With its unique multilateral assets, the United Nations Development System (UNDS) should be playing a key role in assisting governments and other stakeholders with their implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. But this requires change. Despite improvements in recent...

Since its foundation in 1961, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) – nerve centre of the aid effort of the “rich” countries – has played a central role in the PostWar aid system. This book traces the history of the institution and reflects on its future. How intense diplomacy...

Does aid contribute to development? If so, under what conditions and to what extent? These questions are as old as the field of development policy itself and they have been controversially discussed among researchers and policymakers ever since. Yet, two main trends put questions related to aid...

Multilateral cooperation means that states can collectively achieve more than they can through individual and bilateral efforts alone. Multilateral organisations are important instruments for this: they have a greater geographic and thematic reach, operate at a larger scale and stand for...

We evaluate the long-run effects of a decentralized approach to economic development, called community driven development (CDD), a prominent strategy for delivering foreign aid. Notably we revisit a randomized CDD program in Sierra Leone 11 years after launch. We estimate large persistent gains...

How well do countries cope with the aftermath of natural disasters? In particular, do international financial flows help buffer countries in the wake of disasters? This paper focuses on hurricanes (one of the most common and destructive types of disasters), and examines the impact of hurricane...