President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to double U.S. foreign aid, and Representative Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has stated that foreign aid reform will be on the agenda of the 111th Congress. Yet the field of development has changed significantly over the past decade,...

Dambisa Moyo, Nicholas Eberstadt, Paul Wolfowitz, and Mauro De Lorenzo will discuss the importance of global financial institutions in Africa's future.

The Marshall Plan's role in the economic recovery of Europe after World War II is often invoked as indisputable proof that foreign aid works. In 2005, while serving as chancellor of the exchequer, British prime minister Gordon Brown called for "a new deal between developed and developing countries as bold...

In American and European history, arguments over taxation--the power of the purse--have been key in the development of democratic institutions. Ideally, paying taxes stimulates demand for accountability, and accountability is a foundation of good governance. But many developing countries generate relatively little revenue from domestic taxation, financing government instead through...

As the new Congress considers the future of foreign assistance, Daniel Yohannes, CEO of MCC, and panelists from across the political spectrum will gather to discuss whether a bipartisan consensus is emerging on aid effectiveness and assess MCC's experience in putting these best principles into practice.

Foreign aid programs of the past decades have attempted to reduce poverty while introducing necessary reforms in recipient countries through “conditionality”--the practice of requiring economic or political policy changes in exchange for aid. It is now generally agreed that these programs have failed. Recipient governments have pretended to reform, and...

A new study of foreign aid in Morocco prefers European aid programs, but does not offer benchmarks for such a preference.