Annual Report: 2017
4/17/18
The Center for Global Development works to reduce global poverty and improve lives through innovative economic research that drives better policy and practice by the world's top decision makers.
Publications
A Bangladesh Compact: Beyond Aid Solutions for Rohingya Refugees and Host Communities
4/17/18
Bangladesh is providing an immense global public good, hosting more than 688,000 Rohingya fleeing violence in Myanmar since August 2017.
Tackling the Realities of Protracted Displacement: Case Studies on What’s Working and Where We Can Do Better
4/17/18
The international community has come together in new ways to address forced displacement—one of the biggest challenges of the early twenty-first century.
Atoms for Africa: Is There a Future for Civil Nuclear Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa?
4/16/18
This paper explores the feasibility of commercial nuclear power in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in light of advanced nuclear technologies and their potential to overcome some of the challenges to deployment.
Using Supervised Learning to Select Audit Targets in Performance-Based Financing in Health: An Example from Zambia - Working Paper 481
4/11/18
We examine alternative strategies for targeted sampling of health clinics for independent verification. Our results indicate that machine learning methods, particularly Random Forest, outperform other approaches and can increase the cost-effectiveness of verification activities.
More Mobilizing, Less Lending: A Pragmatic Proposal for MDBs
4/3/18
MDB private sector operations or windows (PSWs) are essential actors in mobilizing private finance for development, but their mobilization track record to date falls far short of a meaningful contribution to annual SDG financing gaps in the trillions
Keynote Speech at Harvard University’s 9th Annual African Development Conference
4/2/18
On March 24, 2018, Antoinette Sayeh gave the afternoon keynote speech at Harvard University’s 9th Annual African Development Conference. She highlighted four immediate economic challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa, what they mean for the long-term, and the need for action to address them.
Illicit Financial Flows, Trade Misinvoicing, and Multinational Tax Avoidance: The Same or Different?
3/26/18
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) connected with corruption, crime, and tax evasion are an issue of increasing concern. However, there is not yet a clear consensus on how to define illicit financial flows, and even less on how to measure them.
Does Deforestation Increase Malaria Prevalence? Evidence from Satellite Data and Health Surveys - Working Paper 480
3/22/18
In this paper we combine fourteen years of high-resolution satellite data on forest loss with individual-level survey data on malaria in more than 60,000 rural children in 17 countries in Africa, and fever in more than 470,000 rural children in 41 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. We did not find that deforestation increases malaria prevalence nor that intermediate levels of forest cover have higher malaria prevalence.
Mindful Saving: Exploring the Power of Savings for Women
3/22/18
Mobile savings hold great promise, because they can considerably reduce transaction costs that can be unduly heavy for women. Two questions guide us: how can we encourage more women microentrepreneurs to access formal savings accounts, and is mobile saving a particularly fitting solution? This series uses empirical evidence to address these issues.
Mindful Saving: Exploring the Power of Savings for Women (Factsheet)
3/22/18
Mobile savings hold great promise for empowering women entrepreneurs. Women are often disproportionately burdened by high transaction costs to access savings accounts.
Alleviating Global Poverty: Labor Mobility, Direct Assistance, and Economic Growth - Working Paper 479
3/20/18
Simply allowing more labor mobility holds vastly more promise for reducing poverty than anything else on the development agenda. That said, the magnitude of the gains from large growth accelerations (and losses from large decelerations) are also many-fold larger than the potential gains from directed individual interventions and the poverty reduction gains from large, extended periods of rapid growth are larger than from targeted interventions and also hold promise (and have delivered) for reducing global poverty.
Short-Term Impacts of Improved Access to Mobile Savings, with and without Business Training: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania - Working Paper 478
3/16/18
This paper presents short-term results from an experiment randomizing the promotion and registration of a mobile savings account among women microentrepreneurs in Tanzania, with and without business training. Six months post-intervention, the results show that women save substantially more through the mobile account, and that the business training bolstered this effect.
Paraguay: Is Good Macro Policy Enough to Ensure Adequate Resilience to Adverse External Shocks? How Does It Compare to Other Emerging Markets? - Working Paper 477
3/15/18
This paper assesses the resilience of Paraguay’s economic and financial stability to external shocks and reaches two main conclusions.
Perspective in Economic Evaluations of Healthcare Interventions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: One Size Does Not Fit All
3/9/18
As developing nations are increasingly adopting economic evaluation as a means of informing their own investment decisions, new questions emerge. The right answer to the question “which perspective?” is the one tailored to these local specifics. We conclude that there is no one-size-fits-all and that the one who pays must set or have a major say in setting the perspective.
In the Face of China’s Ambition, US Policy Must Be Defined by a Positive Agenda in the Developing World
3/8/18
In his appearance before the committee, Morris outlined findings from newly CGD published analysis exploring the debt implications of China’s Belt & Road Initiative—and offered his views on what it should mean for US global engagement.
Examining the Debt Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative from a Policy Perspective
3/4/18
China’s Belt and Road Initiative hopes to deliver trillions of dollars in infrastructure financing to Asia, Europe, and Africa. This paper assesses the likelihood of debt problems in the 68 countries identified as potential BRI borrowers. We conclude that eight countries are at particular risk of debt distress based on an identified pipeline of project lending associated with BRI.
Guyana’s REDD+ Agreement with Norway: Perceptions of and Impacts on Indigenous Communities - Working Paper 476
2/21/18
This report examines the impact of the REDD+ agreement between Guyana and Norway on indigenous communities in the country. It aims to understand the concerns, hopes, and fears of indigenous communities at the start of the agreement, and the effects, if any, that communities have faced from REDD+.