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Views from the Center

CGD experts offer ideas and analysis to improve international development policy. Also check out our Global Health blog and US Development Policy blog.

 

An image showing several gold bars.
February 9, 2021

The IMF’s Gold: A Global Resource or a Chimera?

The market value of the IMF’s gold—about US$170 billion at end 2020—far exceeds its historic cost on the Fund’s balance sheet of under $5 billion. Not surprisingly, this has led some to see the IMF’s gold as a “free” resource that should be tapped to meet pressing global needs. And these calls have become louder as the demands of meeting new challenges—from climate change to the pandemic—have confronted flat or shrinking aid budgets.

Mark Plant and David Andrews
IMF Growth projections for all regions fell in the April and June 2020 estimates (versus January), then remained similar in October. All regions are projected to be negative now
October 16, 2020

Six Takeaways from the New Growth Forecasts from the IMF and the World Bank

This week the IMF released new global economic growth projections in the face of COVID-19, updating their earlier projections from June and from April before that. In recent weeks, the World Bank has also released new projections for various regions. Here are six takeaways that we gleaned from reviewing those and dozens of other projections from other organizations over the course of the year.

Amina Mendez Acosta and David Evans
Health and Land Transport Agency (ATT) staff in Madagascar check passenger lists at Andohatapenaka Bus Station on April 9, 2020.
September 28, 2020

The Curse of Falling Expectations

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.

Nancy Birdsall
Aerial view of Bogota. Photo by Dominic Chavez, World Bank
July 20, 2020

After COVID-19: How to Pull Off the SDG Hat-Trick?

To try to get back on track towards achieving the SDG poverty and inequality goals, developing country governments are seeking to pull off a hat-trick over the next decade: sustaining high rates of economic growth, eliminating poverty, and significantly reducing inequality. In a new CGD paper, we consider how realistic this is and ask, after the COVID-19 pandemic, what type of economic growth will be required?

Christopher Hoy and Andy Sumner
Midwife Beatrice works as part of Health Development Initiative (HDI). HDI was founded by Rwandan physicians with the goal of empowering individuals and communities to improve health and advance development.
June 8, 2020

Resilience in Developing Nations

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.

Nancy Birdsall, Karen J. Greenberg and John Berger
An image of 3 percent
March 30, 2020

Three Percent is a Big Difference

There is a little-noticed but important difference between the World Bank’s original goal for poverty reduction and the first of the subsequent UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG1).  The difference is that the Bank’s goal was to reach a 3 percent poverty rate by 2030, while the SDG1 is to “eradicate” poverty by 2030, where “eradicate” means zero. Yet that 3 percent could well make a big difference

Martin Ravallion
A word cloud of the most frequently used words in paper titles from Banerjee.
November 12, 2019

A Quick Guide to 100+ Publications by Economics Nobel Winner Abhijit Banerjee

Last month, Abhijit Banerjee won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, together with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. Here’s a quick introduction to almost all of Banerjee’s publications. The range of topics is breathtaking, from land reform to corruption to microcredit to international aid to the fundamental nature of poverty.

David Evans

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