Research

Shared growth—growth that helps to build a middle class—is now widely embraced as a central economic goal for developing countries. In this new working paper CGD president Nancy Birdsall reviews how macroeconomic policies shape incentives for inclusive growth, focusing on fiscal discipli...

In this working paper CGD research fellow David Roodman explains how the four biggest developing countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China, a group Goldman Sachs dubbed the "BRICs" -- stack up to their rich-country counterparts on the environment component of the annual Commitment to Development ...

Access to financial services -- ranging from credit to the use of electronic means of payment -- is crucial for growth and poverty reduction. This new working paper by CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez tells why access to financial services is low in Latin America and suggests innovative soluti...

USAID launched a project in 1995 to deliver basic health services in Haiti. The project began by reimbursing NGOs for their expenditures, but evolved to include payments based partly on performance targets. The result: marked improvements in health, particularly in immunization coverage and attende...

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs are one way to create incentives for poor people to use preventive healthcare services. Evaluations show that CCT programs work, and their use is spreading rapidly throughout the developing world. This paper analyzes key features of CCT programs and offers pr...

Nicaragua was one of the first low-income countries to try a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. Under the program, poor families are paid for keeping their children in school and visiting preventive healthcare providers. Healthcare providers are paid based on their performance against predet...