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Most of the ideas in this article are discussed in detail in the author's 'Eonomic Poky Making: Lessons from Costa Rica, Published as Occasional Paper No. 21 by the international [...]

POWER plant operator Zeki Kilic was afraid to tell I his wife when his firm announced it was introducing short-time working in response to the global slump. Plummeting demand for [...]

WITH the increasing importance of Asian emerging markets in the world economy, rebalancing growth in developing Asia toward more reliance on domestic demand and less on exports is an important [...]

THE global economy is showing signs of improvement--there is light at the end of the tunnel--but prospects remain highly uncertain. So while it is too early to exit from crisis-response [...]

IN international monetary economics our exam questions remain the same. Only the answers change, from decade to decade. I nominate five concepts, which were virtually conventional wisdom a short time [...]

FOR Daniel Kahneman, one of the most moving episodes in the current global economic crisis took place when a humbled Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, [...]

THE ECONOMIC and financial turmoil engulfing the world marks the first crisis of the current era of globalization. Considerable country experience has been accumulated on financial crises in individual countries [...]

THE 'Power 50'--that was what Institutional Investor called its 2009 list of the 50 most influential people in the financial world. Many of the names were those of top policymakers [...]

BOTH CHINA and Vietnam have made enormous progress in the fight against poverty, and the evidence suggests that rural economic growth has played a large role in this success. Using [...]

THE dramatic growth in private capital flows to low-income countries (LICs) around the world over the past quarter century is one of the good news stories of development. Capital flows [...]

THE global economic landscape has changed dramatically in recent decades. One driving force has been rising economic integration as global trade and financial linkages have multiplied. In the past two [...]

CRISIS anniversaries are usually occasions to draw lessons from the past--and the 10th anniversary of the Asian financial crisis last year was no different. Numerous conferences analyzed events of a [...]

THE current financial market turmoil--which began in the U.S. subprime mortgage market in summer 2007 and quickly spread to Europe--has exposed glaring weaknesses in how financial institutions are supervised and [...]

THE causes of the crisis in subprime mortgages have become clear. They started with poor underwriting practices, which became legion. But damage was propagated at each stage of the complicated [...]

THE current crisis is the worst to hit mature financial markets in decades, and it is not yet over. In the run-up to the crisis, low nominal interest rates, ample [...]

THE HOPE of better risk sharing, more efficient allocation of capital, more productive investment, and, ultimately, higher standards of living for all is propelling the drive for stronger connections between [...]

ASIA, the world's largest continent with nearly three-fifths of its population, has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past 50 years. After the Second World War, Asia was a mix [...]

REGIONAL integration is gaining momentum across the globe. In addition to the well-known integration efforts in Europe, policymakers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East [...]

ETHIOPIA, among the poorest countries in Africa, presents one of the biggest development challenges in a region beset by frequent drought and food shortages and hobbled by inadequate roads and [...]

AS A GROWING number of developing countries weigh whether to further integrate with the global economy through closer trade and financial linkages, they must cope with the prospect that greater [...]

OVER THE past 25 years, China has made huge strides in its battle against poverty as it has transformed into one of the most dynamic economies in the world. China's [...]

THE LAST 150 years has witnessed a global transformation in human health that has led to people living longer, healthier, more productive lives. While having profound consequences for population size [...]

ACROSS the world, a number of current and emerging problems pose new dangers for industrial and developing countries alike. The convergence of these problems will create significant social, political, and [...]

THE STORY of the Washington Consensus dates back to 1989, when the press in the United States was still talking about how Latin American countries were unwilling to undertake the [...]

EXPLAINING the huge difference in average incomes between the world's richest and poorest nations is one of the most fundamental issues in development economics. How did this vast gulf emerge, [...]

Poor countries could boost growth and reduce poverty by expanding exports to the rich countries and to each other. But, despite the progress made in trade liberalization under successive multilateral [...]

Developing countries worry that opening up to trade with the rest of the world may make the poor poorer and the rich richer, with China sometimes cited as an example [...]

WHEN THE IMF launched the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) in 1999, it envisaged some far-reaching changes in its operations. First, there would be a change in the content [...]

To enable the developing countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, the target date, the international community is calling for an increase in foreign aid to 0.7 percent [...]

Reasonable levels of external debt that help finance productive investment may be expected to enhance growth, but beyond certain levels additional indebtedness may reduce growth. An IMF study estimates two [...]

To spur growth and reduce poverty, poor countries will need efficient formal and informal institutions that support market activity. A major World Bank study offers insights into how such institutions [...]

ECONOMISTS are sometimes chastised for their inability to reach a consensus view. George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, captured the mood rather neatly when he wrote: 'If all economists were [...]

THE EVENTS of September 11 posed unprecedented challenges to the operation of the dollar payment system in New York. In its broadest definition, the payment system is a network of [...]

SINCE the mid- 1990s, financial crises have erupted in half a dozen developing and emerging market countries in Asia and Latin America as well as in Russia. The costs for [...]

GLOBALIZATION--the process through which an increasingly free flow of ideas, people, goods, services, and capital leads to the integration of economies and societies--has brought rising prosperity to the countries that [...]

GLOBALIZATION, or the increasing economic integration among nations, has accelerated sharply over the past half century, driven largely by the remarkable expansion of international trade and capital flows, as well [...]

Now that the Asian crisis is behind us, what lessons can we draw from the experience, and how can we use this knowledge to forestall future crises and minimize damage [...]

Studies of the impact of the East Asian financial crisis on Cambodia and the Lao PDR highlight the importance of macroeconomic management, particularly in the face of serious shocks. As [...]

The relationship between corporate balance sheets and a country's macroeconomy is receiving increased attention from policymakers in many countries, especially those most affected by the Asian crisis. How can policymakers [...]

Globalization presents fresh challenges to the world economy, and its implications have yet to be fully assimilated at the national level. At the same time, the lack of a lender [...]

The debate on capital mobility has intensified in the wake of East Asia's recent financial crisis, largely because of the risk of sudden reversals. The crisis demonstrates the importance of [...]

The accords signed by Israel and the PLO in 1993 and 1994 heralded greater prosperity for Palestinians. But an adverse external trade environment has discouraged private investment, and economic conditions [...]

What challenges will the aging of populations in Asia's tiger economies pose for their social insurance and educational systems? What effects will this have on their budgets, and on their [...]

Many transition economies have been unable to reduce inflation to low levels on a sustained basis. Monetary growth has been a dominant factor. Relative price adjustment and nominal wage shocks [...]

Many economists think that countries can boost national saving by privatizing public pension plans. The evidence suggests, however, that less radical reforms may be just as effective. In most countries, [...]

The introduction of the euro will create opportunities for greater integration of Europe's financial markets. If integration and efficiency gains are achieved, Europe's securities markets could rival US markets in [...]

Looking for evidence of income convergence among the world's nations has become a fashionable pursuit. Far from narrowing, the gap between the incomes of the rich and poor countries has [...]

World stock markets are booming and stock markets in developing countries account for a disproportionately large share of this boom. Investors are venturing into the world's newest markets and some [...]

The design of payment systems has important implications for the conduct of monetary policy, the soundness of financial firms, and the functioning of the economy as a whole. The term [...]

Using a large-scale empirical model, the authors quantify the welfare benefits of the Uruguay Round. Their results suggest that because industrial countries liberalized the most, they stand to gain the [...]