A CGD blog. The World Bank’s soft lending arm for poorer countries, IDA, is busy rolling out a new $2.5 billion Private Sector Window. (See last year’s outline proposal for reference.) Bigger private sectors in IDA countries would be hugely welcome, so there is much to like in the broad th…

A CGD blog. A bipartisan group of eight Senators led by Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-MD) has just reintroduced a new version of a bill designed to identify and combat corruption overseas. The Combating Global Corruption Act of 2017 ties some potentially useful anti-corruption measures t…

A CGD blog. The world of business is still extremely gender-unequal. Across the countries in the World Bank’s enterprise surveys less than one in five firms are run by a woman, for example. Governments could help fix that problem by using their immense purchasing power (close on $10 trillion a …

A CGD blog. Martin Kirk and Jason Hickel published a piece earlier this week on the annual Gates Letter. The core critique is that the letter is too rosy. In particular, Kirk and Hickel say of the Gates letter: some of their examples are just wrong. The case t…

A CGD blog with Tanvi Jaluka. For all the protestations about equality, there’s evidence to suggest both the International Olympic Committee and FIFA turn a blind eye to evidence of considerable discrimination against women when it comes to the opportunity to compete at the highest levels of sport. They should be ready to …

A CGD blog with Dev Patel. In 2015, there were 77,470,857 visits to the United States from other countries. These visitors brought tremendous benefit: not only did they each spend an average of $4,400 on US goods and services during their stay, but also they helped US firms engage with forei…

A CGD blog. There’s increasing appetite in the US to follow the UK model and launch a review of US spending through international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank. There is a lot to be said for such an exercise my colleague Todd Moss even carried out a mock ver…

A CGD blog with Tanvi Jaluka. What is the value of women’s work? Organizers of the January 21 Women’s March on Washington are hoping that this year’s International Women’s Day can answer that question.

A CGD blog with Dev Patel. Americans have three choices regarding the low-paying, often hazardous jobs most don’t want: keep foreign labor here, continue to import the needed products, or use robots. To pretend otherwise is doing everyone a disservice.

A CGD blog with Dev Patel. The Trump administration has imposed a number of entry restrictions through executive order, justifying them on national security grounds. But one additional set of concerns regards the economic costs of tightening visa restrictions, which can be considerable even when looking solely at tempora…