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...

On Wednesday March 8, the Center for Global Development hosted an event with Andrew Mitchell, Minister of State for Development and Africa of the United Kingdom, as part of our series of conversations and work on the future of development. The Minister spoke about the role the UK is playing today, t...

Apologies in advance if this week’s links seem somewhat truncated: we moved house this week, and between carrying various heavy items up and down (not least my son, who has been rather unimpressed with the whole process) and unpacking (a process somewhat slower than downloading a photo on a dial-up ...

The most recent G20 meeting ended without making any headway on critical global governance crises. Despite Indian Prime Minister Modi’s plea for members “not to allow current tensions to destroy agreements that might be reached on food and energy security, climate change and debt,” differences on th...