The authors assess the role of the multilateral development system and the reforms needed to support the new global agenda. There is an urgency to the reforms. The coming decades will see the largest urban expansion in history. More infrastructure needs to be built in the next 15 years than the...

While several studies have traced the development of various intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), charting their growth and influence in international affairs, and assessing their prospects, few if any have compared IGOs across various fields. We take a closer look at three different policy...

To what extent do the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank remain central today and how much influence do they still wield in shaping the global agenda? While several studies have traced the development of various intergovernmental organizations (IGOs),...

The mixed record on the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets and the focus on global public goods in post-MDG debates questions the future of traditional development co-operation (official development assistance, ODA). Meanwhile, international financial crisis and fiscal retrenchment...

The paper aims to link the effects of global neoliberalism in the developing and developed worlds. The analysis is qualitative, connecting various topics in the literature. It demonstrates that the economic/financial, policy, and socio-political instabilities of the neoliberal era manifest in...

Trade regulation may never have been in more flux than it is nowadays. Apart from the emergence of ‘megaregionals’ (more recently, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – RCEP, or the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-pacific Partnership–CPTPP) and the difficulties in...

An analysis of the performance of the global financial safety net during the 2008-2009 crisis, and an evaluation of its new components, indicates that, from an emerging markets perspective, the net remains full of holes despite recent stitches. This paper therefore proposes an effective and...

This paper will propose a plan to reform international finance – the World Financial Authority (WFA) Plan. Under such a plan, the IMF and other existing international financial institutions would be reformed and coordinated around a newly created WFA. The WFA would have two core functions....

This paper makes new estimates of the cost of ending poverty and the global distribution of both the cost and poverty itself. First, the paper discusses definitions of 'ending' poverty, arguing that there is an overemphasis (e.g. SDG 1) on the extreme poverty line which is insufficient for...