Global e-commerce sales surged to US$25.6 trillion in 2018, up 8 percent from 2017. Leading the way are China (US$1.5 trillion), the United States (US$600 billion), and the United Kingdom (US$135 billion) holding the top three spots respectively. Yet Africa, with 17 percent of the world’s population...

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.

As much as current US policy has sought to characterize China’s lending program in blunt and strictly negative terms, the reality is mixed. 

Swift and orderly action on international debt is a moral, political, economic, and security imperative for the United States. A series of disorderly and protracted debt crises would be catastrophic for the world’s poorest countries. A Biden administration can raise the G20’s ambition level to avert...

COVID-19 and economic responses to it have amplified and changed the nature of development challenges in fundamental ways. Global development cooperation should adapt accordingly.

We examine the behavior of Chinese government lenders in two debt rescheduling episodes: a “low stakes” case involving Seychelles and a “high stakes” case involving the Republic of Congo. The fact that the Republic of Congo was worse off after rescheduling its debts with Beijing underscores the impo...

Countries provide aid for a variety of reasons, but if uncoordinated, the individual decisions of 30 OECD DAC donors and many more multilateral institutions can lead to wide and ineffective variations in how much aid countries receive.