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POLICY PAPERS
January 17, 2018
Development Finance Institutions (DFIs)—which provide financing to private investors in developing economies—have seen rapid expansion over the past few years. This paper describes and analyses a new dataset covering the five largest bilateral DFIs alongside the IFC which includes projec...
POLICY PAPERS
January 17, 2018
IFC’s portfolio is not focused where it could make the most difference. Low income countries are where IFC has the scale to make a considerable difference to development outcomes. While an excessive portfolio shift might imperil IFC’s credit rating, the evidence suggests that there is co...
POLICY PAPERS
November 17, 2017
This paper covers qualitative case studies from Iran, Nigeria, and India to illustrate a series of lessons for governments implementing subsidy reform policies. From these three country experiences, we find that fostering public support to implement lasting reform may depend on four measures: (1) fo...
POLICY PAPERS
August 29, 2017
In the past decade, Ghana has experienced severe electricity supply challenges even though installed generation capacity has more than doubled over the period. The electricity supply challenges can be attributed to a number of factors, including a high level of losses in the distribution system as w...
BRIEFS
August 24, 2017
After one year, public schools managed by private operators raised student learning by 60 percent compared to standard public schools. But costs were high, performance varied across operators, and contracts authorized the largest operator to push excess pupils and under-performing teachers into othe...
POLICY PAPERS
November 10, 2016
Despite no reported cases of polio in two years in Nigeria, on August 11, 2016, the WHO announced two new wild polio cases had been discovered in Northern Nigeria. While undoubtedly a setback, Nigeria has mobilized its immunization forces and will look to take heed of four key lessons learned during...
BRIEFS
October 26, 2016
Power Africa has the potential to be transformative for millions of poor people and be the single biggest legacy in Africa for President Barack Obama. Observers now have roughly three years to reflect on the initiative: on what’s progressing well, what’s not, and where future risks may l...
POLICY PAPERS
February 03, 2016
Despite the success of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) in reducing the debt burdens of low-income countries, at least eleven Sub-Saharan African countries are currently in, or face a high risk of, debt distress. A few of those currently at risk include countries that have been excluded fr...
REPORTS
September 14, 2015
The Report of the High Level Panel on Humanitarian Cash Transfers shows why giving aid directly in the form of cash is often a highly effective way to reduce suffering and to make limited humanitarian aid budgets go further. We urge the humanitarian community to give more aid as cash, and to make ca...
POLICY PAPERS
March 04, 2015
Donors play a significant role in funding medicines and other commodities in global health. Of the approximately US $28.2 billion spent by donors in 2010, approximately 40% went towards medicines, vaccines and other health commodities, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. The efficiency of this spend is th...