Ideas to action: independent research for global prosperity
Research
Innovative, independent, peer-reviewed. Explore the latest economic research and policy proposals from CGD’s global development experts.
WORKING PAPERS
April 11, 2024
POLICY PAPERS
April 15, 2024
CGD NOTES
April 08, 2024
WORKING PAPERS
April 04, 2024
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Research
WORKING PAPERS
July 20, 2009
Why do so many businesses choose to remain informal? Vijaya Ramachandran and co-authors discover that the answer is more nuanced than often believed. In East Africa, for instance, the difference in productivity between formal and informal firms is often indistinguishable, while in Southern Africa pr...
WORKING PAPERS
June 18, 2009
CGD fellow David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch a landmark evaluation of the impact of microcredit on poor households in Bangladesh. They replicate the study's statistical analysis and put an end to the controversy surrounding it by showing that it fails to rule out reverse causation. A positive a...
WORKING PAPERS
May 28, 2009
CGD visiting fellow John Gibson and David McKenzie investigate the economic determinants behind decisions to migrate and decisions to return home. Using Pacific island countries as case studies, they find that expected gains in income may not be as influential as other expectations and preferences.
WORKING PAPERS
May 21, 2009
Billions of people depend on rice to survive. During the 2007–08 rice price crisis, the international community increased funding for food aid and governments tried to stabilize their domestic prices—only to further destabilize the world market. In the newest of three CGD working papers on the crisi...
WORKING PAPERS
May 20, 2009
Economists often use instrumental variables to demonstrate a causal relationship between some trait of a country and economic growth. In this new analysis, Samuel Bazzi and Michael Clemens show that a variety of instrumental variables used in top economics journals have severe but hidden limitations...
WORKING PAPERS
April 21, 2009
In this working paper, Owen Barder raises fundamental questions about the purpose of aid transfers. For many donors the purpose is "poverty reduction" in the narrow sense of growth that reduces poverty. Barder argues that such a focus ignores key trade-offs, such as between reducing current and futu...
WORKING PAPERS
April 13, 2009
This paper evaluates an intervention aimed at improving road safety in Kenya, in which long-distance minibus passengers were encouraged to speak up and admonish their driver when they felt their safety was being compromised. Evocative messages designed to empower passengers were placed in a random s...