Reports & Papers

Since the Paris Agreement's adoption in 2015, a majority of the world's largest investors have begun to take action on climate change. According to a new report, the 2016–2017 year showed an average improvement in decarbonization within all major investor categories except pension funds.

This paper is a background review representing part of the initial phase of the Financing the Urban Transition work program. The review builds on a growing body of research that highlights both the importance of national sustainable infrastructure and the need to develop more effective and efficient financing mechanisms for delivering compact, connected cities that meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. While progress has been made in both these areas over the last five years, there remains a policy gap between the international/national level and the municipal level.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are playing an increasingly important role in the management of government windfalls and income surpluses from a variety of sources. The rise of SWFs is evident from two major developments. First, there has been a significant increase in the size of assets under their collective management (now estimated at over $5 trillion globally), making them one of the largest – and fastest growing – pools of institutional capital in the world. Second, SWFs are gaining in popularity, as a large number of new funds have been established over the past decade and many more are anticipated in countries and regions with recent resource discoveries and other government surpluses.

Nearly all of the 190 signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agree that the forty-two-year-old treaty is fragile and in need of fundamental reform. But gaining consensus on how to fix the NPT will require reconciling the sharply differing views of nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states. Strengthening the international rules is increasingly important as dozens of countries, including some with unstable political environments, explore nuclear energy. The result is an ever-increasing distribution of this technology. In this paper, Steven E. Miller outlines the main points of contention within the NPT regime and identifies the issues that have made reform so difficult.

Abraaj Capital addresses issues of how to respond to the fast-growing Middle East market. Questions of scaling, institutionalization, and...

The Arab World Competitiveness Report 2007, released by the World Economic Forum was co-authored by Dr. Tarik Yousef, DI Senior Fellow and Dean of the Dubai School of Government. The report states that the United Arab Emirates is the most competitive economy in the Arab world among the countries at the third and most advanced stage of development.

A paper by the National Security Advisory Group

A December 2002 report, published under the auspices of the Academy’s Committee on International Security Studies (CISS), finds that the political, military, and economic consequences of war with Iraq could be extremely costly to the United States. William D. Nordhaus (Yale University) estimates the economic costs of war with Iraq in scenarios that are both favorable and unfavorable to the United States. Steven E. Miller (Harvard University) considers a number of potentially disastrous military and strategic outcomes of war for the United States that have received scant public attention. Carl Kaysen (MIT), John D. Steinbruner (University of Maryland),and Martin B. Malin (American Academy) examine the broader national security strategy behind the move toward a preventive war against Iraq.

In this era of American predominance, alliances are more compelling than ever. The United States needs allies to generate capabilities that amplify its power, create a basis of legitimacy for the exercise of its power, avert impulses to counterbalance its power, and steer partners away from strategic apathy or excessive self-reliance.