A CGD blog with Ian Mitchell. In the next few weeks, the OECD will release its estimate of ODA-Official Development Assistance-provided by member countries, and will no doubt claim yet another record high. But this inflated measure has lost its credibility, in large part because its definition is governed solely by ODA-providing…

A CGD blog. 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…

A CGD blog. The Sustainable Development Goals commit the world to ending extreme poverty by 2030. More cautiously, the World Bank’s twin goals suggest it can help reduce extreme poverty to 3 percent by 2030. Neither goal can be accomplished unless the extreme poverty line is (finally) fixed rather than constant…

A CGD blog. Forecasts of the future shape of the global economy, if they are at least somewhat accurate, can help planning and policy discussions in areas from global governance through business expansion plans. At the same time, this relies on forecasts in fact being somewhat accurate, and it’s a cliche that p…

A CGD blog. I’m not a huge fan of arbitrary lines through country income levels to create income thresholds. That is because there is no obvious clustering of countries within the global (country-level) income distribution, and moving from one income status to another does not correlate with trend breaks or end…

A CGD blog. In a new paper, Zack Gehan and I present scenarios for the global economy in 2050. These scenarios build on a forecast of economic growth built around income, population, education, and temperature. The process suggests a considerable degree of uncertainty about how the world will look in three de…..

A CGD blog with Samuel Huckstep. The European Commission has quietly announced that it now has major ambitions to recruit international workers for its green transition. This is sensible, necessary, and can be positive for all involved. It will, however, face challenges. This blog reviews the EU’s goals, and suggests ways to go abo…

A CGD blog with Charles Kenny. Last month, the World Bank released an “evolution roadmap” proposing to do more on climate change in low- and middle-income countries. It is a global challenge that will have a disproportionate impact on the world’s poorest countries. But it is also important to listen to the Bank’s clients, especia…

A CGD blog. Official Development Assistance (ODA) isn’t what it used to be: each aid dollar is worth a lot less in terms of development outcomes. In large part that’s because the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the donor club within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that …

A CGD blog. The World Bank Group Evolution Roadmap makes three financing asks of donors and shareholders: capital for IBRD, continued support for IDA, and grants to support climate projects. I think donors and shareholders should support a capital increase and strengthen commitments to IDA. But they should not …