In many countries children need to become proficient in both their home language and an international language, such as English, and governments face trade-offs in how to prioritize these two objectives. It is cost effective to prioritize learning to read in students' home language, as well as suppo...

Given the urgent financial needs of developing country governments, it's time to reimagine the US Sovereign Loan Guarantee (SLG) program as a means to mitigate debt vulnerabilities and support governments in dire fiscal straits.

If we could reinvent MDBs to respond to urgent development and climate needs and to benefit from 70 years of experience with the model, what would they look like? Countries should chart their own low-carbon climate resilient development and growth paths, with robust analytical support from MDBs that...

The Pandemic Fund should strategically invest in pandemic preparedness, including for its first call for proposals for surveillance, laboratories, and human resources. This strategic approach should consider both ex ante and ex post considerations of investments for pandemic preparedness.

This policy paper examines the state of knowledge on investing in the “best buys” of surveillance for pandemic preparedness. We conduct a rapid literature review to assess the state of knowledge on the costs and benefits of investing in four selected types of surveillance for respiratory infections,...

Looking back on the run up to the creation of DFID in 1997, those involved tend now to tell two somewhat conflicting stories: first that it was simply “in Labour’s DNA” to uplift development and give it a separate voice in government, and second that the creation of DFID was very much about the circ...

In this note we assess the potential short-term fiscal impact of these instruments. We look at three major natural disasters over the past two years and assess how much relief each country would have received if DSCs had been included in the totality of their external debt instruments.