The Commitment to Development Index ranks 27 of the world’s richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the 5.5 billion people living in poorer nations.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) board of directors is scheduled to meet on December 10. As usual, they will use this end-of-year meeting to vote on which countries will be eligible for MCC assistance for FY2015.

Government procurement worldwide is worth around $9.5 trillion a year. Oil, gas, and mining rents (the gap between the price of the goods produced and the cost of production) amount to around $5 trillion, which is 4.8 percent of global GDP. Governments routinely sign multibillion-dollar contracts r...

Why Forests? Why Now? draws upon science, economics, and politics to show that tropical forests are essential for climate stability and sustainable development, that now is the time for action, and that payment-for-performance finance is a course of action with great potential for success.

With MCC entering its second decade, there are active questions about what it can do to expand its impact. One question is to ask how MCC might expand the set of partners with which it works.

In May 2014, Nancy Birdsall, William Savedoff, and Frances Seymour visited Brazil as part of a three-country study to gain insights into the value of future expansion of performance-based payments in other countries. This brief is based on discussions with government officials, NGO staff, private en...

The Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA) measures donors’ performance on 31 indicators of aid quality to which donors have made commitments. The indicators are grouped into four dimensions associated with effective aid: maximizing efficiency, fostering institutions, reducing the ...