This paper reviews economic developments in Barbados during the 1990s. Economic activity declined during 1990-92 but began to recover in 1993. The recovery started slowly in 1993, but picked up in 1994, and real GDP grew by 3.8 percent in that year. Adverse weather in 1994 led to a drop in sugar...

The aim of the paper is to shift the focus of famine analysis away from food supply towards the macroeconomic determinants of food entitlement—i.e., to the ability of individuals to purchase food. Towards this end, we develop a model to demonstrate how loose monetary and fiscal policies may...

The Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015: Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity was written jointly by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund, with substantive inputs from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This year's report details, for the first...

This paper focuses on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper—National Strategy for Development and Integration (PRSP–NSDI) for Albania. The paper provides an overview of the key challenges facing the country. It presents a brief statement of the national vision, identifies the strategic...

A Development Emergency: the title of this year's Global Monitoring Report, the sixth in an annual series, could not be more apt. The global economic crisis, the most severe since the Great Depression, is rapidly turning into a human and development crisis. No region is immune. The poor...

Poverty reduction strategies (PRS) are central to Fund-supported economic and financial programs in low-income countries (LICs). The joint IMF-World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative introduced the PRS approach and established documentation requirements centered on the...

In December 1999, the World Bank (the Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (the Fund) introduced a new approach to their relations with low-income countries, centered around the development and implementation of poverty reduction strategies (PRS) by the countries as a precondition for...