The panelists in the third Plenary Session of GDN’s 12th Annual Conference addressed how the financial sector can support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), by means of improving financial depth and access, while paying close attention to the formulation of relevant policies and the role played by its main actors...

Is the global financial crisis at the heart of the emerging landscape of development finance? Francois Bourguignon, at the opening plenary of GDN’s Annual Conference, says not. Bourguignon, Director of the Paris School of Economics, speaking in the session ‘Financing Development in a Post-Crisis World: The New Agenda’ believes that the changes in the global economy had already been set in motion before the crisis. This was underpinned by a shift over time from a focus on the quantity to quality of development finance...

For many years, microfinance has been perceived as a kind of ‘magic bullet’ that raises the income and consumption of the poor and helps them cope with poverty. For its supporters, microfinance is not about income or consumption, but rather freedom and empowerment (Rich Rosenberg CGAP). But the perception of microfinance is changing...

During the GDNet Awards and Medals Finalists Presentation Skills Training that took place on the 11-12 January, participants were asked to write a blog to capture the key issues underpinning their work.

We feature here a blog written by Alvin Ang and Jeremaiah Opiniano, from the University of Santo Tomas Research Cluster on Culture, Education and Social Issues in the Phillipines, who were last night declared the winner of the Japanese Award for Outstanding Research on Development (ORD)...