Publications

Instead of giving an income transfer, the IFC should provide financing and its expertise in a way that fits what it does best—investing in the private sector—while giving the IFC incentives to accelerate what it should do even better—taking greater risks in poorer countries.

In this essay, Toby Ord explores the moral relevance of cost-effectiveness, a major tool for capturing the relationship between resources and outcomes, by illustrating what is lost in moral terms for global health when cost-effectiveness is ignored.

Overall, regional indices have become increasingly correlated with the S&P 500 index. Africa lags behind this trend some, and that lag could present opportunities for investors and policymakers.

After more than a decade of US special envoys (Danforth, Zoellick, Natsios, Williamson, Gration, and Lyman) and the independence of South Sudan in July 2011, it is time for the United States to reevaluate what it is trying to achieve in its relations with the two Sudans and how best it can do that.

Bradley Parks and Zachary Rice share with the Center for Global Development the results of a global survey about whether the “MCC effect” exists.

This paper surveys 160 cases where biometric identification has been used for economic, political, and social purposes in developing countries. One primary conclusion is that identification should be considered as a component of development policy, rather than being seen as just a cost on a program-by-program basis.

Climate negotiations have focused on reaching a top-down international agreement and on mobilizing a pool of financial resources. This brief explains the urgent need for a new entity to provide nonfinancial services to faciliate and augment climate action that any nations and private actors take. It explores one possible path for filling the gap: the creation of a new arm of the World Bank.

Given the vital importance of child vaccination programs to US national security interests, intelligence-community participation in public health services should be explicitly banned. Doing so might help restore confidence in vaccination programs—benefiting those immunized and the health and security of Americans here at home.