Research

Localization is usually the wrong answer to legitimate data policy issues. As a result, data transfer restrictions wind up imposing unnecessary costs on providers, such as banks, which effectively serves as a tax which is either passed along to the poor or, even worse, makes it uneconomical for firm...

Marginal abatement cost curves, which suggest the cheapest approaches to reducing carbon emissions, are out of favor in international climate finance discussions because they are not good tools to use when thinking about systemic and urgent change. On the other hand, international financing studies ...

On October 30, 2023, CGD senior fellow Charles Kenny delivered remarks at the Oxford Martin School, where he is a visiting fellow. His speech, “The future of global development and implications for aid,” focused on global economic change and its impact on the development prospects of low- and middle...

The productivity drought and the unending search for GDP growth by high- and middle-income countries has drawn attention to the flagging vigor of large incumbent corporations and the need to groom a crop of "unicorns"—highly valued, entrepreneurial, superstar firms can potentially dial up competitio...

The Handbook for Space Capability Development is an inclusive, pragmatic, and open-access resource focused on “foundational space capability” development. Its intended audience is the planner or planning team charged with drafting a national space strategy and building a national space program. Amon...

Bangladesh’s Primary Education Stipend Program provides stipends for 13 million primary schoolchildren to 10 million mothers. In 2017 the method of payment changed from cash to mobile money. This study considers the experience of the mothers with the shift to mobile money, and to the change in payme...

Globally, we are making fewer potential innovators. To extend our two-century era of comparatively rapid progress, we need radically reduced discrimination in the global opportunity to innovate.