Commentary

As Asia and the Pacific transitions from demographic dividends to deficits, policies focusing on labor mobility and regional cooperation are essential. Investing in human capital and flexible migration policies can address workforce imbalances, ensuring continued economic growth and stability across...

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint, was released in late 2023 but has recently received heightened attention. I perused the document for content on development policy, looking at the section on the US Treasury and on USAID.

With disaster displacement on the rise, and the link to climate change established, the need to reduce the risk of internal displacement and provide solutions will require finance. A lot more finance. Given the constraints on domestic resources and the demands on stretched ODA budgets, and the absen...

We lost an intellectual giant last week with the passing of James C. Scott. If they’re very lucky, most great scholars manage to get one really big idea out there into the world, the kind of idea that people cite and are influenced by even without having read the book or paper it came from. The best...

For the past 35 years, the World Bank has hosted the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, or ABCDE, showcasing internal and external research relevant to the Bank’s mission of a world free of poverty. This year, on July 9 and 10, CGD co-hosted the conference together with the World Bank.

On the CGD blog today, Ashley Pople and Stefan Dercon summarise the enormous benefits of a cash transfer paid to vulnerable Bangladeshis in anticipation of a flood that was predicted to occur based on modelling. Households that received the transfer were far less likely to go a day without eating, r...

Why do we see these improvements three months after the floods? We show that the anticipatory cash transfer increased the choices available to household before the flood peak. Compared to no-cash households, recipient households took more action in preparation for the incoming floods, including evac...