CGD's weekly Global Prosperity Wonkcast, event videos, whiteboard talks, slides, and more.
The last decade has seen considerable progress enrolling children in schools worldwide: today most people live in countries on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal of 100% primary completi
How big is China’s aid to Africa? Does it complement or undermine the efforts of traditional donors?
In this CNN interview, Senior Fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez argues that the recently announced measures in Cyprus that imposes losses on non-insured depositors as part of a full-fledged bank restruct
CGD was pleased to welcome the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies for an event honoring Lant Pritchett, recipient of the 2013 Distinguished Service Award.
Despite the growing strength of emerging economies, they remain vulnerable to global crises such as the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and prolonged fiscal uncertainty in the US.
The threat of climate change can only be averted with genuine cooperation between traditional and emerging powers.
The world faces a huge challenge in providing food security for all in the face of growing populations, increasing demand for resource-intensive foods, and climate change. Leaders from G8 and G20 governments are pursuing a range of policy responses and it is crucial that they recognize the key role of technological innovation to ensure crop yields keep up with demand and available food meets nutritional requirements. But new inventions will do no one any good if they simply sit on the shelf.
President Barack Obama's re-election gives him four more years to carry out his US global development vision. Rethink director Sarah Jane Staats shares a few ideas that could help the administration get a running start on their second term.
In his widely-acclaimed 2011 book Origins of Political Order, Fukuyama explores the divergent trajectory of political and institutional development across societies. His new CGD Working Paper "What is Governance?" presents a framework for quantifying governance across countries. As part of the Understanding India Series, Fukuyama will contrast the evolution of political institutions in India and China.
CGD and Foreign Policy Magazine honored Senator Richard Lugar, winner of the 2012 Commitment to Development Award, The award is bestowed annually since 2003, and honors an individual or organization that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies towards the developing world.
Rita Perakis explains a new financing mechanism called Development Impact Bonds. DIBs would provide upfront funding for development programs by private investors, who would be remunerated by donors or host-country governments—and earn a return—if evidence shows that programs achieve pre-agreed outcomes.
Todd Moss, senior fellow and vice president for programs at the Center for Global Development, demonstrates how leaders of poor countries can beat the resource curse -- the paradox that countries that strike it rich often suffer from high poverty, dismal governance, and terrible corruption. His policy option, called Oil to Cash, helps foster a social contract in resource-rich countries by directly distributing natural resource revenues. Under this proposal, a government would transfer some or all of the revenue from natural resource extraction to citizens in a universal, transparent, and regular payment--and, importantly, then tax part of it back.
On January 21st, Senior Fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez was interviewed by CNN in Santiago, Chile about the recent growth recovery in China and its effect on Latin America. Although Liliana recognized that growth prospects in the region have improved for 2013 in light of China's recent events.
Join us for a MADS featuring Lant Pritchett. Pritchett will be discussing a new working paper, which reframes the impact evaluation debate. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) has always been an element of implementing organizations’ accountability to their funders, and recently there has been a push for much greater rigor in evaluations to isolate causal impacts and enable more ‘evidence based’ approaches to accountability and budgeting. Pritchett and his co-author extend the idea of impact evaluation, and show that the techniques of impact evaluation can be directly useful to implementers, rather than a potentially threatening accountability mechanism. They introduce the concept of experiential learning (“e”), which allows implementing agencies to leverage monitoring data to search across alternative project designs. Within-project variations in design can serve as their own counter-factual, dramatically reducing the incremental cost of evaluation and increasing the usefulness of evaluation to implementers. The right combination of M, e, and E provides the right space for innovation and organizational capability building, while at the same time providing accountability and an evidence base for funding agencies.
Mead Over says the United States has been a leader in the fight against the global AIDS epidemic, spending billions of dollars through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to hel
In this CNN interview, Senior Fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez explains that while the region’s economic growth prospects remain strong for 2013, there are some factors that will limit its growth potential. First, external financing needs in the region, as measured by the current account of the balance of payments are widening. This, together with the presence of fiscal deficits in most countries (with the notable exception of Chile and Peru) reduce the region’s resilience to a potential external shocks (such as an exacerbation of the Eurozone crisis). Second, institutional weaknesses and political constraints will hurt some countries in the region, notably Argentina and Venezuela. However, Liliana expects that political constraints to undertake much needed infrastructure investments in Brazil will be eased in 2013, partly motivated by the 2014 World Cup.
Large accumulation of international reserves by Latin American countries was central in containing the adverse effects of the global financial crisis. Lines of credit from the Federal Reserve and the new liquidity facility from the IMF also played a key role, at least for some major countries. However, reserve accumulation is not free of cost, Fed support is not guaranteed and IMF resources might not be sufficient at times of systemic crises and may carry conditionality that make such assistance only contingent. This raises the question as to whether Latin America should actively pursue the effective implementation of regional arrangements capable of ensuring the availability of liquidity at times of acute financial stress. The Latin America Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee dealt with this issue by answering these questions, among others, and shared their statement publicly at this CGD event: