Commentary

With donor priorities shifting and global crises competing for attention, the future of development aid—particularly for social sectors like education—has rarely been more uncertain. Given the dramatic reductions in US aid and impending cuts by other donors such as the UK, low- and middle-income cou...

There's a common concern that AI systems are black boxes prone to unexpected behavior, from Google recommending users eat rocks to Sora’s AI videos depicting gymnasts sprouting extra limbs. While some of these examples may seem benign, organizations using AI for development are rightly concerned abo...

In an earlier blog post, we argued that rationalizing tax expenditures (TEs)—comprising exemptions, deductions, and reduced rates providing preferential tax treatments for specific groups of individuals, regions, or sectors—is critical to enhancing the capacity of low- and low-middle income countri...

Medical doctors regularly warn their patients about unhealthy foods and behaviors. But who is going to warn the public about unhealthy public policies and government spending? The quick answer is that other doctors (the kind with PhDs not MDs), along with qualified policy analysts of all kinds, can...

Grazing livestock—especially cattle—are responsible for about 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, measured by their warming effect over 100 years, but ranchers won’t invest in methane-reducing innovations without external incentives. An Advance Market Commitment could fix this market failu...

The Trump administration’s actions related to development policy are rooted in the “America First” doctrine. Their approach is not in line with internationally agreed objectives but narrowly aligned with perceived national interests. We take a step back to examine the underlying principles that appe...

Last week the government’s Evaluation Task Force published a new Evaluation Registry, putting together all UK government evaluations onto a single searchable website. We found that while aid-spending agencies make up only 1.3 percent of UK government spending, they are the subject of 12.5 percent of...