Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
As the global trade powerhouses lurch towards protectionism, CGD’s Commitment to Development Index, released today, reveals which advanced economies have trade policies that support—or fail to support—lower-income countries.
Today, we published the Commitment to Development Index (CDI) 2018, which ranks 27 of the world’s richest countries on how well their policies help the more than five billion people living in poorer countries. European countries dominate this year’s CDI, occupying the top 12 positions in the Index and with Sweden claiming the #1 spot. Here, we look at what these countries are doing particularly well in the past year to support the world’s poor, and where European leaders can still learn from others.
Germans have given Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term as chancellor, but once again without a parliamentary majority. It seems likely that Merkel will now try to negotiate a black-green-yellow “Jamaica coalition” (referring to the parties’ colors) with the Greens and the pro-business Liberals replacing the Social Democrats as coalition partners. Despite the gain in vote for nationalists, our analysis suggests the Jamaica coalition could actually strengthen Germany’s role in accelerating global development, as well as benefitting Germany.
On September 5, we launched the results of the 2017 Commitment to Development Index (CDI), which scores 27 countries on how development-friendly their policies are. This year, we include two new indicators assessing how rich-country “tariffs” (taxes on imports) and “subsidies” (payments to domestic producers) inhibit development. But which is more damaging, and therefore deserves a greater weight in the Index?
Using the approach embedded in previous CDI calculations, we calculate that tariffs may be over three times as damaging as agricultural subsidies in inhibiting developing country trade. Below, we look at how tariffs and subsidy inhibit development, and assess their respective impact.
After some modest tweaks over the years, the trade component of the Commitment to Development Index got a makeover in 2013—not a new face, but a nip and tuck here and there. The latest CDI includes a more direct measure of tacit barriers to trade from the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators on the time and cost to import, exclusive of tariffs. The trade component also now recognizes the growing importance of trade in services—and barriers to it—thanks to another team of World Bank economists that developed the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index.
One passage in President Obama's Middle East speech today caught my attention:
When I told my co-workers I was going to an event called "Fashion Fights Poverty" (co-sponsored by the United Nations
I am pleased to announce the release of the 2006 edition of the Commitment to Development Index. Each year the CDI rates and ranks 21 rich countries on how much their policies help or hurt poorer nations. The CDI assigns scores in seven policy areas (foreign aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology), with the average being the overall score.
Some years ago, after the Jubilee 2000 debt-cancellation campaign wound down, Bono and other activists founded a group called DATA, based here in Washington, DC.
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