As one of the only truly global institutions, the World Bank is uniquely positioned to be the world’s premier source funding for global public goods. But despite its global coverage, the World Bank has never truly been oriented towards global challenges. Its mission has been defined primarily by ind...

Many public organizations employ technologies of scrutiny such as peer review or quality assurance to improve their performance and decision-making. Such technologies may affect performance and decision-making directly, through scrutiny, and indirectly, through behavioural responses by agents within...

Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen, with the World Food Programme (WFP) reporting that 22.8 million people—more than half the country’s population—are projected to be acutely food insecure in 2022, including 8.7 million at risk of famine-like conditions. Even before the Taliban t...

This note summarizes two years of research under the Center for Global Development project “Governing Data for Development,” led by Michael Pisa and Ugonma Nwankwo along with project co-chairs Pam Dixon and Benno Ndulu. The project was funded by the Hewlett Foundation and guided by a ...

An increasing share of official development assistance is being used for climate-related activities. This trend is continuing despite the lack of comprehensive cost-effectiveness evidence to guide spending decisions and continuing concerns that few applications are effective or efficient mechanisms ...

Official development assistance (ODA) can be and often is spent in well-off countries, where a vanishingly small proportion of the population live in poverty (Dissanayake & Tahmasebi, 2021). Such spending is sometimes justified either on the grounds that a large number of the global poor neverth...