RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Nigel Purvis, Andrew Stevenson and Abigail Jones, October 2011, The Brookings Institution
The World Bank has proposed to phase out lending for new coal generation projects in middle income countries in an initial draft of the institution’s new ten-year energy sector lending strategy. Nigel Purvis, Abigail Jones and Andrew Stevenson examine this proposal, arguing that the World Bank should allocate scarce multilateral development funding for other pressing investments that cannot attract private capital as easily.
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Julius Agbor and Olumide Taiwo, September 29, 2011, The Brookings Institution
As international development institutions increase concessional lending to low-income countries due to persistent global food and fuel price shocks, Julius Agbor and Olumide Taiwo explain that issues of governance and accountability will become crucially important and call for reforms in the framework of local governance. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
David Gartner, September 23, 2011, The Brookings Institution
For years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called for governments to expand their level of transparency, while maintaining a lack of transparency in its own decision-making. David Gartner provides recommendations on improving the transparency of the IMF, including reforming its access to information policies and shortening the time before making deliberations public. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Lex Rieffel, September 20, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Since 1945, an American has held the position of World Bank leader. Lex Rieffel argues that if President Obama follows this practice when World Bank President Robert Zoellick’s current term ends in 2012, it is likely to cost both the United States and the World Bank political support and international goodwill. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Lex Rieffel, September 16, 2011, The Globalist
While the postwar architecture of the economic system has worked well until recently, most analysts believe the organizations involved need to reform to successfully confront 21st century challenges. Lex Rieffel argues that the first step to improve global governance is for the World Bank to move out of Washington. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Michael M. Cernea, July 2011, Resettlement News
In a recent interview with Resettlement News, Michael M. Cernea discusses the origin of the world’s first social policy on development-caused forced displacement and resettlement and his fundamental role in the creation of the policy.
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Domenico Lombardi, April 12, 2011, The Brookings Institution
The IMF spring meetings and the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting will undoubtedly touch on global imbalances issues. Finance ministers are expected to approve monitoring guidelines defining the macroeconomic variables that both the G-20 and IMF have been working on since November. Domenico Lombardi previews these meetings and next steps for both the IMF and G-20. Read More
VIDEO
Domenico Lombardi, February 04, 2011
China’s regulation of its currency is causing tension with the United States and emerging economies around the world, including Brazil, India and other Asian nations. Expert Domenico Lombardi explains that while every nation wants to gain the greatest possible advantage for its exports, we’re not in an all-out currency war.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, January 26, 2011, The Washington Post
Against the backdrop of the World Economic Forum in Davos convening this week, Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz discover that nearly half a billion people escaped extreme poverty in just the past five years. Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty in such a short period. So while the conversation in Davos will inevitably focus on the extremely impoverished, there is reason to celebrate successes in poverty reduction and to ensure policy debates are grounded in reality. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Katherine Sierra, October 12, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Tackling climate change was high on the agenda at this past weekend’s Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Ministers of finance and development, as well as representatives from the private sector, civil society and other development agencies pressed for continued global action, particularly on ways to finance the transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy in the developing world. Katherine Sierra formulizes five action items resulting from the annual meetings that could lead to positive outcomes at COP16 in Cancun. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Homi Kharas and Nancy Birdsall, October 09, 2010, GlobalPost
World financial leaders gathered in Washington, DC for the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank to discuss how to replenish the coffers of the International Development Association (IDA) — the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries in the world. At a time of huge fiscal deficits in advanced countries, it is unrealistic to expect the rich world to financially contribute more than they already are. Nancy Birdsall and Homi Kharas analyze the quality of official development assistance and ask that donors be “smarter about aid,” to increase its impact in terms of development and poverty reduction for each dollar spent. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Johannes F. Linn, October 08, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Governance reform will be high on the agenda for this weekend’s annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. But a larger challenge faces the international community, argues Johannes Linn. He declares that the multilateral development system is broken; and that the G-20 is the only credible forum to review the overall aid architecture and reform the multilateral development banks. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, October 07, 2010, The Brookings Institution
The IMF's flagship publication, the World Economic Outlook (WEO), released in conjunction with the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank, measures the pulse of the global economy. Analyzing the WEO's projections for global growth, the Wolfensohn Center's Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz develop measures to infer that the global economy has recovered more quickly than predicted but the global crisis will continue to reverberate in some countries for years to come. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Homi Kharas, October 06, 2010, The Brookings Institution
On October 6, Homi Kharas, current Brookings senior fellow former chief economist at the World Bank and author of the recent book Delivering Aid Differently, previewed the upcoming annual meetings in a live web chat moderated by Seung Min Kim, assistant editor at POLITICO. Read More
PAST EVENT
Thursday, May 13, 2010
12:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Washington, DC
On May 13, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings hosted an expert academic consultation on the development of the World Bank Group's new Education Strategy (2010-2020). The consultative meeting brought together a small group of progressive critical thinkers from academia and the global education advocacy community. Read More