Global development policy is a particularly revealing field in which the Trump administration combines crude transactionalism with a high level of ideological commitment, namely an authoritarian libertarianism oriented toward elite interests. This is coupled with, at times, a chaotic absence of...

IEG@50: Celebrating 50 Years of Independent Evaluation at The World Bank Group is a commemorative report marking five decades of independent evaluation across the World Bank Group. The report celebrates the legacy of the Operations Evaluation Department and its transformation into the...

This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) assesses the performance of the World Bank Group’s (WBG) assistance to the Republic of Kosovo from fiscal years (FY) 2012 to 2025, seeking to identify lessons to inform future WBG engagements in Kosovo, including the next CPF, which is expected in FY27....

This study analyzes the empirical link between German bilateral development finance and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) at the sub-national (ADM2) level. We construct a unique dataset by merging geo-referenced development aid projects - implemented by KfW Development Bank - over more than two...

· This brief provides a big-picture overview of support for Ukraine after four years of war. The key finding from 2025 is that Europe has almost offset the collapse in US support. · US aid fell by 99 percent. At the same time, Europe sharply increased its aid allocations, by 59 percent for...

In den ersten beiden Jahrzehnten nach dem Fall des Eisernen Vorhangs Anfang der 1990er Jahre spielte der Internationale Währungsfonds (IWF) für die operative Wirtschaftspolitik, aber auch für die Gestaltung von Institutionen in Schwellen- und Entwicklungsländern eine wichtige Rolle. Dies lag...

This study takes a critical look at Franco-German relations in the field of international cooperation along the entire humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) spectrum to better gauge the usefulness of bilateral collaborative action in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Both the corresponding...

Seven decades after the landmark Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, its outcomes and principles continue to guide South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTrC) among the nations of the global South. Despite the current challenges facing global governance, multilateralism and...

This article examines smart cities as a locus for international power struggles, emerged at the gap between their discursive and materialised realities. While the body of research on smart cities is growing, most studies focus on their development within individual nation-states. However, the...

This joint World Bank and UNHCR report is developed in response to the United Nation (UN) omnibus resolution to coordinate an effort to measure the impact arising from hosting, protecting and assisting refugees. Following this resolution UNHCR, with assistance from the World Bank, led a...

Financial student aid improves educational outcomes and reduces social inequality, yet many eligible students do not take it up. To examine whether correcting misperceptions increases take-up, I conducted an RCT with 6,225 university students across Germany who were not receiving aid. I find...

Given the increasing global interest in the transition to green energy sources in developing countries that have financial constraints, this study examines the influence of foreign finance on the production and consumption of renewable energy (RE). The study also explores whether globalization...

We review the literature on the political economy of foreign aid, examining the geopolitical returns generated by Official Development Assistance (ODA). Our paper identifies conditions under which donors are able to influence political and economic outcomes in recipient countries, shape their...

Development aid faces a crisis of budgets, legitimacy, and political alignment. Framed in recent decades as technocratic and benevolent, aid has always been political, shaped by donor and recipient incentives. Its post–Cold War expansion reflected a permissive era of unipolarity and...

Seven decades after the landmark Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, its outcomes and principles continue to guide South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTrC) among the nations of the global South. Despite the current challenges facing global governance, multilateralism and...

The following article diagnoses the collapse of the Official Development Aid system (ODA), this ODA system which had been rebuilt since the beginning of the century, after the earthquake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, with which it shares common points. The article points out that this second...

The African Development Fund (ADF) is much less active than the World Bank's IDA in Africa. This predominance of the IDA is only found in Africa. In fact, disbursements by other major regional banks exceed those of the World Bank in their respective regions (Central America and the Caribbean,...

Since its inception in 2008, the Development Policy Financing (DPF) with a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat DDO) instrument has seen significant expansion across all regions, channeling almost five billion US dollars to support countries in the aftermath of a natural catastrophe. As a...

This publication showcases practical examples of how countries, with financing from International Development Association (IDA) and technical assistance support funded by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), are turning this vision into reality one project at a time -...

Investing in health is one of the most powerful drivers of human capital formation, economic growth, and job creation. However, low- and lower-middle-income countries are at a crossroads with growing economic uncertainty and sharp cuts to external aid. This report-part of an annual...

Biodiversity is the variety of life at genetic, species, and ecosystems levels. It is essential to sustain human life, food security, crop yields, jobs, livelihoods, and marine productivity. Yet, it is declining at an unprecedented rate as the planet approaches a tipping point that could have...

In this paper, I investigate the effects of offering conditional student aid to foreign students on their labor supply in Denmark. I utilize a natural experiment created by an EU court ruling in 2013, deciding that foreign students had the right to a monthly student aid subsidy on equal terms...