A little more than a year into the Trump 2.0 era, the “post–Cold War” international order as we know it is coming to an end. Amid increasing volatility and conflict, the shape and character of the order that will replace it are dangerously unclear. There are ambitions by so-called middle...

Renewable energy has seen rapid uptake, particularly in the Global South. Solar energy projects have boomed in recent years, but uptake by countries is uneven. Beyond geophysical conditions, technological innovation, market dynamics and donor-driven “lighthouse projects”, political...

Since the beginning of US President Donald Trump’s second term in early 2025, not only US development policy but the entire international development cooperation landscape has fundamentally changed. The United States – previously by far the leading actor in global development cooperation –...

Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and meeting global climate targets will necessitate unprecedented levels of investment, particularly in developing countries. A substantial portion of this investment must be sourced from the private sector, given the scale of the...

The environment in which development policy operates has changed quickly. Some of these changes are longer-term trends to which development policy should adapt: the global economy is in upheaval, while global crises are becoming the norm and are increasing the debt level even further. Moreover,...

Development finance institutions mobilize over $250 billion annually through blended finance operations, yet practitioners lack a unified framework to evaluate its catalytic effect and for choosing among instruments. I develop a model of investment multipliers under two canonical market...