What we've written.
What we're reading.

The case for a foreign assistance system that is less bureaucratic, more focused on growth, and built to end — from a former USAID Foreign Service Officer.

Elissa Miolene on the fragile new architecture of U.S. foreign aid taking shape 18 months after USAID's dismantlement — and The New Foreign Assistance's role in shaping what comes next.

Michael Igoe on the emerging architecture of U.S. foreign aid — including The New Foreign Assistance and its role in shaping what comes next.

Michael Igoe on the interregnum in U.S. foreign aid — the old system dying, the new one still taking shape — and where The New Foreign Assistance fits the moment.

Daniel Handel on the launch of The New Foreign Assistance — and a candid accounting of what went wrong with the old system, and why the rebuild matters.

Poverty was universal until the Great Enrichment after 1800 — driven not by capital or exploitation but by an ideology of liberty and dignity for ordinary people. The case for growth as the most important secular event in human history.

China has entrenched itself in the World Bank, using U.S. contributions to subsidize Belt and Road and lock in Chinese technology. The case for the U.S. to reassert strategic leverage in a $400 billion institution.

Hartley, Pallan, and Wheaton find that market reforms drive substantial long-run growth — but benefits take 3-5 years to materialize as capital and labor reallocate. The case for patient, structural ambition over short-term fixes.

Ken Opalo on why the World Bank's newfound enthusiasm for industrial policy will produce the same faddist failures as every previous orthodoxy — and why African governments should ignore the best-practice packaging.

Dean Karlan and co-authors reassess poverty traps: the theory is more often assumed than empirically demonstrated.

Even insiders concede the system is no longer fit for purpose.

State's Nick Checker on commercial diplomacy: deals over programs, results over disbursement.

A reference directory of pacesetting organizations across global health, food security, and nutrition.

Quico Toro on Pritchett's case against RCTs, and for growth-first development.

Paul Niehaus and co-authors price the end of extreme poverty: 0.3% of global GDP.

Karthik Tadepalli on the "missing middle" of development: not household interventions, not growth platitudes, but firm growth — the rigorous, ambitious lens that ties aid to prosperity.

The reform opportunity hiding in the aid-cuts moment.

Lant Pritchett on the case for growth: no country has reached high wellbeing without it.

Nearly half of sampled awards failed to achieve expected results — yet implementers were generally paid in full. An agency-wide failure of accountability, not a war-zone anomaly.

Steven Teles on why government complexity, not size, is the deeper problem.

Andrew Natsios on the paradox: the most measurable programs are the least transformational, and the most transformational the least measurable.