Short Reads

Short Read 4: The Honest Truth about Transparency

The development finance system of institutions holds immense value. Part of this value lies in the data yielded by their unique experience of lending and investing across developing economies. Sharing this data could accelerate our efforts towards sustainable development by enabling creativity, lowering the cost of capital for key stakeholders and harnessing competitive forces. Transparency has its costs, but these pale in comparison to the costs of prolonged opacity.

Short Read 3: A Sense of Securitisation

Risk transfer and securitisation have at long last been admitted to the development finance conversation. Perhaps owing in part to its contribution to the global financial crisis, any mention of securitisation in development finance circles is typically met with a varying mix of excitement and concern. It may therefore prove useful to demystify a comparatively straightforward mechanism and to assess the potential of its use to accelerate the financing of sustainable development.

Short Read 2: Measurement, Reporting and Mobilisation

As the development finance system of institutions scrambles to mobilise capital markets, accurately assessing progress is necessary to develop an understanding of what the most effective strategies and instruments are, and what simply does not work. The adoption of methodologies delivering an overly optimistic picture of current achievements conversely presents a direct threat to the ability of the system to deliver on the objectives set by shareholders.

Short Read 1: ODA, PSI, Incentives, and Why they Matter

Numbers have a stubborn tendency to develop a life of their own. Measurements morph into targets, targets turn into ceilings, ceilings inevitably lead to optimisation, and the dynamics of optimisation create incentives. Incentives have real life consequences. The modernisation of the DAC Statistical System and the rules it sets for ODA reporting have far reaching implications for development finance.