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Blog Post
September 23, 2022
Once you’ve looked at policy as a source of societal progress and regress, especially over the long term, it is hard to look at anything else. As a result, I hope ever-more people in the EA community in town this week decide to work in government, or work on making government work better.
Blog Post
August 26, 2022
A lot of people working in global development—including many at CGD like me—would like to see the World Bank’s lending arm for richer developing countries play a larger role financing global public goods like climate change mitigation and pandemic preparedness. That would take a larger IBRD, likely...
Blog Post
August 25, 2022
The existing MCC income cutoff is based on the robust principle that the best buys in global development are concentrated in the world’s poorest countries. (Indeed, when the Corporation started, it only worked in low-income countries for that reason). There is a declining marginal utility of a dolla...
Blog Post
July 05, 2022
For all that investment is far from all we need, we will still need a massive amount of it if we are to meet global targets on sustainable development. Low and zero-carbon power plants; expanded electricity, water and sanitation networks; universal health and education systems—none come cheap. Estim...
Blog Post
July 05, 2022
DFC has been the subject of a growing list of proposals from lawmakers that envision the agency tackling a wider range of challenges than initially envisioned. The agency may find ways to leverage this heightened interest. However, delivering on the bipartisan, foundational vision for DFC amid evolv...
Blog Post
June 30, 2022
The MCC is particular about which countries it supports. Among the requirements, Ukraine passes the agency’s (important and legitimate) hurdle that it only works in the world’s low- and lower-middle-income countries. It also passes a lot of other tests the MCC lays out for support, based on a scorec...
Blog Post
June 28, 2022
But to the extent the overall foreign assistance system is poorly managed to deliver, it is worth looking at who bears responsibility for those failures. The answer, surely, is the institutions implementing the programs—the ones who buy the goods and services ultimately purchased with US funding. It...