Commentary

India is among the worst countries in the world on the World Economic Forum’s gender gap index, ranking 129th in 2024. Representation of girls and women in textbooks is a natural complement to ongoing successful efforts to increase gender parity in schools. This blog analysis gender bias in textbook...

Nobody doubts China is a world power. But it is still underpowered at a number of global institutions. China could make progress in fixing that problem at the World Bank by increasing its contribution to IDA, the Bank’s soft lending arm for the world’s poorest countries, in the ongoing replenishment...

The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call to the world, revealing vulnerabilities in our global health systems and, perhaps most critically, in how we finance the prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery (PPRR) efforts needed to combat pandemics. As we confront the mpox public health emergenc...

When given additional income, how much do the poor choose to spend on food? This deceivingly simple question is surprisingly difficult to answer and has preoccupied many generations of economists. For starters, do observed correlations between income and food demand truly capture the effect of incom...

Following the UK general election, CGD's Ranil Dissanayake speaks with Stefan Dercon from the Blavatnik School of Government (and CGD) and Laura Chappell from the Institute for Public Policy Research about the unique challenges presented by today's development landscape, the key drivers of economic ...

Over the past three years, I have been pushing an idea developed with Scott Morris of a climate-dedicated capital increase at the World Bank Group as likely the most plausible and efficient route to generate the levels of global financing required to speed climate mitigation efforts in developing co...

In this piece, we explore possible reasons why countries are not utilizing the RSF for pandemic funding, including revealed preferences, implicit signaling, and interministerial dynamics. We conclude with broader challenges of global health financing architecture and the urgent need for a surge fina...