Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
In late July, we had called for the immediate release of the IFC/MIGA report, and we are pleased that the report has now been disclosed. The review is comprehensive and exposes serious problems in IFC/MIGA’s accountability system that have led to its dysfunction. The process for implementing reforms should be open and transparent and should address the following shortcomings:
The COVID-19 pandemic has become a threat to global prosperity and stability, but what is the cost of doing nothing in response?
In a new working paper, we aim to address this gap with a new measure of cross-border, concessional finance—Finance for International Development (FID). FID is designed to be a measure which is more consistent across all development actors—going beyond just OECD members.
On October 10, CGD, in collaboration with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), held a workshop in Mexico City to discuss CGD’s innovative tool that serves to diagnose the crucial impediments to digital financial inclusion in specific country contexts. There, we shared a draft of CGD’s forthcoming paper: A Decision Tree for Improving Financial Inclusion.
In a world of stagnating public aid, limited fiscal space, and rising public debt in low-income countries, can they realistically expect to rely more on private finance from foreigners?
Yesterday, the House Committee on Financial Services held a hearing with US Secretary of the Treasury Stephen Mnuchin on the international financial system. Chairwoman Maxine Waters opened the session with a strong statement on the World Bank’s $2.5 billion IDA Private Sector Window (PSW). Chairwoman Waters raises important concerns with the Private Sector Window that should be urgently addressed.
Matti Kohonen of Christian Aid holds out the enticing prospect that African countries could collect an additional 1.5 percent of gross domestic product in tax if only big multinationals would stop dodging. The problem is that this estimate is (still) based on wishful thinking. Multinational corporations should pay tax, but the scale of potential revenues depend on underlying levels of investment and profitability in a country.
The world, as they say, is moving “beyond aid.” As true as that may be in aggregate, however, the trend doesn’t apply evenly across groups of countries. While fairly significant data gaps prevent a complete and unbiased picture, the available data show that ODA remains a comparatively prominent source of external financing for fragile states.
It is now abundantly clear that aid money will provide only a fraction of the resources needed to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. That realization came early on, and it was a central theme of the Addis Financing for Development conference of 2015, held before the SDGs were even signed.
As part of borrowing from the IMF, the IMF and the country that is borrowing agree on the implementation of certain policies (conditions) during the program period. The implementation of some conditions is not essential for the continuation of the program, including some pertaining to budgetary expenditures. Their implementation often vary from country to country, and the empirical analysis shows that certain budgetary conditions achieve their intended objectives over the long term, while others do not. In this blog, I explain which budget conditions work, and which don’t work.
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