Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
When a society goes from broadly shared growth to a state of malaise or decline, the ensuing pain is not just economic but psychological. Now that tens of millions of people in developing countries are suffering precisely such a reversal of fortune, the political fallout is sure to be tumultuous.
As the current and former leaders of the Center for Global Development, we express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the late Elaine Wolfensohn. Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn have been friends and supporters of CGD since its inception.
In a year marked by pandemic and protest, good books are more important than ever. We're back with more hand-picked recommendations from CGD's staff and researchers to help you better understand, empathize with, or escape the world.
For the US to back an American candidate as president disrupts an arrangement that has been fundamental to the bank’s effectiveness as a development institution investing in better lives and livelihoods in its borrowing member countries.
A simple way to guarantee an adequate flow of long-run, sustained funding for health surveillance and disease control, and to prepare for the next novel virus in the world’s poor countries, is to create an endowment dedicated to that purpose. A $10 billion endowment could generate income of $500 million a year.
There are two ways to look at progress in the developing world context. I think the right way to look at it is that there has been tremendous success. The downside is that, as we see with the threat of COVID as well as the risk of more natural disasters because of climate change, that they and the economies in which they live and work, are vulnerable - lacking resilience, obviously, especially now.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced destructive nationalism, but it has also highlighted the necessity of international collaboration. Global-minded citizens—starting in the United States—must now push their governments to cooperate and support multilateral institutions
Last week Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar sent a letter signed by hundreds of lawmakers from 40 countries to the heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, urging them to greatly increase the access of developing countries to financial assistance. They called for a new issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) at the IMF, echoing the earlier plea of Gordon Brown and Larry Summers for at least $1 trillion in new SDRs.
Not enough will be said about Paul O’Neill's discovery of and his quiet support for global development, including for debt relief to Africa, during his time in Bush’s cabinet. O’Neill also leaves an indelible mark on CGD, for which I will always be grateful.
The lockdowns throughout the world are creating a new type of brutal inequality: between those who continue to have a steady source of income and those who do not.
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