Eastern Europe/ Russia

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

In this working paper CGD research fellow David Roodman explains how the four biggest developing countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China, a group Goldman Sachs dubbed the "BRICs" -- stack up to their rich-country counterparts on the environment component of the annual Commitment to Development...

While the threat of global warming is increasingly accepted, little attention has been paid to the likely impact at the country level, especially in the developing world. In this new book, Bill Cline, a joint senior fellow at CGD and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, provides...

Remarkable increases in primary schooling over the past decade have brought gender equity to the education systems of many poor countries. But some 60 million girls are still not attending school. In this CGD brief, non-resident fellow Maureen Lewis and visiting fellow Marlaine Lockheed explain...

The April 5, 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report predicts that droughts and floods will become more frequent and severe as a result of global warming. In this CGD Note senior fellow David Wheeler shows that citizens of poor countries are much more likely than citizens in...

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....

Microfinance is a widely celebrated strategy for helping poor people in the developing world. Leading microfinance institutions, including the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Grameen Bank, reach millions of clients. CGD research fellow David Roodman and Uzma Qureshi analyze why some microfinance...

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...

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...

In this posthumously published working paper, Dick Sabot argues that the U.S. external deficit is putting at risk the welfare of poor people in developing countries. This accessible paper draws on a forthcoming book, The U.S. as a Debtor Nation, by William Cline, and has been updated to include...

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...

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.

This paper is part of the Copenhagen Consensus process, which aims to assess and evaluate the opportunities available to address the ten largest challenges facing the world. One of these ten challenges is the “lack of education.” This paper provides an analytical framework to evaluate the...

Public policy on financial crises in emerging markets has implicitly been grounded in economic theory calling for lender-of-last-resort intervention when the country is solvent, and on theory recognizing that reputational damage is the quasi-collateral enabling lending to sovereigns with no...

This study examines the impact of the principal financial crises in emerging markets in recent years on the incidence of poverty in the countries in question. The growth impact is first identified by comparing average per capita growth in the two years prior to the crisis to that in the crisis year...

While most technical assessments classify privatization as a success, it remains widely and increasingly unpopular, largely because of the perception that it is fundamentally unfair, both in conception and execution. We review the increasing (but still uneven) literature and conclude that most...

This paper analyzes privatization and enterprise reform of three major countries in the transition region; Poland, Czechoslovakia (subsequently the Czech Republic), and the Soviet Union (subsequently Russia). For each, it discusses the prevailing ideologies of advisors prior to and during the...