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
January 29, 2007
Microfinance is generally credited with helping to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the poor. But as microfinance institutions move beyond entrepreneurial credit to offering consumer loans, many practitioners and policymakers are skeptical about "unproductive" lending. In this working pap...
WORKING PAPERS
January 29, 2007
Information asymmetries--which occur when one party to a transaction has more or better information than the other party--can cause inefficiency, over-investment, or poverty traps. Unfortunately, they are difficult to identify in practice. In this working paper, CGD non-resident fellow Dean Karlan...
WORKING PAPERS
January 29, 2007
Policymakers often urge microfinance institutions to increase interest rates to eliminate reliance on subsidies. This makes sense if the poor will borrow regardless of interest rates: then micro lenders increase profitability without reducing the poor's access to credit. But there is little evidenc...
WORKING PAPERS
January 29, 2007
Group liability--wherein individuals are both borrowers and guarantors of other client's loans--is often described as the key innovation that led to the explosion of microcredit. It is thought to create incentives for peers to screen, monitor and enforce each other's loans. But some argue that grou...
CGD NOTES
January 25, 2007
U.S. aid to Africa soared during President Bush's first term, to more than twice the level of any previous administration. But the newly divided government--Democratic Congress, Republican White House--could mean a cut in aid. In this CGD Note senior fellow Todd Moss uses just-released data from t...
CGD NOTES
January 22, 2007
Although many countries must share responsibility for the negotiating stalemate in the Doha Round of trade negotiations, the proximate cause of the talks' collapse last summer was the U.S. refusal to offer additional reductions in agricultural subsidies. In this CGD Note, senior fellow Kimberly Ell...
BRIEFS
January 22, 2007
In this CGD/ Peterson Institute Brief, CGD senior fellow Kimberly Elliott argues that agriculture liberalization is crucial to the successful completion of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, since it is the sector with the highest remaining barriers in rich countries and the greatest...