitimating: requiring no recourse to the views or interests of others, and permitting no external constraints on its self-ascribed aims. And by global governance I mean the shared norms, institutions and practices by which the international community seeks to manage common challenges. Are the United States and global governance on a collision course? If so, how did that come to be, and what are its consequences - for the US and for the international community?

This paper introduces a policy analysis framework designed to support systematic, transparent assessment of artificial intelligence (AI) governance proposals in a rapidly evolving and contested regulatory landscape. AI policy debates often collapse into binary positions that obscure underlying tradeoffs and normative assumptions. The framework structures policy analysis around multiple policy attributes, allowing users to surface priorities and tensions without prescribing outcomes. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach that integrates qualitative insights from subject matter experts with computational text analysis to inform the design of policy attribute indices and rubrics. The resulting approach quantifies the relative emphasis of different policy objectives and presents them through comparative visualizations that support interpretability and cross-policy comparison. The paper also examines the use of commercial large language models for rubric-based policy analysis, benchmarking their outputs against a domain-trained rubric-calibrated model with explicitly defined analytical assumptions. Rather than assessing policy effectiveness or desirability, the framework focuses on relevance and alignment across attributes. By making analytical assumptions explicit, including attribute selection, rubric construction, and weighting schemes, the framework enables users to evaluate whether its embedded priorities align with the users’ own normative commitments. The approach is jurisdiction-agnostic and intended to support policymakers, analysts, and researchers navigating complex AI governance environments.

The framework makes three contributions: (1) it operationalizes multidimensional policy assessment through empirically grounded rubrics that surface tradeoffs rather than resolving them; (2) it develops a transparent hybrid methodology combining feedback from subject-matter experts with computational validation; and (3) it demonstrates how domain-trained rubric-calibrated models can be used as a benchmark for comparing different general-purpose large language models. These methodological advances enable more systematic, reproducible policy comparison while maintaining transparency about embedded normative choices.

Regulatory policy is often under-prioritised by governments, particularly when compared with the detailed focus associated with tax and spending measures. Even where a clear policy development process is adopted and applied for regulatory measures, it rarely has the same profile or attendant resources as applied to fiscal measures. This paper highlights one aspect of this regulatory policy deficit – the lack of priority given to evaluation and ex-post review of regulatory measures.

Post implementation reviews (PIRs) are an essential part of the framework for ensuring best practice regulatory policy making by government and regulators. Ex post evaluation highlights whether regulations are achieving their objectives and operating as expected, or whether they are leading to unintended consequences or imposing disproportionately high costs. They inform decisions over whether to retain, revise or remove the regulation. However only 25% of OECD countries have formal requirements for PIRs and even then, an evaluation is often not undertaken for many regulatory measures.

This paper reviews the different approaches to PIRs in the UK, Canada, Australia, the US and the European Union in terms of system governance, methodology and public transparency and capacity building. It highlights the methodological challenges in undertaking PIRs, in particular the importance of a well-designed monitoring and evaluation plan and the failure to feed the results of the PIR into subsequent modifications to the regulations which suggests a systematic failure in the policy making framework.

The paper suggests that PIRs are not undertaken more comprehensively due to: limited political benefit, lack of prioritisation and concern over exposing previous policy failures. It proposes seven policy approaches that might lead to a more comprehensive approach to PIRs, however the common thread running through all of these approaches is the critical importance of high-level political support. Without high-level backing, statutory requirements will be variously disregarded, internal and external voices ignored and the pragmatic short-term pressures to focus on new and high profile policy measures will trump the longer-term benefits from a comprehensive approach to policy evaluation.

Impact assessments (IAs) of government regulatory policy proposals set out their expected costs, benefits and risks and who is likely to face those impacts. In the UK, primary legislation can confer powers on Government ministers and other bodies to enact Statutory Instruments (SIs) and other secondary legislation. Because SIs have the same effect as Acts of Parliament, but face significantly less scrutiny, there has been a trend to increase the use of this mechanism for areas of policy or principle, rather than purely administrative procedures. This trend has implications for democratic accountability and the different timing and treatment of primary and secondary legislation also has important implications for the way impact assessment is carried out.

This paper outlines the rationale for a compound (primary and secondary) approach to introducing legislation, identifies different types of subordination and considers the implications for estimating their expected impacts in an IA - particularly when the assessment of the secondary measure happens after some of the uncertainty related to the possible outcomes of the primary measure has been resolved and this can be taken into account in the secondary decision(s). It points out the limitations of the conventional NPV-based approach to assessing the impacts of compound measures and proposes the use of a real options approach to IAs to address this concern. In particular it suggests that the real options approach should be used in cases where there are: uncertain outcomes, different possible timings, irreversible policy decisions and distortions due to the use of standard discount rates. Primary legislation creates the opportunity but not the obligation to pursue secondary measures and should be assessed taking these future options into account.

Britain’s health and care system is in a precarious state. The pressures of an ageing population, common to many industrialised countries, are being compounded by post-pandemic waiting lists for National Health Service (NHS) treatment which number around 7.7 million people. Public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to historic lows of 24%, a drop of 29 percentage points since 2020. Part of the problem is insufficient social care capacity, which is overburdening hospitals. At times, up to a third of hospital beds in some regions have been occupied by older people who are medically fit for discharge but who cannot live independently, and cannot get access to social care.

Satisfaction with social care is even lower with only 13% of the British public reporting satisfaction with the system. Already, the system is failing to meet the demands placed upon it. Currently, 16% of people aged between 65 and 74 struggle with one or more of the activities of daily living (ADL), according to the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Of those aged 85+, 44% struggle with one or more ADLs. AgeUK estimates that 1.6 million people over 65 have unmet needs for care and support.

To make matters worse, demand for social care from the over-65s in England is increasing as the population ages and grows. The annual number of requests for social care to local authorities by over-65s rose from 1.32 million to 1.37 million requests between 2017/18 and 2021/22. Furthermore, projections by the Health Foundation suggest that 1 in 5 people in England could be living with major illness in less than two decades’ time as the prevalence of chronic diseases increase.

Compounding the problems has been a lack of meaningful reform by both main political parties. In 2010, a Labour proposal to fund universal social care through a new inheritance tax was dropped after being labelled a ‘death tax’. In 2017, a Conservative manifesto pledge to increase individuals’ contributions towards social care was dropped after being criticised as a ‘dementia tax’. The 2021 Conservative plan for a Health and Social Care levy was dropped in 2022.10 All attempts at setting the financing of elderly care on stronger ground have failed in part because of the political difficulty of raising taxes to fund a system which few voters understand, for a sector which has had little voice.

This paper presents a matched pair case study of two factories supplying Nike, the world's largest athletic footwear and apparel company. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. On the surface, both factories appear to have similar employment (i.e., recruitment, training, remuneration) practices and they receive comparable scores when audited by Nike's compliance staff. However, underlying (and somewhat obscured by) these apparent similarities, significant differences in actual labor conditions exist between these two factories. What drives these differences in working conditions? What does this imply for traditional systems of monitoring and codes of conduct? Field research conducted at these two factories reveals that beyond the code of conduct and various monitoring efforts aimed at enforcing it, workplace conditions and labor standards are shaped by very different patterns of work organization and human resource management policies.

This paper is intended for corporate lawyers who increasingly are being asked to advise their clients on business and human rights issues. It addresses the far-reaching implications of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights ('UNGPs'), which the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed in 2011, following six years of multistakeholder consultations, research, and pilot projects. Their uptake has been broad and swift. They have become the global authoritative standard, providing a blueprint for the steps all States and businesses should take to uphold human rights.

As of early 2025, the challenges of social media governance are back in the headlines. Some countries are embracing an ‘anything goes’ approach, emphasizing freedom of speech and the absence of censorship. Other countries are doubling down on protections to minimize online harm and offensive content. While each country sorts out its own path for the near future, the importance of this decision is not in any doubt. Social media channels are a hugely powerful force driving many societal outcomes, which we have witnessed repeatedly over the past decade. Social media has been instrumental in connecting family and friends, sharing art, rescuing lost loved ones, forming new high-growth businesses, informing people, globalizing culture, enabling bullying of children, deepening partisan divides, influencing electoral outcomes, causing riots, toppling governments, enabling criminals and fomenting genocide. It’s a mixed record, to say the least.

Social media is now the planet’s most prevalent method for sharing information. As of 2024, more than 5 billion users spend an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes per day on these platforms (more time than with traditional TV or any other form of media). In the next two years, social commerce—the process of selling products directly on social media platforms or within social-first commerce marketplaces—is projected to surge to $1.2 trillion, making it the 17th largest economy in the world.

Despite many social benefits, this rapidly expanding ecosystem is fertile ground for misinformation, hate speech, fraud, varied harms to youth and many other issues. The rise of AI generated content, and AI-powered human-like agents are further amplifying these risks. In response, some governments have taken measures to combat online harm, typically by requiring platforms to take protective measures. As an initial 'stop-gap' approach, these requirements have helped reduce harm, but have not been entirely successful. The regulatory approach has several shortcomings such as:

Empowering any regulator to (directly or indirectly) dictate acceptable speech raises the specter of government censorship. Platforms use varied thresholds for harm, and define harmful content differently than regulators do, creating legal and operational disputes. Placing the onus on platforms fails to adequately account for the responsibility of the individual - both creators and consumers - in enabling harm. Ensuring online safety imposes significant costs on platforms which inadvertently reinforces platform monopolies as only the largest networks can afford compliance. Can we do better? How can we allow free information while limiting harms? How should we balance conflicting rights such as freedom of speech, privacy and personal safety and security? How should we better protect youth? What expectations can we reasonably put on platforms, regulators, content producers or consumers? How can we decide any of this in a fractured global regulatory environment, where governments take significantly different views on these issues, yet information flows are globalized?

In our view, the technological changes coming demand not just incremental changes to oversight, but a bold reimagination of our online safeguards. Instead of tightening the regulatory grip on social media (or taking a hands-off approach!) we need a smarter solution—one that focuses on improving the experiences of users themselves, and lets them ultimately manage the boundaries of their online experience.

A battle rages between the partisans of shareholder and stakeholder capitalism; the very heart and soul of corporate governance is at stake. This paper advances the scholarly debate by mapping Amartya Sen's distinction between culmination outcomes and comprehensive outcomes onto shareholder primacy and stakeholder theory. It provides foundational reasons to move away from the untenable idealism of value maximization, characterized here as a culmination outcome-oriented approach, towards a stakeholder-oriented approach that is concerned with broader comprehensive outcomes. It argues that the stakeholder approach more accurately reflects how business decision makers actually make choices; as compared to the shareholder primacy approach, which proposes that decision makers are able to seek (and should seek) to maximize a single-valued culmination score. It is argued that the value maximization approach is flawed because no decision-making space exists where a "maximal" allocation is available in its merely technical sense, free of the taint of politics or constraints of ethics. The stakeholder approach is a more realistic account of what decision-makers are actually able to do in discharging their managerial responsibilities; and thus, it provides a richer account of what they ought to do and how. While imperfect in its own way, the stakeholder approach is a more down-to-earth theory of reasoned and purposive business decision-making for addressing today's critical problems of people and planet.