The East Asian export-led development model has served as a beacon for decades. For the many urbanized and rapidly urbanizing countries, the East Asian experience with and response to emerging challenges can be equally instructive. High-income East Asian economies are at or approaching peak urbaniza...

South Africa responded to the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown using a combination of existing social protection programmes, unemployment insurance, and additional measures to support those most affected. This paper reviews policies and implementation with the objective of highlighting...

As the global financial community considers how to extend debt relief accompanied by IMF adjustment programs to vulnerable low-income countries, the issue of policy conditions for fiscal adjustment will inevitably arise. This paper considers the effectiveness of conditions related to domestic revenu...

Many stress the critical role of the private sector in filling yawning sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) infrastructure finance gaps, only widened by the pandemic. Our paper looks in detail at financially closed (construction-ready) transactions with private participation in SSA from 2007-2020. Despite the “...

Sovereign bond guarantees (SBGs) are an effective but underutilized instrument available to the US government in support of developing country partners. By protecting bond purchasers in the event of a foreign issuer country’s default, SBGs substantially reduce borrowing costs for developing country ...

This paper discusses three potential requirements for country platforms to facilitate effective delivery of GPGs. We propose that existing country platforms be repurposed to coordinate the contribution of domestic and external stakeholders to GPG delivery efforts at the country level. For this propo...

This paper aims to determine the extent to which gender was considered in the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) operations aimed at responding to the COVID pandemic and associated economic crisis. Using keywords to identify COVID response projects, we found 264 projects approved between March ...

This paper explores the UK’s proposed “Indo-Pacific tilt” from a development perspective. In light of recent cuts to the UK’s official development assistance (ODA), we ask how the UK can use scarce development resources in the Indo-Pacific more effectively to capitalise on opportunities to support s...

The Global Financing Facility (GFF), launched in 2015, is a partnership backed by a multi-donor World Bank trust fund that aims to “prioritize and scale-up evidence-driven investments to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH-N) interventions” in ...

The Bay of Bengal, the Sahel, and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are especially vulnerable to the impacts of slow-onset climate events resulting from climate change. Global temperature warming is leading to a dramatic rise in sea levels, which will lead to coastal erosion and land loss across...