Imagine you were undergoing a programme of uncomfortable and unpleasant, but necessary, exercise and dietary changes to improve your health and found yourself slightly ahead of schedule, though some distance from your target. You sit down with your doctors and give them the good news: I’m doing bett...

We’ve updated our 2022 working paper with Laura Moscoviz on long run trends in education quality with several new surveys from around the world. Notably, a new survey round for India (NFHS-5) casts doubt on earlier data (NFHS-3). Dropping the suspect data, India’s current learning levels are unchang...

The IMF has now approved ten new loans to countries under its new Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), established in 2022 to provide financial support on concessional terms to countries facing long-term structural challenges arising from two key threats: climate change and pandemic preparedne...

This week’s General Assembly was a gloomy affair as UN officials strained to defend multilateralism in an increasingly polarized world with several major heads of state MIA.

The likelihood of capital increase for the World Bank’s non-concessional lending arm, the IBRD, appears to be climbing. At least an odd European government appears to be doing some preparatory work for it. But any negotiations around a capital increase may be complex. Large shareholders and borrowe...

The politics of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has changed substantially since we launched the first CGD working group on AMR in 2007. There is now much more awareness about the need to act, even if global solutions have not yet been implemented. Countries including the UK, Canada, and Japan have an...

Health systems in Africa are under considerable strain: rapid demographic change, rising non-communicable diseases, and emerging and re-emerging threats such as COVID-19 and Ebola are increasing demands on limited health services. The African Union’s admission to the G20 provides an opportunity for ...