助成Institute forInternational Policy Studies
・Tokyo・IIPS International Conference“Reidentifying Japan for the 21st Century”
Tokyo, October 27-28, 2004

“Criticism of the “Commitment to Development Index 2004””
ByProf. Takahiro Miyao
Professor and Executive Research Fellow
Center for Global Communications
International University of Japan

Criticism of the “Commitment to Development Index 2004”
Takahiro MIYAO (Professor, GLOCOM) and Mikihiro Maeda (ResearchAssociate, GLOCOM)
Prepared for Takahiro Miyao’s presentation at the international
symposium, “Reidentifying Japan for the 21st century,” to be held at theANA Hotel on October 27-28, 2004.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine havepublished the 2004 edition of the Commitment to Development Index,
where Japan is placed at the bottom of the 21 advanced countries interms of the “dedication to policies that benefit” developing countries.
While the purpose (at least the “superficial purpose,” as David
Roodman puts it in his article, “The Commitment to Development
Index: 2004 Edition”) of rating rich countries’ policies to help poorer
countries can be understood and appreciated, the actual method andfinal results are really problematic and even dubious. Anyone who hasever studied economic development and foreign aid would wonder why
Japan is placed below any of the 21 advanced countries in terms of thededication to policies to help developing countries, when Japan is thesecond largest donor nation in the world and is well known for its
long-term commitment to policies to help developing nations, especiallyin the Asian region.
As we see it, the CDI (Commitment to Development Index) has someserious defects, which tend to put a large donor country like Japan in
an unfairly disadvantageous position. First of all, the size effect isalmost completely ignored. By focusing on per capita figures or ratios toGDP, Japan is ranked as low as Portugal and Spain, whose ODA/GDP
ratios are almost the same as that for Japan. We all know, however,that just like the ratio of trade to GDP, it is much more difficult tomaintain the same ratio of aid to GDP (or population) as the size of thedomestic economy gets larger. In other words, the larger the size of the1domestic economy, the higher the degree of commitment needed inorder to maintain the same ratio of aid to GDP. The CDI ignores thissimple fact completely.
Second, there seem to be some arbitrary assumptions that single out
Japan whose approach toward aid is somewhat different from othercountries. More specifically, the CDI seems to weigh loans much lessthan grants, as interest payments by developing countries aresubtracted out. However, one could even argue that interest might beregarded as a sign of successful aid activities, because recipients are
now able to repay their loans after the development of their economies
with the help of such loans. On the other hand, grants could be given todictators who have no accountability to anyone at home or abroad. In
any case, Japan with a disproportionately high ratio of loans to grants
is very much disadvantaged, according to the arbitrary assumptions inthis regard.
Third, and more fundamentally, there is no consistent measurement
among the 7 components, namely, aid, trade, investment, migration,environment, security and technology. For example, aid policy ismeasured by the amount of aid itself, whether in terms of GDP orpopulation, whereas trade policy is measured by tariffs and quotas oncertain goods, and yet another method, a checklist approach, is adopted
for investment policy. There is no coordination or no theoretical model
to give a consistent view of the 7 components as a whole. This could
happen when you delegate your analyses to specialists in various fields
without strong coordination. Then you often fail to check somespecialists’ deviation from other specialists, where they can only see“trees” but not the “forest,” possibly leading to a very distorted view ofthe overall picture, such as Japan, which is among the most dedicatedcountries to development aid, placed at the bottom of the 21 countries
in terms of the dedication to policies that benefit developing countries.
Just to illustrate our point, let us mention a similar defect which can befound in the well-known IMD (Institute for Management Development)

2ranking of world competitiveness, where Japan is ranked in the 23rdplace, below Singapore (2nd place), Hong Kong (6th place), Taiwan (12thplace) and even Malaysia (16th place)! After checking individualcomponents, namely, economic performance, government efficiency,
business efficiency and infrastructure, we have find some irregularities
in the economic performance component in that Japan’s ranking (17thplace) looks too low in view of the fact that Japan’s score is actually
very high (2nd or 3rd place) in many of the individual items regarding
economic performance. We have later found out by talking to a
researcher who actually worked on the IMD ranking project that those
who are in charge of ranking in the economic performance component
deliberately omitted those items in which economically powerfulcountries such as Japan are ranked highly, presumably to make their
final results look more interesting and appealing.
In fact, we have re-worked with the existing data in the “IMD World
Competitive Year Book 2004,” and came up with our own ranking forJapan by making use of all the available data without omission.
Furthermore, we have adopted what might be called the “Olympic
medal approach,” by counting the number of individual items in which
the country in question is ranked among the top three positions (gold,silver and bronze medals) in order to avoid any arbitrary weights
attached to some arbitrarily selected items. Our results for Japan aresummarized as follows (more details are given in the appendix):(1) Economic Performance: 2nd by our ranking (vs. 23rd by IMD)
(2) Government Efficiency: 34th by our ranking (vs. 37th by IMD)
(3) Business Efficiency:

21st by our ranking (vs. 37th by IMD)

(4) Infrastructure

2nd by our ranking (vs. 2nd by IMD)

(5) Overall Ranking

7th by our ranking (vs. 23rd by IMD)

This clearly shows that arbitrary selections and omissions as well as
arbitrary weights in just one component, “economic performance” inthiscase,

could

hurt

a

particularcountry’s

overallstanding

significantly. Although it may be more interesting and appealing,3

particularly to mass media, to have unexpected rankings than just aconfirmation of the common sense, that would risk the credibility andusefulness of the ranking activity itself.
This may well be the case with the CDI, as David Roodman clearlystates that “ranking the rich was a means to more important ends: todraw media attention …… ultimately to prod policy reform.” While hehas been partially successful in drawing some media attention
regarding the surprisingly low rankings for Japan and possibly U.S., hemay not be able to succeed in pushing policy reform unless he and hiscolleagues reconsider the overall framework and approach to build
credibility and confidence in their study on ranking the rich.

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