CGD research fellow David Roodman and Uzma Qureshi analyze microfinance institutions (MFIs) as businesses, asking how some succeed in covering costs, earning returns, attracting capital, and scaling up. We draw on existing literature and interviews with industry players and academics. Key...

The Commitment to Development Index of the Center for Global Development ranks the world's 21 richest countries on the "development-friendliness" of their policies. It is revised and updated annually. This working paper includes revisions from the methodology used to develop the 2004 CDI. The...

This working paper by CGD research fellow David Roodman provides an introduction to a particular class of econometric techniques, dynamic panel estimators. The techniques and their implementation in Stata, a statistical software package widely used in the research community, are an important...

The launch of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) soon after September 11, 2001 has been predicted to fundamentally alter U.S. foreign aid programs. In particular, there is a common expectation that development assistance will be used to support strategic allies in the GWOT, perhaps at the expense...

The Burnside and Dollar (2000) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970-93 to 1970-97, as well as filling in missing data for the original...

The Burnside and Dollar (2000) finding that aid raises growth in a good policy environment has had an important influence on policy and academic debates. We conduct a data gathering exercise that updates their data from 1970-93 to 1970-97, as well as filling in missing data for the original...

The most-noted studies on the impact of microcredit on households are based on a survey fielded in Bangladesh in the 1990s. Contradictions among them have produced lasting controversy and confusion. Pitt and Khandker (PK, 1998) apply a quasi-experimental design to 1991-92 data; they conclude that...

Roodman (2023) (henceforth R23) re-evaluates Khanna (2023) (henceforth K23). R23 is able to replicate K23's results, highlighting no mistakes in K23's analysis. R23 argues that K23's results may be sensitive to recreating part of the underlying district-level sample, using a subset of K23's...

Duflo (2001) exploits a 1970s schooling expansion in Indonesia to estimate the returns to schooling. Under the study’s difference-in-differences (DID) design, two patterns in the data—shallower pay scales for younger workers and negative selection in treatment—can violate the parallel...