Aid Effectiveness

Nancy Birdsall offers Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides three recommendations on strengthening the Pakistani private sector.

This paper reflects on the global goal setting experience of the MDGs and what might be done differently if there is new round of MDGs after 2015.

This paper assesses the challenges of applying COD Aid in the health sector. After clarifying how COD Aid differs from results-based financing approaches, the paper presents four key characteristics for designing a successful agreement. It discusses features of the health sector and foreign aid...

This analysis draws upon MCC reports and country indicator performance to predict which countries will be made eligible to apply for FY2012 compact or threshold assistance. We offer a forecast of potential FY2012 eligible countries; it is not an official list of the countries that will...

This paper investigates the scale and scope of emerging donors and ways the international donor community could encourage their greater transparency and accountability.

Construction is a vital part of development, but it often falls prey to poor governance and corruption. Making the details of construction contracts public is one proven way to help citizens get what they are paying for.

This brief provides a summary of the forthcoming second edition of the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA) Assessment sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Center for Global Development.

This note offers a preliminary assessment of MCC candidate country scores on the FY2012 hard hurdles.

The Commitment to Development Index ranks 22 of the world’s richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the 5.5 billion people living in poorer nations. Moving beyond standard comparisons of foreign aid volumes, the CDI quantifies a range of rich-country policies that affect...

This data set contains the Stata code needed to replicate the data analysis in “When Does Rigorous Impact Evaluation Make a Difference? The Case of the Millennium Villages” (CGD Working Paper 225)

This report takes a look at the Obama administration's FY2012 budget request and congressional reaction to gauge the potential for implementing foreign aid reforms as spelled out in the administration's policy documents.

Ben Leo and Ross Thuotte check on the progress countries are making toward the Millennium Development Goals.

The U.S. military has become substantially engaged in economic development and stabilization and will likely continue to be for some time to come. This brief takes U.S. military involvement in development as a given and concentrates on five recommendations for it to operate more efficiently and...

The U.S. military has become substantially engaged in the development and stabilization space and will likely continue to operate in this space for some time to come. This paper proposed five policy changes for the military to improve its development activities.

A new wave of development programs that explicitly use incentives to achieve their aims is under way.They are part of a trend, accelerating in recent years, to disburse development assistance against specific and measurable outputs or outcomes. With a proliferation of new ideas under names such as...

Independent impact evaluation is crucial to determine whether development interventions are effective; however, surprisingly few of these studies were conducted until recently.

To inform the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s review of its country selection process, the MCA Monitor has conducted a parallel review and offers five key recommendations.

The main body of this short essay comprises written testimony that Owen Barder submitted to Britain’s House of Lords in response to a question about the effectiveness of foreign aid. In a brief introduction Barder draws upon his recent experience living in Ethiopia for three years to shed light...

Charles Kenny investigates the complex role development agencies have in promoting technology overseas.

This paper surveys the arguments for and against cash-transfer programs in resource-rich states, discusses some of the new biometric identification technologies, and reaches preliminary conclusions about their potentially very large benefits for developing countries.

An accompaniment to the report Beyond Bullets and Bombs: Fixing the U.S. Approach to Development in Pakistan, this data set describes budgeted levels of U.S. military and economic assistance to Pakistan for the period from 1948 to 2010.

Shafik highlights a key issue for aid practitioners: donors and recipients need the freedom to take risks, to experiment with new approaches, and to learn from failure as well as success. She emphasizes that evaluation and learning depend on transparency to allow citizens of recipient countries to...

This brief details how the new Congress could save more than $500 million annually by eliminating unnecessary regulations currently in place that are incredibly wasteful, anticompetitive, and make it harder to carry out effective development programs abroad.

This paper analyzes some of the elements that cause the perception in the realm of social policy that too little evidence is produced and used on the impact of specific policies and programs on human development. They propose we develop Results-Based Social Policy Design and Implementation systems...

This brief examines options for a COD Aid contract in Pakistan’s education sector and its potential benefits for improving the relationship between official donors and the government of Pakistan, and for increasing the effectiveness of aid spending in Pakistan.

Traditional donor financing mechanisms tend to track inputs instead of results, lack transparency, accountability, and country ownership. These inefficiencies waste resources, erode the trust of aid constituencies, and fail to improve the lives of the poor. TrAid+ is a new mechanism that aims to...

In a presentation delivered at the UK Department for International Development on March 9, 2011, CGD president Nancy Birdsall spoke about opportunities and challenges for the implementation of Cash on Delivery Aid, an approach that allows aid agencies to address both short-term and long-term...

In this paper, Connie Veillette presents the problems that beset the existing process for budgeting and resource allocation, and argue that the process is backwards. Instead of using baseline budgets and existing resources to dictate objectives, policymakers should clearly define and articulate the...

Arkedis focuses on understanding why long-term development is often subjugated to other objectives in the day-to-day planning processes of the U.S. government. She proposes one way to ensure that funding choices are made more rationally and systematically: by aligning the differing goals of aid...

A new focus on measuring development results would have far-reaching benefits for U.S. development strategy, for U.S. public diplomacy efforts, and for the strength of Pakistan’s democratic institutions. In this essay, Nancy Birdsall and Wren Elhai suggest five possible indicators that...

The Right Honourable Tony Blair discusses building strong African leadership in an essay prepared for a public address hosted by CGD on December 16, 2010.

Economic growth is one aspect of development; state capability is another. This paper shows that many countries remain in “state capability traps” and suggests ways to sabotage persistent techniques of failure.

This analysis draws upon two recent congressionally mandated reports and country indicator performance to predict which countries the MCC board will select as eligible to apply for FY2011 compact or threshold assistance.

In this report John Simon and Julia Barmier assess past and current efforts to indicate whether direct development investment is worth promoting as a matter of public policy.

This brief describes a new approach, Cash on Delivery Aid, which gives recipients full responsibility and authority over funds paid in proportion to verified measures of progress.

The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) ranks 22 of the world’s richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the five billion people living in poorer nations. Moving beyond standard comparisons of foreign aid volumes, the CDI quantifies a range of rich country policies that...

This paper offers a proposal to improve performance-based allocation systems of International Development Association (IDA) donors and others to better address the needs of fragile states and better link development allocations with performance.

This paper focuses on how budgetary scorekeeping systems affect governments’ ability or willingness to support innovative development finance initiatives and explores several options to overcome the restrictions the systems often impose.

The authors examine the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an experimental and intensive package intervention to spark sustained local economic development in rural Africa, to illustrate the benefits of rigorous impact evaluation. Estimates of the project’s effects depend heavily on the...

As many countries still lack supply-side capacity to fully participate in trade preference programs, aid-for-trade programs are necessary complements to facilitate capacity building, especially in poorer countries. In this paper, Susan Prowse exams current aid-for-trade delivery mechanisms, what is...

Since 1995, 17 African countries have defied expectations and have launched a remarkable, if little-noticed, turnaround. Emerging Africa describes this revitalization and why it is likely to continue.

This essay draws on the work of the Center for Global Development's Study Group on U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan and on the ideas in the group's open letters to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to present five recommendations for spending aid money well in Pakistan.

This report focuses on the workforce strengthening strategies of three of the major HIV/AIDS donors—the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), and the World Bank’s Africa Multi-country HIV/AIDS...

In this working paper, the authors introduce an MDG Progress Index to assess how on or off track countries are toward MDG targets.

Visiting fellow Nuhu Ribadu reflects on his experience as the head of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the international work needed to challenge corruption in Africa.

The United States ranked 17th in the 2009 Commitment to Development Index with strengths in trade and security but weaknesses in aid and environment. This CGD Note describes how the United States could boost its score.

In this essay, Andrew Natsios gives a first-hand account of what he finds most hinders USAID—layers of bureaucracy that misguide and derail development work.

Severino and Ray envision a new conceptual framework to manage the complexity of current international collaboration in development assistance.

In this short essay, senior fellow David Wheeler compares the world’s foreign assistance architecture to how the rest of the world operates in the digital age. He suggests that multilateral and bilateral transactions from one behemoth to another may be stuck in the past now that technology can...

In the fourth open letter to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Nancy Birdsall conveys the recommendations of the CGD study group on a U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan for necessary strengthening of USAID's staff capacity to better design and deploy an effective development strategy in the country.

CGD research fellow Ben Leo estimates that the World Bank could provide an extra $7.5 billion to the poorest countries over the next three years by adjusting the balance sheets of IDA and IBRD, its main lending arms.

Against the backdrop of the fast approaching Millennium Development Goals deadline, World Bank shareholders have an opportunity to dramatically increase resources available for the poorest, most vulnerable countries. By better leveraging the IBRD’s balance sheet for creditworthy blend and...

Nancy Birdsall, Augusto de la Torre, and Felipe Valencia Caicedo analyze the Washington Consensus, from its early beginnings to failure as a reform agenda.

In the second open letter to Ambassador Holbrooke, Nancy Birdsall conveys recommendations from the second meeting of the CGD Study Group on U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan, focused on the policies and programs that would be most effective in dealing with the security and development...

David Roodman testifies before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade about supporting Haiti's private sector

In an open letter to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Nancy Birdsall relays four main suggestions from the CGD Study Group on a U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan about how U.S. assistance should be delivered to maximize development outcomes.

This working paper re-releases a 2005 CGD analysis of failed World Bank aid to Pakistan in the 1990s and identifies the lessons that are relevant today, as aid to Pakistan surges again.

Cash on Delivery (COD) Aid proposes serious reform to make aid work well by forcing accountability, aligning the objectives of funders and recipients, and sharing information about what works.

In this essay, visiting fellow Desmond Bermingham describes the framework for a better “global education compact” between donor and recipient nations and four possible arrangements to mobilize and allocate development assistance for education. He highlights the advantages and disadvantages of...

This paper examines how the lack of recognition of Somaliland by the international community—and the consequent ineligibility for foreign financial assistance—has shaped the region's political development. It finds evidence that Somaliland’s ineligibility for foreign aid facilitated the...

Does foreign military assistance strengthen or further weaken fragile states facing internal conflict? In a new working paper, CGD post-doctoral fellow Oeindrila Dube and co-author Suresh Naidu find that U.S. military assistance to Colombia may increase violence and decrease voter turnout,...

Decades of research have been unable to conclusively show either a positive or negative effect of aid on economic growth in poor countries. CGD senior fellow Arvind Subramanian and Raghuram G. Rajan use a new technique in their latest working paper that suggests aid slows the manufacturing sector...

This course explores the role of microfinance in economic development. It will discuss how poor people in poor countries use financial services such as credit and savings; the history and practice of delivering such services; what is known about their contribution to development; and how stories...

Benjamin Leo, formerly of the U.S. Treasury and National Security Council and a key behind-the-scenes player in the inception and implementation of Multilateral Debt Relief Initiatives, examines the potential risk of renewed debt re-accumulation by countries that have only recently completed the...

International aid works, but it could work much better. Reform efforts focused on better planning often ignore what constrains aid agencies and takes the bite out of their commitments. In this working paper, Owen Barder shows how forming a "collaborative market" around aid—one marked by...

CGD policy analyst Lindsay Morgan explores the reality of aid-supported development in Zambia from three (very different) perspectives of people working there, in light of Dambisa Moyo's book, Dead Aid. She sheds light on a fundamental paradox of the aid business (huge donor efforts, much good, and...

Donor spending on global health has surged, yet for many poor people in developing countries even basic prevention and treatment remain elusive. CGD’s newest book, Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls, shows how modest payments in cash or kind can get more health from...

Total U.S. development assistance has fallen 22 percent since 2005 from $27.9 billion to $21.8 billion in 2007. In real terms, this was the smallest amount since 2002, excluding assistance to Iraq, Afghanistan, and HIV/AIDS programs. Senior fellow Steve Radelet and his coauthors examine the...

With the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) soon to release the scorecards and performance data that form the basis of the FY09 country selection round, Sheila Herrling and Amy Crone examine how countries fare on the control of corruption indicator, the only “hard hurdle” that countries must...

The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President shows how modest changes in U.S. policies could greatly improve the lives of poor people in developing countries, thus fostering greater stability, security, and prosperity globally and at home. Center for Global...

Meeting today’s foreign policy challenges requires a new vision of American global leadership based on the strength of our core values, ideas, and ingenuity. It calls for an integrated foreign policy that promotes our ideals, enhances our security, helps create economic and political...

In September 2008 official aid donors and recipients will meet in Accra, Ghana, to discuss how to make development assistance more effective. CGD president Nancy Birdsall and co-author Kate Vyborny suggest that advocates of better aid who really want a win at Accra forget haggling over broad...

Donors spend billions of dollars to fight HIV/AIDS in developing countries, but poor integration between donors and host country health systems risks undermining international efforts to prevent and treat AIDS. In this analysis, CGD’s HIV/AIDS Monitor argues that donors need to pay more...

In Reinventing Foreign Aid, CGD non-resident fellow William Easterly has gathered top scholars in the field to discuss how to improve foreign aid. These authors, Easterly points out, are not claiming that their ideas will (to invoke a current slogan) Make Poverty History. Rather, they take on...

Improving education has been a central goal of international development for decades, and the best indicators of improvement measure student performance. But can such measurements be used as incentives to stimulate more rapid improvement in education? There are no simple answers to this question...

In this new CGD book, visiting fellow Carol Lancaster analyzes the dramatic changes in U.S. foreign aid during the Bush administration, including the increased use of aid to address failed states and to fight the global war on terror, the establishment of an entirely new aid agency—the Millennium...

CGD senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran argues in this essay that the next U.S. president can play a valuable role in helping Africa to overcome two crucial barriers to poverty reduction: lack of power and lack of roads. Ramachandran urges the next president to create a $1 billion Clean Energy Fund...

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has vowed a major overhaul of U.S. foreign assistance. He joins a growing list of members of Congress and the defense, diplomacy and development community who recognize that U.S. foreign assistance programs are...

With President Bush's trip to Africa making headlines this week, CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet and research assistant Sami Bazzi offer a close look at the latest U.S. foreign assistance numbers. Bottom line: although America's aid has more than doubled since 2000, the new money went mostly to...

David Roodman, creator of the Commitment to Development Index (CDI), has devised a measure of foreign aid flows that takes into account the interest payments that developing countries make to rich country creditors. The Net Aid Transfers data set, which is a component of the CDI, is now available...

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is supposed to prevent U.S. corporations from giving bribes while conducting business abroad--bribes that encourage corruption in poor countries and stymie development. But some corporations use gaping loopholes in the law and its international counterpart,...

The econometric quest for evidence on aid effectiveness continues. Practitioners in the $80 billion-a-year aid enterprise care about their work and hanker for objective evidence that they are helping. In this working paper, CGD research fellow David Roodman argues that there is a clear aid-growth...

The argument about whether foreign aid "works" rages on. Recently, Paul Collier sought a practical middle path between William Easterly's development pessimism and Jeffrey Sach's development boosterism. How can smart people draw such contradictory conclusions from the same data? This new working...

On December 12, the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) Board will choose which countries are eligible for FY2008 funding in what may be the toughest selection round to date. With funding tight, new countries passing the performance test, half of the countries with signed compacts failing, and an MCC...

Amid a contentious FY2008 budget round between Congress and the White House, foreign assistance -- particularly that for development -- may face cuts during negotiations. The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) -- one of few U.S. foreign aid programs specifically targeted to long-term development...

Each year since 2003, the Commitment to Development Index (CDI) has ranked 21 rich countries on their dedication (or not!) to policies that benefit the five billion people living in poor countries. The CDI moves beyond simple comparisons of aid funding and in so doing embodies the mission of CGD,...

The Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) will soon release performance data that will form the basis of its FY2008 country selection round. The only indicator that countries must pass to qualify for MCC money is Control of Corruption. CGD's Sheila Herrling and Sarah Rose have crunched the numbers for...

This CGD brief summarizes the results of the 2007 Commitment to Development Index (CDI), which ranks 21 of the world's richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the five billion people living in poorer nations. The Netherlands comes in first on the 2007 CDI on the strength of...

In 2004 a working group of experts was convened by the Center for Global Development to identify cases in which large-scale efforts to improve health in developing countries have succeeded—saving millions of lives and preserving the livelihoods and social fabric of entire communities. Seventeen...

Aid experts interested in China's rapidly expanding development assistance program—particularly in Africa—have been frustrated by lack of information. How much aid is Beijing giving, and to whom? In this new working paper, Paul Hubbard fills in a piece of the puzzle by using...

Paul Collier's new book, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, argues that many developing countries are doing just fine and that the real development challenge is the 58 countries that are economically stagnant and caught in one or more "traps":...

The board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation will soon decide how to incorporate two new natural resources indicators—a Natural Resource Management Index (NRMI) and a Land Rights and Access indicator—into the FY2008 country selection process. In a new paper by CGD’s MCA Monitor...

*REVISED Version May 2008In development economics, statistical analysis usually begins with data from many observational units--households, companies, or countries--over just a few time periods. Two analysis techniques are becoming popular for studying causal relationships among variables in this...

This report of the CGD working group on IMF Programs and Health Spending explores the controversy that surrounds IMF-supported programs in low-income countries and their effect on the health sector. Critics contend that programs unduly constrain health spending though macroeconomic, especially...

This brief summarizes the findings of the CGD working group on IMF Programs and Health Spending, convened in fall 2006 to investigate the effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs on health spending in low-income countries. The report offers clear, practical recommendations for...

A White House conference on social justice in Latin America this week may signal a shift to U.S. engagement with the region that goes beyond security, free trade, and anti-narcotics efforts. CGD president Nancy Birdsall and Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, suggest seven ways...

Testimony Before the House Committee On Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health

Chinese foreign aid is rising fast and Western aid agencies are concerned: will Chinese aid undermine efforts to promote reform in Africa and elsewhere? Will Chinese loans burden poor countries with fresh debt? In this new essay, CGD visiting fellow Carol Lancaster provides a concise and accessible...

Fragile states--countries defined by poverty, weak governance and often violent conflict--represent a major development challenge for today's global aid community and a significant threat to global security. This CGD Brief offers recommendations for how donors can best engage weak countries,...

This CGD working group report offers five practical recommendations for strengthening the International Development Association (IDA)--the World Bank's soft-loan facility for the world's poorest countries--as donors begin replenishment talks that will shape IDA's course from mid-2008 through...

This report of CGD's Global Health Forecasting Working Group, which was convened in early 2006 by senior fellow and director of programs Ruth Levine to sort out why demand forecasting has been so problematic, provides an elegant analysis of the problem and a sensible agenda for action. Their report...

Achieving better health in poor countries depends in part on giving companies that produce drugs, vaccines and diagnostics incentives to invest in their production by improving their ability to forecast which products will be purchased by whom in what quantities. This brief reviews the findings of...

Since its inception in 2004 the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has been an experiment in improving the effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid in a small set of poor but well-governed countries. This new MCA Monitor Analysis brief based on visits to seven Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)...

Developing countries, donor agencies, and private philanthropies devote about $500 billion a year to improve the health of people in the developing world. But the lack of timely, accurate information about how this money is spent is undermining its impact. This problem can be solved. A working...

This paper examines IMF projections of donor aid to low-income countries and whether these projections changed after world leaders pledged at the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit to double aid to Africa by 2010. The authors find that IMF projections since the post-Gleneagles Summit have shown little...

As Congress gears up to allocate some $36 billion in the international affairs budget across a multitude of foreign aid programs, CGD senior policy analyst Sheila Herrling and research assistant Sarah Rose ask whether the MCA should receive the full $3 billion requested by the president for the...

President Bush's FY2008 budget request provides a first glimpse into how the administration's new foreign assistance framework and transformational diplomacy agenda translate into who gets how much for what. In this CGD essay, authors Samuel Bazzi, Sheila Herrling and Stewart Patrick, show that the...

Does aid to Africa undermine the emergence of a robust African middle class? If so, what can be done about it? In this new working paper, CGD president Nancy Birdsall argues that high and unpredictable aid flows could be making life harder for Africa's small and medium-sized businesses by, for...

In response to both public health imperative and unprecedented political pressure, aid to fight HIV/AIDS has increased massively in recent years: global funding to combat the disease in low- and middle-income countries has more than tripled since 2001, from $2.1 billion to an estimated $8.9 billion...

Bill Easterly calls Moss' new introduction to Africa "compulsively readable and accessible" and "a masterpiece of clear thinking." Each chapter is organized around three fundamental questions: Where are we now? How did we get to this point? What are the current debates? CGD's package of materials...

Group liability--wherein individuals are both borrowers and guarantors of other client's loans--is often described as the key innovation that led to the explosion of microcredit. It is thought to create incentives for peers to screen, monitor and enforce each other's loans. But some argue that...

Policymakers often urge microfinance institutions to increase interest rates to eliminate reliance on subsidies. This makes sense if the poor will borrow regardless of interest rates: then micro lenders increase profitability without reducing the poor's access to credit. But there is little...

Information asymmetries--which occur when one party to a transaction has more or better information than the other party--can cause inefficiency, over-investment, or poverty traps. Unfortunately, they are difficult to identify in practice. In this working paper, CGD non-resident fellow Dean...

Microfinance is generally credited with helping to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the poor. But as microfinance institutions move beyond entrepreneurial credit to offering consumer loans, many practitioners and policymakers are skeptical about "unproductive" lending. In this working...

Can one teach basic entrepreneurship skills? A growing number of microfinance organizations are trying, in the hopes of improving the livelihood of their clients and to further their mission of poverty alleviation. In this working paper, CGD non-resident fellow Dean Karlan and his co-author...

Microfinance is often viewed as a tool for empowering women. However, it is not clear that increasing a woman's share of household income also improves her status within the household. In this working paper, CGD non-resident fellow Dean Karlan and his co-authors examine whether access to...

This week the Millennium Challenge Corp. briefed staff-level representatives of its Board on plans to add two new indicators, for Natural Resources Management and Land Rights and Access, to the country eligibility criteria starting with the FY 2008. Expand and Enhance: A Proposal to Strengthen the...

U.S. aid to Africa soared during President Bush's first term, to more than twice the level of any previous administration. But the newly divided government--Democratic Congress, Republican White House--could mean a cut in aid. In this CGD Note senior fellow Todd Moss uses just-released data from...

The aid business has long grappled with the trade-off between showing results and supporting a country's own institution-building. Donors want to be sure that their money makes a difference, and often quickly. But close monitoring raises costs and pushing for quick results leads to projects that...

This analysis from CGD's MCA Monitor describes two new indicators of governance and policy performance that determine a country’s eligibility for Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) finance: Natural Resources Management Index and Land Rights & Access. The authors analyze the process that led to...

This note explores the countries most likely to be selected for FY07 eligibility for the Millennium Challenge Account. The authors also discuss key issues the Board will face this year, including deciding eligibility for the four countries with signed compacts that do not pass the indicator test....

In U.S. Foreign Aid Reform: Will It Fix What Is Broken? CGD research fellow Stewart Patrick says the U.S. foreign aid regime is broken, and it is not clear that the Bush administration's reform plan will fix it. Patrick proposes a total overhaul of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act and the creation...

In response to a request from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, CGD convened the Global Health Indicators Working Group to examine potential measures of a government's commitment to health. The group's report recommends eight indicators for consideration by the MCC and other donors as they...

Analysis of the U.S. budget reveals a chasm between Washington rhetoric about the potentially large threats arising from weak and failing states and the paucity of resources devoted to engaging with these troubled countries. The authors argue that the U.S. should think creatively about how and when...

Controversies about aid effectiveness go back decades. This new working paper by CGD senior fellow Steven Radelet provides an introduction and overview of the basic concepts, data and key debates about foreign aid. It explores the range of views on the relationship between foreign aid and economic...

It is sometimes claimed that big surges in aid might cause Dutch Disease--an appreciation of the real exchange rate which can slow the growth of a country's exports--and that aid increases might thereby harm a country's long-term growth prospects. In this new working paper CGD senior program...

Donor countries have pledged to increase aid by 60 percent over the next five years, and larger increases would be needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Can developing countries use more aid effectively? In this new working paper, CGD senior program associate Owen Barder argues that the...

When aid projects proliferate, donors often seek better oversight through smaller projects. While this may improve administration, it burdens recipient governments with reporting requirements and donor visits. CGD research fellow David Roodman suggests in a new working paper that big projects are...

U.S. "development assistance" refers to the transfer of resources from the United States to developing countries and to some strategic allies. It is delivered in the form of money (via loans or grants), contributions of goods (such as food aid), and technical assistance. Learn more about Rich...

HIV/AIDS is one of the largest challenges facing the global community. The disease has reduced life expectancy by more than a decade in the hardest hit countries and slashed productivity, making it even harder for poor countries to escape poverty. Global HIV/AIDS and the Developing World, a CGD...

Development refers to improvements in the conditions of people’s lives, such as health, education, and income. It occurs at different rates in different countries. The U.S. underwent its own version of development since the time it became an independent nation in 1776. Learn more about Rich...

Given all the other pressing worries, why was education among the issues that G8 leaders discussed at the St. Petersburg Summit? Education and the Developing World, a CGD Rich World/Poor World Brief, explains why investing in education is not just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do....

Each year billions of dollars are spent on thousands of programs to improve health, education and other social sector outcomes in the developing world. But very few programs benefit from studies that could determine whether or not they actually made a difference. This absence of evidence is an...

This brief outlines the problems that inhibit learning in social development programs, describes the characteristics of a collective international solution, and shows how the international community can accelerate progress by learning what works in social policy. It draws heavily on the work of...

The Commitment to Development Index (CDI), which ranks 21 countries across six policy areas, is widely seen as the most comprehensive and substantive measure of rich country policies towards development. In response to requests from other would-be index builders, CDI architect David Roodman...

In this working paper, David Roodman and Scott Standley analyze the use of tax incentives in rich countries to promote private charity. They discuss tax policy as de facto aid policy, and policy implications.

As the Bush Administration prepares to announce the reorganization of U.S. foreign assistance, Nancy Birdsall, Stewart Patrick and Milan Vaishnav argue in a new essay that making a dent in global poverty will require that the U.S. address four flaws: low volume and poor quality of aid; incoherence...

At a time when the international dialogue surrounding development is focused on increasing the quantity of aid, this paper focuses on how each dollar of foreign assistance can be more effective in reducing poverty. Using a sophisticated mathematical modeling process, the author explores the...

Does foreign aid help develop public institutions and state capacity in developing countries? In this Working Paper, the authors suggest that despite recent calls for increased aid to poor countries by the international community, there may be an "aid-institutions paradox." While donor intentions...

Are we doing well by doing good? This CGD Note by C. Peter Timmer explores the alliance between US farmers, processors and shippers that forms the political foundation of the US food aid program. The Note outlines the current winners and losers of US food aid, and argues that surprisingly, the...

In addition to the possible benefits from increased aid, what might also be the downside? From the recent G8 Summit to UN declarations, calls for a "Big Push" in official development assistance by OECD countries are becoming more frequent and pressing. In this working paper, CGD Research Fellow...

The Economist has called the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) "a model for other rich countries." CGD Senior Program Associate Owen Barder, a former director of information, communications, and knowledge at DFID, provides an insider's account in: Learn more

The international goal for rich countries to devote 0.7% of their national income to development assistance has become a cause célèbre for aid activists and has been accepted in many official quarters as the legitimate target for aid budgets. The origins of the target, however, raise serious...

In this working paper, CGD research fellow David Roodman describes the methodology of the foreign aid component of the 2011 edition of the Commitment to Development Index. The CDI ranks 22 of the world’s richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the 5.5 billion people living...

The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) of the Center for Global Development ranks 21 of the world’s richest countries by evaluating their stance on seven domains of government policy to determine how those policies affect developing countries. This brief summarizes the components and results...

Bill Easterly challenges a central rationale of the push for the 2015 Millennium Development Goals: the idea that poverty can be overcome with a big push in foreign aid and investment. Instead, change must come from the bottom up, he says.

Before the G-8 Summit, President Bush said that U.S. aid to Africa had tripled since he took office and would double again by 2010. CGD’s Steve Radelet and Bilal Siddiqi find that total U.S. aid to the region has doubled, but not tripled, since 2000, continuing an upward trend that began in 1996....

The launch of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) soon after September 11, 2001 has been predicted to fundamentally alter U.S. foreign aid programs. In particular, there is a common expectation that development assistance will be used to support strategic allies in the GWOT, perhaps at the expense of...

Time to put to rest the stale debate over whether the World Bank should disburse grants or loans to the world’s poorest countries. It is critical that the Bank provide more of its funding as grants, but in a more rational manner than has been the case to date. A third Bank window should...

This report was prepared by a Working Group convened by the Center for Global Development to identify key priorities the Paul Wolfowitz at the start of his tenure at the World Bank on June 1, 2005. It argues that Wolfowitz's biggest challenge will not be managing the Bank, with its 10,000 staff,...

CGD President Nancy Birdsall testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 on the Commission for Africa report initiated by Tony Blair. She suggested the U.S. should prepare a package of Africa-related initiatives for the UK-hosted G-8 Summit in July covering...

Senior Fellow Steve Radelet testified in front of the House International Relations Committee on the Millennium Challenge Account.

It has long been understood that economic growth is the essential foundation for poverty reduction. The key to income growth is the expansion of jobs that pay sustainable remunerative wages, and the two keys areas of production in this vein have almost always been agriculture and labor-intensive...

This new CGD Note by Center for Global Development President Nancy Birdsall and Institute for International Economics Senior Fellow John Williamson argues that sale of a portion of IMF gold makes sense as a way to create a more transparent institution and use a global resource for debt relief for...

In this book, Nicolas van de Walle identifies 26 countries that are extremely poor and grew little if at all in the 1990s. His sample excludes North Korea and countries where civil war explains some of their failure to grow (Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tajikistan and others). The 26 countries...

Although nearly all poor countries are classified by the World Bank as IDA-only, Nigeria stands out as a notable exception. Indeed, Africa’s most populous country is the poorest country in the world that is not classified as IDA-only. Under the World Bank’s own criteria, however, Nigeria has a...

This paper considers what role pull instruments or challenge programs (such as the World Bank's Poverty Reduction Support Credits or the United States' Millennium Challenge Account) could play within the overall framework of foreign aid, asking how they could be designed to function as effective...

This brief summarizes five key recommendations from the CGD book A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Governance, and Reform by Kemal Dervis. It presses for reform on a broad front with a renewed, more legitimate, and more effective United Nations as the overarching framework for global governance...

In the face of continuing development challenges in the world's poorest countries, there have been new calls throughout the donor community to increase the volume of development aid. Equal attention is needed to reform of the aid business itself, that is, the practices and processes and procedures...

Millions Saved: Proven Success in Global Health is about part of that success story: 17 cases in which large-scale efforts to improve health in developing countries have succeeded - saving millions of lives and preserving the livelihoods and social fabric of entire communities.

This Brief is based on the CGD book Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health. The book book features 17 success stories. These cases describe some large-scale efforts to improve health in developing countries that have succeeded - saving millions of lives and preserving the livelihoods...

This paper argues that regional public goods in developing countries are under-funded despite their potentially high rates of return compared to traditional country-focused investments. In Africa the under-funding of regional public goods is primarily a political and institutional challenge to be...

The historic 2002 United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, overlooked a crucial question: regionalism. Financing Development: The Power of Regionalism is designed to correct this omission.

Nigeria is currently classified by the World Bank as a ‘blend’ country, making it the poorest country in the world that does not have ‘IDA-only’ status. This paper uses the World Bank’s own IDA eligibility criteria to assess whether Nigeria has a case for reclassification.

Recent research offers differing assessments of the overall, worldwide effect of foreign aid on economic growth in the countries that receive aid. To understand these differences, we re-analyze the same data and same regressions used in the three most influential aid-growth studies. In all three,...

CGD working paper 32, "The Anarchy of Numbers: Aid, Development, and Cross-country Empirics" submits seven aid-growth studies to robustness testing and finds that most are fragile. The data used in the paper are in Excel (data set) and Stata formats (4-year and 5-year aggregates). Full results...

The Commitment to Development Index of the Center for Global Development rates 21 rich countries on the “development-friendliness” of their policies. It is revised and updated annually. In the 2004 edition, the component on foreign assistance combines quantitative and qualitative measures of...

The world has increasingly recognized that private capital has a vital role to play in economic development. African countries have moved to liberalize the investment environment, yet have not received much FDI. At least part of this poor performance is because of lingering skepticism toward...

*REVISED Version September 2004 The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unlikely to be met by 2015, even if huge increases in development assistance materialize. The rates of progress required by many of the goals are at the edges of or beyond historical precedent. Many countries making...

This paper focuses on key ways in which donors can improve the quality of foreign assistance and make it more effective in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

"Pro-poor growth" is the new mantra of the development community. This exploratory essay, commissioned by the Indonesia Project at Australian National University (ANU), places this new interest in pro-poor growth in regional perspective and then attempts to draw historical and policy lessons for...

This work quantifies how long it has taken countries rich and poor to make the transition towards high enrollments and gender parity. It finds that many countries that have not raised enrollments fast enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals have in fact raised enrollments extraordinarily...

U.S. Foreign Assistance After September 11th Testimony for the House Committee on International Relations, February 26, 2004

The history of foreign development assistance is one of movement away from addressing immediate needs to a focus on the underlying causes of poverty. A recent manifestation is the move towards "sustainability," which stresses community mobilization, education, and cost-recovery. This stands in...

The book compiles a vast amount of unpublished and published material on existing CTE programs and their impact on poverty. Groundbreaking case studies and detailed evaluations of programs in Mexico, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Chile add up to an unusual and surprising success...

Conventional wisdom about US foreign policy toward Africa contains two popular assumptions. First, Democrats are widely considered the party most inclined to care about Africa and the most willing to spend resources on assistance to the continent. Second, the end of the Cold War was widely thought...

This brief assesses the impact of AGOA to date and recommends measures to improve its development potential.

This book tackles head on the tension between foreign policy and development goals that chronically afflicts U.S. foreign assistance; the danger of being dismissed as one more instance of the United States going it alone instead of buttressing international cooperation; and the risk of exacerbating...

In this study, Steven Radelet examines the MCA's potential promise and possible pitfalls. He offers a rigorous analysis of the MCA’s central challenge: making foreign aid more effective in supporting economic growth and poverty reduction in the poor countries. He systematically explores what...

At the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 the nations of the world committed to join forces to meet a set of measurable targets for reducing world poverty, disease, illiteracy and other indicators of human misery—all by the year 2015. These targets, later named the Millennium Development...

Testimony before the House International Relations Committee on The Millennium Challenge Account.

The Burnside and Dollar (2000) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970-93 to 1970-97, as well as filling in missing data for the original period...

The US government's proposed $5 billion Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) could provide upwards of $250-$300m or more per year per country in new development assistance to a small number of poor countries judged to have relatively "good" policies and institutions. Could this assistance be too much...

Global private capital flows have barely touched the poorest nations; the rich invest mostly with the rich. It is possible that failures in the global capital market prevent capital from exploiting high returns in poor countries; it is also possible that fundamental returns to investment are lower...

We assess the dynamic behind the high net resource transfers of donors and creditors, IDA, bilaterals, IBRD, IMF and other multilateral creditors to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Analyzing a panel of 37 recipient countries over the years 1978-98, we find that net...

While many analysts decry the lack of sufficient investment in Africa, we find no evidence that private and public investment are productive, either in Africa as a whole (unless Botswana is included in the sample), or in the manufacturing sector in Tanzania. In this restricted sense, inadequate...

One feature of adjustment loans that has been often overlooked in their evaluation is their frequent repetition to the same country, with such extremes as the 30 IMF and World Bank adjustment loans to Argentina over 1980-99 or the 26 adjustment loans to Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. Repetition changes...

The welfare of the poor turns in large measure not only on technocratic development "policies", but the effective delivery of key public services, core elements of which require thousands of face-to-face discretionary transactions ("practices") by service providers. This paper presents eight...

This study brings readers up to date on the complicated and controversial subject of debt relief for the poorest countries of the world.

Over the last several years, the United States and other major donor countries have supported a historic initiative to write down the official debts of a group of heavily indebted poor countries, or HIPCs. Donor countries had two primary goals in supporting debt relief: to reduce countries' debt...

The tragedy of foreign aid is not that it didn't work; it was never really tried. A group of well-meaning national and international bureaucracies dispensed foreign aid under conditions in which bureaucracy does not work well. The hostile environment under which such aid agencies functioned induced...