Author: lattrell

Environmental Impacts of Oil Crop Expansion in the Tropics: Contrasting Soybeans in South America with Oil Palm in Southeast Asia

Oil crops play a critical role in global food and energy systems, providing cooking oils for human consumption, biofuels for energy, feed for animals and ingredients in beauty products and industrial processes. This versatility makes them desirable in both local and global markets, with recent substantial expansion of oil crop agriculture. However, this expansion has […]

The Role of Supply-Chain Initiatives in Reducing Deforestation

Growing public concern about the contribution of forest loss to climate change and biodiversity decline has spurred new initiatives by private sector actors to eliminate deforestation from their operations and supply chains, including the adoption of aspirational goals by corporations. The number of private commitments to reduce deforestation from supply chains has greatly increased in […]

Nationwide Shift to Grass-Fed Beef Requires Larger Cattle Population

In the United States, there is growing interest in producing more beef from cattle raised in exclusively pasture-based systems, rather than grain-finishing feedlot systems, due to the perception that it is more environmentally sustainable. Yet, existing understanding of the environmental impacts of exclusively pasture-based systems is limited by a lack of clarity about cattle herd […]

Short Gianotti publishes on productivity gains & risk management in Land Use Policy

Anne Short Gianotti, Associate Director of the Land Use and Livelihoods Initiative (LULI) at the GDP Center and Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, recently published the article “Pursuing productivity gains and risk reduction in a multi-hazard landscape: A case study from eastern Uganda” in the journal Land Use Policy.   […]

GDP Center Databases Featured in NY Times

Two databases developed at the Global Development Policy (GDP) Center were prominently featured by the New York Times as part of an interactive story on China’s vision for a global network of trade, investment and infrastructure:  The China Global Energy Finance Database  The China-Latin America Finance Database The article, entitled “China Rules: How China Became a Superpower,” was published by the New […]

The Effects of Trade Agreements on Imports of Biologics: Evidence from Chile

Intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions have become a staple of modern free trade agreements since the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which set minimum standards for IPR protection for World Trade Organization (WTO) members. Many recent bilateral and multilateral trade agreements increase the scope and coverage of IPR provisions and […]

Expansive Disclosure: Regulating Third-Party Funding for Future Analysis and reform

During the Global Financial Crisis, certain financial markets temporarily dried up, and left  some corporations and investors seeking  new avenues for building wealth, both for themselves and for their shareholders. One such avenue is commonly called third-party funding (TPF), in which an individual or corporation outside of a legal dispute provides financing to one of […]

Karra Speaks at International Conference on Family Planning in Rwanda

Mahesh Karra, Associate Director of the Global Development Policy Center Human Capital Initiative (HCI) and Assistant Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, attended the 2018 International Conference on Family Planning held in Kigali, Rwanda from November 12-15, 2018. Dr. Karra led a session on […]

Efficiency Before Effectiveness: The Case of the Inter-American Development Bank

Projects implemented by multilateral development banks (MDBs) seek to support countries’ economic and social development. In most cases, aid is provided  for investment projects that support development or implementation of medium-term economic and legal reforms. The literature on the effectiveness of these development projects has traditionally focused on ex-post analysis. While this is the appropriate […]

Climate Transition Risk and Development Finance: A Carbon Risk Assessment of China’s Overseas Energy Portfolios

The role of development finance institutions (DFIs) in low-income and emerging countries is fundamental to providing long-term capital for investments in climate mitigation and adaptation. There is growing awareness among DFIs of the need to factor climate change into the financial risk assessment of their portfolios and the importance of assessing the opportunities generated by […]