Recently I participated in a roundtable on the future of carbon markets at the Center for American Progress. The discussion, co- sponsored by Climate Advisers, was co-chaired by former U.S. senator Tom Daschle and former EPA administrator Carol Browner, and included CAP chair John Podesta. Jim Kim, the president of the World Bank, made opening remarks. In other words, the participants included lots of insiders who know a thing or two about how Washington works-and doesn't.

The discussion was wide-ranging, and because Mr. Kim was there, a good part of it was focused on the World Bank. If you want to know how I think the World Bank could make a world of difference on climate, see this outside-the-box proposal for the bank to lead on creation of a new global climate agency.

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I'm a little late to this, but recently Chris Blattman set off an interesting debate by criticizing Bill Gates' recent interest in the quality of GDP statistics in Africa. Chris worries that Gates is falling into the trap of "seeing like a state" -- i.e., from the top down, obsessing over national statistics -- rather than a bottom-up entrepreneur who, presumably, couldn't care less about aggregate GDP numbers.

As part of a working group looking at "Data for African Development" together with the African Population Health Research Centre in Nairobi, I'm here to defend the idea of "seeing like a state" in 21st century Africa. I just think Bill Gates is doing it wrong.

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Michael Clemens released a groundbreaking (pun intended) new CGD working paper today titled The Effect of Foreign Labor on Native Employment: A Job-Specific Approach and Application to North Carolina Farms. Too busy to wade through the research methodology? Skip instead to this report, International Harvest: A Case Study of How Foreign Workers Help American Farms Grow Crops - and the Economy, also written by Michael and released today by CGD and the Partnership for a New American Economy.

As House Judiciary considers Rep. Goodlatte's (R-VA) new Agricultural Guestworker Act, HR 1773, Senate Judiciary carries on its markup of the Gang of 8's comprehensive immigration reform bill, and we wait (perhaps indefinitely) for a House version of a comprehensive bill, Michael's research has two major ...

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Up to now, the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (sadly still not widely AKA the HiPoPoDomAe) has done a pretty good job of displaying public collegiality. But in the lead-up to today's Panel meetings in New York, that began to break down. A story in the Guardian suggested that drafts of the report have been described as "absolutely awful" and "a bit of a car crash." One big reason for dismay, according to the Guardian: the report drafts don't include nearly enough in the way of specific language on eradicating $1.25/day poverty, hunger and avoidable child mortality -all by 2030.

I've written before on this blog about the plausibility problem with zero goals -many of the proposed targets for 2030 would require historically unprecedented progress from those countries ...

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This is a joint blog with Alexis Sowa.

Last weekend marked the first time in Pakistan's 60-plus year history that a democratically elected government completed its term. This is a major achievement for Pakistan. It also raises the possibility of a new chapter in US-Pakistan relations because a new civilian government led by the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, the winning party) might prove to be surprisingly open to US help in addressing Pakistan's huge development challenges.

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The United Kingdom has been a stalwart funder and innovator in foreign assistance for almost 20 years. In 2011, it created the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) to report to Parliament on the country's growing aid portfolio. ICAI is a QUANGO in Brit-speak - a quasi-public non-governmental organization - with a 4-year mandate which is undergoing review this year. Recently, I took a look at the reports it has produced to see whether the organization is fulfilling its role in holding the country's overseas development aid programs accountable. I found one fascinating report which shows what ICAI could be doing and many more reports that made me wonder whether ICAI is duplicating work already within the purview of the agency, Department for International Development (DFID), which ...

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Bills, conferences, bilats, and condemnations abound: Assad must go. But as Secretary Kerry wrapped up a meeting on the crisis in Syria with President Putin this week, news leaked of yet another Russian arms deal with Syria.

The latest reported deal (in part financed through the Russian foreign-development bank, the VEB) sells ground-to-air missile systems to the Assad government. The Wall Street Journal reports that these batteries "would significantly boost the regime's ability to stave off intervention in its civil war."

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Congratulations to Ambassador Roberto Azevedo from Brazil, who will be the next Director-General of the WTO. Ambassador Azevedo campaigned for the WTO position as an insider who could hit the ground running and that is exactly what he will need to do. He also said that being an insider would help him in rebuilding trust among the members and he will need to get started on that immediately-even before he takes over on September 1.

Just three months after he takes office, Avezedo will have to go to the ministerial in Bali and try to find a way out of the Doha Round trap. My preferred alternative is to salvage whatever is possible and declare victory. If no agreement comes together, however, it will be time to officially bury the Doha Round, and that will take strong leadership.

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Robert Rector and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation have written a report claiming that regularizing unauthorized immigrants in the United States will cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars. Neither Rector nor Richwine are trained economists and the methods that they use to arrive at this number are not economic analysis.

There is widespread condemnation of Rector and Richwine's work across Washington. Conservative analysts, in fact, have been the loudest in slamming Rector and Richwine's inferior methods. When the American Action Forum, Americans for Tax Reform, the Cato Institute, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) are roundly trashing Rector's methods, the problem is not Rector's politics; it's his methods.

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This is a joint post with William Savedoff.

Earlier this year, Nancy Birdsall and I laid out why India's new cash transfer program is superior to current in-kind subsidy programs on which the government spends $26 billion a year with no discernible impact on poverty. While not a panacea, the new program has a lot going for it - cash transfers have been shown to work for poverty reduction in many settings, the program uses a biometrics-based system to identify beneficiaries and process payments, and the country has experience in implementing similar programs like the JSY - a cash transfer conditional on a facility birth.

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