Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
In late July, we had called for the immediate release of the IFC/MIGA report, and we are pleased that the report has now been disclosed. The review is comprehensive and exposes serious problems in IFC/MIGA’s accountability system that have led to its dysfunction. The process for implementing reforms should be open and transparent and should address the following shortcomings:
In our new study–“Are Teachers in Africa Poorly Paid? Evidence from 15 Countries”–we pulled together representative household data from 15 African nations in the last 10 years and examined how well teachers are paid relative to other workers with similar skill and experience.
The US is facing growing concerns about how COVID-19 could negatively impact maternal health & exacerbate racial inequities in care and outcomes surrounding childbirth—but there's an opportunity for reform ahead.
There may be no government response that can fully mitigate COVID-19’s impact and maintain fairness for 2020’s exam candidates. But high-stakes exams are unfair every year, not just during a pandemic: large differences in home support and access to resources are not new. Exams reinforce income inequality, create perverse incentives in the classroom, and limit the number of students who could benefit from more education.
CGD colleagues raised questions and concerns at the time of the announcement. In weighing his possibly presidency, an especially salient question becomes: can Claver-Carone deliver a general capital increase (GCI)?
In Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay, he divided the world into hedgehogs, who have a singular vision uniting all action, and foxes, characterized by the breadth of their intellectual curiosity and locus of attention. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office needs to be both hedgehog and fox to fulfill its promise, being able to relate all of its work to its central vision of being a force for good in the world, while retaining the fox’s ability to work on multiple problems in multiple ways.
Each year, the Center for Global Development produces the Commitment to Development Index, evaluating countries across a range of indicators that measure their impact on developing countries. This blog demonstrates that the ranking of countries in the CDI is fairly robust to the weights used. That rankings change little as weights are varied suggests that the CDI is capturing something real about the attitudes towards development of countries included in the index.
This blog highlights the impact of living through a pandemic on mental health, including worsening substance abuse disorders, and on nutrition and access to primary health care.
Many developing countries are pursuing domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) initiatives, which is critical for them to finance the spending necessary to enable sustainable development. The need for DRM has now taken on greater urgency given the fiscal implications of the COVID-19 crisis.
Accurately forecasting the demand for health products at health clinics, and ordering the correct quantity, is a significant challenge to ensuring availability of health products at the last mile of health systems. While much progress has been made since then in terms of more accurate global forecasting, clinic-level demand forecasts still remain an unaddressed area.
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