Research

Some miracles resist forgetting. They continue to hold out hope for believers. The East Asian Miracle that apparently blessed four economies with a growth bonanza in the last quarter of the twentieth century, endures because a legion of countries believe that supernatural events can be made to recur...

This note assesses how large tobacco, alcohol, and sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) companies navigated the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of sales and profits, in order to provide evidence for raising health taxes on these products.

In recent decades, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have turned to health technology assessment (HTA) to prioritize health care interventions in pursuit of universal health coverage. HTA has demonstrated its value through significant cost savings, as demonstrated by Thailand and Brazil, whe...

How committed is each country to tackling climate change at home and to helping developing countries? We consider nine key indicators on the world’s major economies spanning their climate contributions in three areas: international finance, policy, and emissions. Indicators are calculated to be comp...

A major shortcoming of the $100 billion climate finance goal agreed in 2009 was the absence of a clear baseline. With draft negotiating text for a new climate finance goal now available, we set out some relevant starting measures and amounts to inform the negotiations going into COP29 and make recom...

The IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) is now two years old. Demand for new RSF programs appears to be declining despite the significant climate finance needs in many lower- and middle-income countries. To enhance the RSF’s appeal, we propose three recalibrations to program design.

The comprehensive reform agendas for the multilateral development banks (MDBs) constitute the most ambitious effort to overhaul these institutions since their launch at Bretton Woods 80 years ago. But ambitious agendas can and often do languish. CGD has built an MDB reform tracker as an independent,...