US Development Policy

With election-year events crowding out the legislative calendar, there’s only so many more opportunities for the Senate to show its commitment to development and its interest in improving US development policy. Legislators still have a week and a half in town, and we were encouraged to see the...

President Obama launched the opening salvo in the FY2015 budget process with his recently released request, and while some of his foreign assistance proposals seem destined to go the way of the cutting room floor, you certainly can’t fault the request for having a specific point of view. ...

In an era of tight budgets, the US government needs to maximize development programs that deliver bang for the buck and services that people want.  To do this, it must lean heavily on programs that leverage private capital in support of core development objectives.

Does the US government care about its repeated commitments to focus assistance on country-led priorities?  Based on public attitude surveys in Africa and Latin America over the last decade, the answer seems to be ‘not really’.

MCC’s board of directors will meet on December 10 to decide which countries will be eligible for compact and/or threshold program assistance for FY2014.  CGD’s Rethink offers a preview of the issues the board will grapple with, as well as a prediction of which countries th...

My guest on this week’s Global Prosperity Wonkcast is CGD senior fellow and director of the Rethinking US Development Policy program Ben Leo, here to discuss his new CGD working paper, Is Anyone Listening?  in which he examines how well US foreign assistance aligns with the prioritie...