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Blog Post
February 21, 2024
So: how do donor governments actually use their subsidies to the private sector to support mitigation and development projects around the world? The process usually starts with a private company (the project sponsor) asking a development finance institution (DFI) like the World Bank Group’s Internat...
Blog Post
February 06, 2024
The World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group has just issued a “Focused Assessment” of the IDA Private Sector Window, looking at the PSW’s first five years of operation. The PSW, launched in 2018, uses $5.6 billion of World Bank IDA financing to subsidize IFC and MIGA investments in the private sec...
Blog Post
November 09, 2023
The World Bank’s soft lending arm, IDA, will begin its 21st round of replenishment negotiations soon. One thing on the agenda will be the IDA Private Sector Window (PSW), which uses IDA resources to subsidize private sector investments primarily through the World Bank Group’s International Finance C...
Blog Post
June 14, 2023
An interesting paper (and podcast) by Francis Fukuyama and Michael Bennon look at China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and recent debt distress in BRI project countries, building on work by Scott Morris and co-authors that examined 100 Chinese debt contracts with foreign governments. BRI has invol...
WORKING PAPERS
October 27, 2022
There is considerable interest in increasing private participation in infrastructure to meet the twin goals of climate mitigation and development in low- and middle-income countries. At the same time, this infrastructure needs to make returns in order to be financially sustainable.
Blog Post
October 27, 2022
The kind of investment sustainability that’s getting the most love at the moment is environmental sustainability: we want our buildings, machines, and infrastructure to be low carbon (as we should). But financial sustainability still matters, too: if they are to be a success, solar power plants and ...
Blog Post
April 28, 2022
The idea that shavings of public gold sprinkled like fairy dust on private investment projects would bring to life a giant array of infrastructure and services which in turn would gift us wondrous progress in development hasn’t worked out. It is time to drop the fantasy and focus instead on the test...
Blog Post
December 15, 2020
What impact do development finance institutions (DFIs) like the IFC have on actual development? Today, George Yang and I release a paper that tries to take a sectoral approach to impact: does an IFC electricity investment lead to more power production per capita in a country, or financing provided t...
Blog Post
March 18, 2020
The World Bank Group has some very clear (and very good) guidelines about what makes for a successful public-private partnership where governments contract service provision like energy supply or education from private firms. Sadly, the bank has been ignoring that rule recently. And that is a sign o...
Blog Post
October 10, 2019
Today the IFC announced a step forward in its transparency around the use of aid resources to finance private companies. That’s right and proper: When scarce aid, and scarce tax resources, are used to support private firms, citizens of donor countries and recipient countries alike ha...