March 31, 2010
Cash on Delivery Aid…The Book!
Last week was a busy time in Washington for those interested in results-focused approaches to foreign aid, with two major events, one here at CGD and one at the World Bank.
Views from the Center
March 30, 2010
SDRs to Jump-Start a Green Fund: Still a Good Idea
Climate change politics are strange. Innovation, even when it’s about easy new money, is hard. That’s the lesson I extract from what happened on March 4th in the IMF boardroom.
March 25, 2010
COD Aid, Maternal Mortality, and the G-8—A Good Recipe?
This is a joint post with Katherine Douglas.
One of the exciting things about the Cash on Delivery Initiative is that once people understand the concept, they frequently come up with all kinds of new ideas for applying it. This happened most recently at the CGD-hosted book launch for Cash on Delivery: A New Approach to Aid this week. Within the course of an hour, the conversation shifted from skeptical questions to prospective applications of COD Aid. While the book outlines a proposal for channeling aid to countries that accelerate their progress toward accomplishing the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary completion, people have asked about applying it to water, deforestation, malaria and to another Millennium Development Goal: reducing maternal mortality.
March 25, 2010
ONE Way to Help Women
Unlike World Water Day (March 22nd) or World TB Day (March 24th), International Women’s Day (March 8th) was a hard holiday to miss. Or at least it was in Washington. Hundreds of articles, conferences and galas focused on the inspiring women—and men—working to promote and celebrate the social, economic and political achievements of women. But now that I’ve almost recover
March 24, 2010
Multilateralism on Currency Issues
This article also appeared in the Business Standard.
Back in 1971, the then US Treasury Secretary, John Connolly, told his European counterparts that the dollar was “our currency, but your problem”. Today, it seems that China has returned that favour. Its currency has become a problem for the US. Not just the politics but the intellectual climate has become charged with even Nobel laureate Paul Krugman urging strong trade action against China. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has a damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don’t choice facing him in mid-April, when he is required by law to pronounce on whether China is a currency manipulator.
March 23, 2010
Sunday’s Immigration Marchers and Development
The spotlight in Washington on Sunday was on health care reform. But something else big happened here that day: Tens of thousands marched on the National Mall to ask for reform of U.S.
March 19, 2010
Evaluation Agency Created by CGD Shares “Best in Aid” Award
AidWatch – the brainchild of noted aid critic (and former CGD fellow) Bill Easterly – has given its Best in Aid Grand Prize to the “Smart Giving movement,” nominated by Saundra Schimmelpfennig of the blog Good Intentions are Not Enough.
March 19, 2010
Birdsall Tells Congress Haiti Needs More than Aid—And More Flexibility from Congress Itself
Read all of CGD's Fresh Ideas for Haiti on trade, migration, debt and more.
The U.S. response in Haiti must be about more than aid, CGD president Nancy Birdsall told Congress this week. She urged members of Congress to push for better trade and migration policies—in addition to more flexibility with our assistance efforts—to help Haiti rebuild after the earthquake.
March 19, 2010
A Development Perspective on China’s Currency—And a Fresh WTO Solution
My colleage Arvind Subramanian published an intriguing Op-Ed in the Financial Times this week. In “The Weak Renminbi is Not Just America’s Problem” Arvind notes that the undervalued Chinese currency is a global problem that requires a multilateral response. He then argues persuasively that neither the United States nor the IMF can be expected to persuade China to revalue its currency. Instead, he says, such action should come from the WTO.
March 18, 2010
A New CGD Initiative on U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan: What Is It and Will It Work?
This is a joint post with Molly Kinder.
At CGD, we normally conduct research and analysis on development issues (trade, aid effectiveness, climate change, global health), not developing countries. Pakistan is an exception. Motivated by national security interests, the Obama administration is poised to triple its development assistance to Pakistan. The effectiveness of this new U.S. assistance is imperiled by the same governance problems that have undermined the billions spent by the U.S. and other donors in the last 30 years. Given these challenges, how can the new pledges of U.S. aid to Pakistan be implemented effectively, and what, if any, other policy or program initiatives might matter?
To address these questions, we recently launched a new CGD initiative on the U.S. development strategy in Pakistan. As part of this initiative we have convened a study group, comprising leading experts in development economics, national security, aid effectiveness and including several prominent Pakistanis. The study group will meet regularly over the next year to help us prepare periodic open letters to the administration commenting on and hopefully helping improve the assistance program, as well as trade and other U.S. policies aimed at greater security, stability and prosperity in Pakistan.
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