The Center for Global Development (CGD) is a nonprofit

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...

based in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

that focuses on

international development International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of economic or human development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classifications ...

History

It was founded in November 2001 by former senior U.S. official

Edward W. Scott Edward W. "Ed" Scott Jr. is an American businessman, philanthropist, and former senior United States government official. Along with Bill Coleman and Alfred Chuang, he founded enterprise software company BEA Systems. Education Scott was educat ...

, director of the

Peterson Institute for International Economics The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), known until 2006 as the Institute for International Economics (IIE), is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by C. Fred Bergsten in 1981 and has been led by ...

, C. Fred Bergsten, and Nancy Birdsall. Birdsall, the former vice president of the

Inter-American Development Bank The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB or IADB) is an international financial institution headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States of America, and serving as the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribb ...

and former director of the Policy Research Department at the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

, became the center's first president. Lawrence Summers was unanimously elected in March 2014 by the CGD Board of Directors to succeed founding Board Chair Edward Scott Jr., on May 1, 2014. CGD was ranked the 13th most prominent think tank in the international development sphere by

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

's "2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report". In 2009, ''Foreign Policy'' magazine's Think-Tank Index listed CGD as one of the top 15 overall think-tanks in the US. CGD's stated mission is "to reduce global poverty and inequality by encouraging policy change in the United States and other rich countries through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community. The center considers itself to be a "think and do" tank, with an emphasis on producing research that is channeled into practical policy proposals.

Major programs

CGD is well known for leading debt-relief programs, specifically in

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

and

Liberia Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean ...

. CGD vice president Todd Moss first proposed the Nigerian debt buy-back, which resulted in the

Paris Club The Paris Club (french: Club de Paris) is a group of officials from major creditor countries whose role is to find co-ordinated and sustainable solutions to the payment difficulties experienced by debtor countries. As debtor countries undertake ...

of rich nations forgiving 60% of $31 billion of debt.“Clean Slate”, ''The Economist'', October 2005 Former CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet advised Liberian president

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born Ellen Eugenia Johnson, 29 October 1938) is a Liberian politician who served as the 24th president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. Sirleaf was the first elected female head of state in Africa. Sirleaf was born in Mon ...

and her senior advisors on debt relief and aid coordination. CGD is also known for creating the program called

advance market commitments An advance market commitment (AMC) is a binding contract, typically offered by a government or other financial entity, used to guarantee a viable market for a product once it is successfully developed. Generally AMCs are used in circumstances wher ...

to encourage vaccine development for specific diseases. The G7 endorsed the approach and the Gates Foundation and five countries gave $1.5 billion to create a vaccine against strains of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

. In cooperation with ''Foreign Policy'', CGD has published the Commitment to Development Index since 2003. The annual index ranks countries based on how their foreign aid, trade, migration, investment, environment, security and technology policies encourage global development. The Center for Global Development in Europe was established in October 2011 with the aim of engaging with and learning from policymakers, academics, and researchers in Europe, and bringing the CGD blend of evidence-led, high-quality research and engagement to European policymaking and engagement about development. "CGD in Europe" research initiatives include "Europe Beyond Aid", Development Impact Bonds, and Illicit Financial Flows. In November 2013, CGD purchased a new headquarters that includes a 170-seat state-of-the-art conference center, a 60-seat boardroom/ideas lab, and a multimedia studio.

Research

CGD conducts research within a range of topics that impact

global poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little

income

and people of the developing world. Topics include aid effectiveness, education,

globalization Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...

and global health, as well as the impact of trade and migration on development. The center is well known for its research on aid effectiveness. CGD president Nancy Birdsall recently developed Cash on Delivery (COD) Aid, an initiative aimed to improve aid effectiveness by focusing foreign aid on outcomes, not inputs. In 2008, CGD produced a compilation of essays edited by Nancy Birdsall called "The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President". These essays give policy recommendations to solve international problems, such as global health, foreign aid policy, migration, global warming and foreign direct investment. CGD recently published a report on the dangers of drug resistance in "The Race against Drug Resistance: When Medicines Fail", which the Global Health team launched on June 14, 2010. The center's Migration and Development Initiative aims to study the effects labor movement has not only on the receiving country, but also on the country of origin and the migrants themselves. CGD economists Michael Clemens and

Lant Pritchett Lant Pritchett (born 1959) is an American development economist. He is the RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He was born in Utah in 1959 and raised in Boise, Idaho. He graduated from Brigham You ...

have repeatedly called for a development agenda that incorporates migration from low and middle-income to high-income countries, where wages for the same task can be up to ten times higher. However, they argue that the misperception that development is about places rather than people often leads policymakers as well as economists to ignore the large benefits to the migrants themselves. Rich countries' immigration policies are also a factor in the Commitment to Development Index. CGD has advocated for temporary visas for Haitians to seasonally work in US agriculture and participated in an initiative to that end. In 2016, they issued a report on how policymakers can manage migration between the United States and Mexico to the benefit of both countries. CGD Senior Fellow Ranil Dissanayake publishes a weekl
blog
associated with the Center for the Study of African Economies. Other research topics listed on their website include capital flows/ financial crises, debt relief, environmental issues, economic growth,

governance Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, social norm, norms, power (social and political), power or language of an organized society over a social system (family, tribe, formal organization, formal or informal organization, a ...

/democracy,

international financial institutions An international financial institution (IFI) is a financial institution that has been established (or chartered) by more than one country, and hence is subject to international law. Its owners or shareholders are generally national governments, al ...

, finance, food and agriculture, inequality, population, poverty, private investment, security and development, and data sets and resources.

Funding

CGD receives funding from foundations, governments, individuals, and corporations. The organization publishes information on its website for all grants and donations received that are above $100,000. CGD received the highest rating (five stars) from Transparify for its open disclosure of funding in 2014 and 2015. In 2013, the government of

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

gave CGD $5 million to support its work on tropical forests and development. That support was cited in a New York Times article about think tank funding. A report by the

Center for International Policy The Center for International Policy (CIP) is a non-profit foreign policy research and advocacy think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. and New York City. It was founded in 1975 in response to the Vietnam War. The Center describes its mission ...

's Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative of the top 50 think tanks on the

's Global Go-To Think Tanks rating index found that during the period 2014-2018 the Center for Global Development received the second-highest amount of funding from outside the United States compared to any other think tank, with a total of more than US$37 million, though the center was commended for being "remarkably transparent about its funding sources."

Initiatives

The center considers itself a "think and do" tank, and thus has multiple initiatives to implement their policy suggestions. These, initiatives attempt to give specific policy recommendations to organizations while creating a dialogue. In 2003, David Roodman created the Commitment to Development Index with ''Foreign Policy'' magazine and Mapping Worlds. The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) ranks and analyzes nations’ financial and political commitments to development every year. The index uses interactive graphs and analyzes how countries contribute to development in seven policy areas: aid (both quantity as a share of income and quality), trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology. Other initiatives include Cash on Delivery Aid, Combating Drug Resistance, Development Impact Bonds, Europe Beyond Aid, the Latin America Initiative, Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery, Oil-to-Cash: Fighting the Resource Curse through Cash Transfers, Pakistan: US Development Strategy, Preemptive Contract Sanctions, Reforming Trade Preferences, Rethinking US Development Policy, The Future of the World Bank, Tropical Forests for Climate and Development, Understanding India, and Value for Money: An Agenda for Global Health Funding Agencies. From November 2007 to November 2012, CGD published Carbon Monitoring For Action
CARMA
, a searchable

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

that estimated carbon

emissions Emission may refer to: Chemical products * Emission of air pollutants, notably: **Flue gas, gas exiting to the atmosphere via a flue ** Exhaust gas, flue gas generated by fuel combustion ** Emission of greenhouse gases, which absorb and emit rad ...

of power plants and power companies around the world.

Events

CGD hosts about 200 public and private events a year that draw more than 7,000 participants. Events have featured speakers such as U.S. Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

, President of

Goodluck Jonathan Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan (born 20 November 1957)Lawson Heyford, ''The Source'' (Lagos), 11 December 2006. is a Nigerian politician who served as the President of Nigeria from 2010 to 2015. He lost the 2015 presidential election to fo ...

, economist

Paul Romer Paul Michael Romer (born November 6, 1955) is an American economist and policy entrepreneur who is a University Professor in Economics at New York University. Romer is best known as the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and for co-recei ...

, UK Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell, among many others. During Secretary

’s visit to CGD on January 6, 2010, she emphasized the importance of development and said it was "time to elevate development as a central pillar of our foreign policy and to rebuild

USAID The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...

into the world's premier development agency". CGD hosts an annual lecture series called the Sabot Lecture series, in honor of the late development economist Richard "Dick" Sabot. Each year, the Sabot Lecture hosts a scholar-practitioner who has made significant contributions to international development, combining academic work with leadership in the policy community. Past Sabot speakers include Lawrence Summers, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Lord Nicholas Stern,

Kemal Dervis Kemal may refer to: ;People * Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a Turkish politician and the first president of Turkey * Kemal (name), a common Turkish name ;Places * Kemalpaşa, İzmir Province, Turkey * Mustafakemalpaşa, Bursa Province, Turkey ;See also ...

and Kenneth Rogoff.

Stance on transphobia

In 2019 a tribunal brought by former visiting fellow Maya Forstater at the Central London Employment Tribunal found in favour of CGD for not renewing her contract due to social media messages describing transgender women as men ( ''Maya Forstater v Centre for Global Development'' (2019)). Employment Judge James Tayler found that Forstater's '

gender critical Feminist views on transgender topics vary widely. Third-wave feminists and fourth-wave feminists tend to view the struggle for trans rights as an integral part of intersectional feminism. Former president of the American National Organization f ...

' views were "incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others" and that they did "not have the protected characteristic of philosophical belief" under the UK Equality Act 2010.https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5e15e7f8e5274a06b555b8b0/Maya_Forstater__vs_CGD_Europe__Centre_for_Global_Development_and_Masood_Ahmed_-_Judgment.pdf However, in June 2021, an Employment Appeal Tribunal led by

Akhlaq Choudhury Sir Akhlaq Ur-Rahman Choudhury ( bn, আখালেক উর-রহমান চৌধুরী; born 23 April 1967) is a British High Court judge of England and Wales. In 2017, he was made Knight Bachelor on appointment, becoming the first B ...

overturned this judgment, finding that Forstater's beliefs were covered under the protected belief characteristic within the meaning of the Equality Act. The appeal was allowed after the appeal tribunal concluded the belief that "biological sex is real, important and immutable" met the legal test of a "genuine and important philosophical position", and "could not be shown to be a direct attempt to harm others." As such these beliefs were afforded protection under the Equality Act. The original tribunal's ruling that the belief was "not worthy of respect in a democratic society" was overturned. The appeal was supported by interventions by the UK's

Equality and Human Rights Commission The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is a non-departmental public body in Great Britain, established by the Equality Act 2006 with effect from 1 October 2007. The Commission has responsibility for the promotion and enforcement of eq ...

and the NGO

Index on Censorship Index on Censorship is an organization campaigning for freedom of expression, which produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London. It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd (WSI) in association w ...

which both stated that 'gender critical' views should be considered a philosophical belief and thus protected under law. CGD vice president Amanda Glassman, released the following statement in reaction: "The decision is disappointing and surprising because we believe Judge Tayler got it right when he found this type of offensive speech causes harm to trans people, and therefore could not be protected under the Equality Act." On 30 June 2021, 87 staff members wrote a letter to management saying "We were disappointed to learn that the Employment Appeals Tribunal overturned its 2019 ruling ... We believe the original verdict was correct when it found that this type of offensive and exclusionary language and action causes harm to trans people and therefore could not be protected under the Equality Act."

Notable fellows

Resident fellows

* Nancy Birdsall * Kalipso Chalkidou * Michael Clemens *

* Liliana Rojas-Suarez

Visiting fellows

Joyce Banda Joyce Hilda Banda (née Ntila; born 12 April 1950) is a Malawian politician who was the President of Malawi from 7 April 2012 to 31 May 2014. Banda took office as President following the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika. She is the ...

* Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala *

Antoinette Sayeh Antoinette Monsio Sayeh (born 12 July 1958 in Monrovia, Liberia) is a Liberian economist and Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sayeh served as the Director of the African Department at the IMF from July 14, 2008, ...

Non-resident fellows

* Abhijit Banerjee *

Chris Blattman Christopher Blattman is a Canadian-American economist and political scientist working on conflict, crime, and international development. He is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at the University of Chicago's Harris School ...

* Francis Fukuyama *

Paul Gertler Paul Gertler (born March 30, 1955) is an American economist and the Li Ka Shing Distinguished Professor of Economics in the Haas School of Business and the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. Gertler is considered an early pioneer in the ra ...

* Ravi Kanbur *

Dean Karlan Dean Karlan is an American development economist. He is Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University where, alongside Christopher Udry, he co-founded and co-directs the Global Poverty Research Lab at Kellogg School of Management. ...

* Michael Kremer *

Nora Lustig Nora Lustig (born January 13, 1951) is the Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and the Director of the CEQ Institute at Tulane University, and a non-resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Di ...

Branko Milanović Branko Milanović ( sr-Cyrl, Бранко Милановић, ) is a Serbian-American economist. He is most known for his work on income distribution and inequality. Since January 2014, he has been a visiting presidential professor at the Graduate ...

Sendhil Mullainathan Sendhil Mullainathan () (born c. 1973) is an American professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the author of '' Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much'' (with Eldar Sha ...

Martin Ravallion Martin Ravallion (19 March 1952 – 24 December 2022) was an Australian economist. He was the inaugural Edmond D. Villani Professor of Economics at Georgetown University, and had previously been director of the research department at the World ...

Bogolo Kenewendo Bogolo Joy Kenewendo (born c. 1987) is a Botswana global economist and politician with deep expertise in international trade and development. She has a particular focus on Pan-African development and a passion for accelerating digitization an ...

References

External links

*
Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Center For Global Development Dupont Circle Foreign policy and strategy think tanks in the United States Non-profit organizations based in Washington, D.C. Nonpartisan organizations in the United States 2001 establishments in the United States Think tanks established in 2001 International development organizations