The UK's Energy Price Guarantee increased CO2 emissions by 3.2 million tonnes over the period October 2022-April 2023—double the achievements of UK climate mitigation aid over the same period, which we estimate at a reduction of just 1.6 million tonnes of CO2, demonstrating that when it is expedient...

A week into the house move there are definite signs of progress: we have a sofa, which has been thoroughly colonised by my son, who has mastered the art of arranging his four rather small limbs and body in such a fashion as to occupy as large a surface area as possible; the boxes have graduated from...

The White House's FY24 international affairs budget request is ambitious, aimed at tackling a wide range of challenges facing countries worldwide and reasserting US leadership, particularly in strategic areas where the administration hopes to displace China's growing global influence.

In a recent note, Zack Gehan and I used a database of World Bank projects to examine the association between World Bank project types and environmental review procedures and project preparation times. We found that policy lending projects are significantly faster to design, while projects that under...

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the deepest global recession since World War II. Countries across the world implemented substantial mitigation measures in response to the economic shock of the pandemic, with the size of the economic stimulus measures averaging about 5.6 percent of GDP. Social pro...

Climate financial intermediary funds (FIFs) represent one of the largest sources of multilateral grant and other concessional finance for climate, including for middle-income countries (MICs). Together, they have received more than $50 billion in cumulative grant funds from donors. They have collect...

The World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap suggests the institution could provide more grants and subsidies to activities that support the provision of global public goods (GPGs), particularly in richer developing countries. Provision of those public goods is surely a priority: avoiding future pandemics and...