Ideas to action: independent research for global prosperity
Search
Filters:
Experts
Facet Toggle
Topics
Facet Toggle
Content Type
Facet Toggle
Time Frame
Facet Toggle
Blog Post
November 24, 2020
COVID-19 has highlighted the ways that global public goods play an increasingly important role in the world, in both negative and positive ways. It’s increasingly clear that many of the biggest challenges nations face—and the solutions—won’t be restricted to one nation’s borders. The need for region...
Blog Post
July 06, 2020
Imagine the young George Washington said, “I cannot tell a lie. I did not cut down the cherry tree,” then added sotto voce, “’twas the hatchet that did it.” Multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development finance institutions are dissembling in the other direction when it comes to their impact...
Blog Post
May 19, 2020
You might find this question odd. After all, since the outbreak of COVID-19, the development finance institutions DFIs have been busy announcing financial goals for crisis response, and offering reassurances of proactive stances. But it is important to recall at this moment that their financial mode...
Blog Post
April 10, 2020
Is the crisis a signal on how devastating the great problems confronting our future could be in a world that is not prepared for them, in particular to face challenges such as major inequalities, the climate emergency, and the loss of nature. The way in which our world produces and consumes, calls f...
Blog Post
March 26, 2020
In retrospect, the scale up in MDB financing during the 2008-2010 crisis, though significant, now looks conservative as we consider the potential scale of damage from the current COVID-19 pandemic. To put the question bluntly, if the human and economic devastation follows a worst-case scenario, just...
Blog Post
March 25, 2020
It is now only a question of when, not if, the COVID-19 pandemic will exact its human and economic toll on the poor and developing countries of South Asia, Africa, and Latin America the way it is already ravaging East Asia, Europe, and North America. And when it does, they too will need to respond w...
Blog Post
March 24, 2020
Debt relief for low-income countries is on the table of measures to consider for coronavirus response. The imperative right now is to get cash to LICs as quickly as possible. Suspending some debt service payments may be a good first step in freeing up some budget space for new spending. Beyond that,...
Blog Post
March 18, 2020
The experience of the 2007 global financial crisis can tell us a few things about how low-income countries could be affected by the coronavirus pandemic in the near term, even as we recognize that the myriad economic problems created by the pandemic are almost certainly greater in number and scale t...
Blog Post
February 19, 2020
Increasingly, Washington views international financial organizations as weapons in the global struggle for the neoliberal economic model against China’s state-led approach to development. And often, the international financial institutions are the battlefield itself, in a conflict over voting s...