There is a non-trivial chance that ODA for non-humanitarian and climate finance will fall in absolute terms over the coming years and that aid will become increasingly focused on richer countries. The most promising strategy for bilateral ODA flows may be to increase the generosity of traditional do...

The first section of this note examines the causes and consequences of Afghanistan’s financial crisis and lays out policy options the international community can support to enable urgent financial flows and restore the basic functioning of the Afghan financial system. The next section examines prosp...

USAID recently released a draft Local Capacity Development (LCD) Policy. While USAID routinely invests in interventions designed to strengthen local capacity, this is the first time the agency has attempted to articulate principles that will govern its approach and propose, in broad terms, the steps...

In the context of an ongoing debate around the role of aid in middle income countries, it is worth revisiting the discussion around aid allocation in general.

As the world’s largest bilateral donor responsible for managing around $20 billion in annual funding, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has a particular responsibility to take an evidence-informed approach to its work. It also has a congressional mandate to do so.

The UK has considerably increased the amount of aid it spends on research in recent years. We suggest reporting reforms that will increase transparency and allow greater scrutiny of the way UK research aid is spent. We also call for the UK to live up to its reporting to the OECD that all British aid...

Are USAID programs high impact and good value for money? Do they work? Do they generate more results for less cost than if the agency just gave poor people cash? We don’t always know the answers to those questions, but USAID is trying to find out.