With the COVID-19 pandemic, the development context for the world is fundamentally challenged in many ways. The pandemic has taken a drastic human toll, and its global-scale economic and social impacts affected rural development work focused on the most poor and vulnerable populations. It has...

"External exposure can be measured by the sensitivity of first and second moments of economic growth to openness and foreign shocks. This paper provides an empirical evaluation of external exposure using panel data methods for a worldwide sample of countries. Controlling for domestic conditions,...

"This paper examines the implications of bank activity and short-term funding strategies for bank risk and returns using an international sample of 1,334 banks in 101 countries leading up to the 2007 financial crisis. Expansion into non-interest income generating activities such as trading...

"Political economy explanations for fiscal profligacy are dominated by models of bargaining among organized interest groups over group-specific targeted benefits financed by generalized taxation. These models predict that governments consisting of a coalition of political parties spend more than...

"The authors determine how time delays affect international trade using newly collected World Bank data on the days it takes to move standard cargo from the factory gate to the ship in 126 countries. They estimate a modified gravity equation, controlling for endogeneity and remoteness. On...

"The paper presents a nontechnical summary of the current state of debate on the measurement and implications of global inequality (inequality between citizens of the world). It discusses the relationship between globalization and global inequality. And it shows why global inequality matters and...

"Are natural resources a blessing or a curse? Bravo-Ortega and De Gregorio present a model in which natural resources have a positive effect on the level of income and a negative effect on its growth rate. The positive and permanent effect on income implies a welfare gain. There is a growth...

"To study the effects of tariffs on gross domestic product (GDP), one needs import demand elasticities at the tariff line level that are consistent with GDP maximization. These do not exist. Kee, Nicita, and Olarreaga modify Kohli's (1991) GDP function approach to estimate demand elasticities...