This is a joint post with Ted Collins.
In last month’s Evaluation Gap Update, we were going to refer to a particular impact evaluation database when we stopped to ask just how many such databases there might be. So Ted investigated and promptly developed a list of 14 evaluation databases that can be found below.
As attention shifts from traditional foreign aid to private and domestic sources of finance for development, recovering stolen assets is not only a matter of justice but increasingly a development issue in its own right. That’s why organizations like the StAR initiative (a joint effort of the World Bank and UNODC) and NGOs like Transparency International and Global Witness have been making these points and successfully pushing the agenda.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria recently announced an ambitious goal of raising $15 billion in its fourth replenishment later this year, of which they hope the United States will contribute one-third ($5 billion, or $1.65 billion a year for three years). So I was interested to see these two sentences tucked into the White House’s 2014 budget request:
The day before we recorded this Wonkcast news broke of an agreement between the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to pilot “multilateral automatic tax information exchange.” My guest, research fellow Alex Cobham, explains why this is so important, why financial secrecy and international tax law seem suddenly to be at the top of the global economic policy agenda—and why this could be especially good news for developing countries.
The Obama administration’s proposal for food aid reform is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, but it is still a big step in the right direction. Overall, the administration estimates that the proposal would allow roughly the same level of funds for food aid to reach an additional 4 million people, and do so more quickly in emergencies.
President Obama's total FY2014 international affairs budget request--$52 billion--looks a lot like what was left for international affairs in FY2013 after sequestration. But the administration uses a scalpel, not an ax, to get there in FY2014. The FY2014 budget, if approved, shifts significant resources away from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and concentrates spending on food security, global health and multilateral investments. And the big news, of course, is an overhaul of US food aid.
I see three signs the president’s scalpel is guided by his 2010 Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development (PPD) (and I owe a huge debt to the always-stellar USGLC budget analysis from Larry Nowels and others):
So the initial round of results are in and there were some surprises. Early this month, odds makers in the United Kingdom and Ireland had Mr. Kyerematen, from Ghana, and Ms. Gonzalez, from Costa Rica, as the favorites to become the next director-general of the World Trade Organization, but both are out after the first round of consultations. The next round of consultations will begin next week, and the final two should be announced by the end of the month.
My guest on this Wonkcast is Amina Mohamed, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and one of the nine candidates to become the next director general (DG) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Mohamed tells me she is extremely familiar with the DG selection process, as she managed it eight years ago while working within the WTO.
Recent days have brought news of two early CGD staff members excelling in their respective fields.