Do remittances reduce poverty?

August 14, 2019
Vishwesh Sundar has recently graduated with an Advanced Master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from Leiden University, The Hague. He was also a research assistant at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies where he assisted with a project on South-to-West Asia migration governance. We live in a globalised world, and my family is an epitome of that phenomenon.
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Which is better: a guaranteed job or a guaranteed income?

May 17, 2018
Guest post from Eleanor Chowns of Bath University Martin Ravallion (former Chief Economist of the World Bank, now at CGD) published a useful paper this week asking exactly this question.  As he says, there’s no simple answer – which is why the question is so interesting. Both ‘the right to work’ and ‘the right to income’ aim to secure a
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Mark Goldring on how to maximise the impact of business on poverty and injustice

May 1, 2018
Guest post from Mark Goldring, Oxfam GB’s Chief Executive  Last week I introduced an Oxfam event at which Paul Polman of Unilever and a number of proponents of social enterprises came together to explore what kind of new business models we need to help beat poverty for good. My starting point was that business has played a massive part in
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Can economic growth really be decoupled from increased carbon emissions in Least Developed Countries? Ethiopia’s Story

March 14, 2017
Guest post from Steve Baines These are definitely not the research findings I expected to be presenting. The data in front of me has challenged some of my long-held assumptions. Climate negotiations through the years show us one thing very clearly – that Least Developed Countries demand the right to develop their own economies and build their own prosperity for
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How are different governments performing as global citizens? Time for a new index!

February 23, 2017
Apologies. I get given stuff at meetings, it goes into the reading pile, and often takes months to resurface. So I have just read (and liked) a Country Global Citizenship Report Card handed to me in New York in December. It’s put together by the Global Citizens Initiative, run by Ron Israel. Time to assuage my guilt. The ‘citizens’ in
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Is power and politics a massive distraction? Crossing swords with the World Bank.

May 8, 2013
This post is written on the hoof, dashing between presentations, so please pardon the rough edges. Yesterday I shared a platform with Marcelo Giugale, the World Bank’s Africa Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (right). We were coming from very different places, some might say different planets, which is always stimulating. I did my standard power and politics spiel,
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By 2015 Nigeria will have more poor people than India or China

July 27, 2011
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New books on development: bad microfinance; climate change and war; what works; inside the World Bank; mobile activism

July 21, 2010
One of the perks of writing a blog is that I can scrounge review copies of development-related books. I’m sure they’re all fascinating and I really want to read them but alas, they don’t come with extra hours in the day attached. So I now have a growing pile by my desk that is in danger of becoming a health
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Vietnam: really making poverty history

December 15, 2008
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