"Systematic information on household financial asset holdings in developing countries is very sparse. The author reviews some available data and current policy debates. Although financial asset holdings by households are highly concentrated, deeper financial systems are correlated with improved...

The Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) is one of the world's best known series of conferences for the presentation and discussion of new knowledge about development. First held at World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C. in 1988, the ABCDE has become broader in scope as...

This report is the fourteenth in an annual series assessing major development issues. This report synthesizes and interprets the lessons of more than forty years of development experience. Together with last year's report on poverty and next year's on the environment, it seeks to provide a...

This report is the fourteenth in an annual series assessing major development issues. This report synthesizes and interprets the lessons of more than forty years of development experience. Together with last year's report on poverty and next year's on the environment, it seeks to provide a...

This annual conference is a global gathering of the world's leading scholars and practitioners. Among the attendees are participants from developing countries, think tanks, NGOs, and international institutions. The papers included in this book concern issues such as:-inequality and growth in...

The coronavirus crisis has stiffened debt and development-related headwinds that had become strong even before 2020. Sustaining development while maintaining debt sustainability has been made harder by the protracted effects of the pandemic on public finances, earnings and employment, and human...

Counting the world's poor: problems and possible solutions; by Angus Deaton. Comments on "counting the world's poor"; by Martin Ravallion, and T. N. Srinivasan. Ecology, history, and development : a perspective from rural Southeast Asia; by Yujiro Hayami. Productivity growth and sustainability in...

Crisis, adjustment, and reform in Thailand's industrial firms; by David Dollar and Mary Hallward-Driemeier. Corporate performance in the East Asian financial crisis; by Stijn Claessens, Simeon Djankov, and Lixin Colin Xu. Industrial policy : growth elixir or poison?; by Howard Pack. Financial...

"The "developing world's middle class" is defined here as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line of developing countries, but are still poor by US standards. The "Western middle class" is defined as those who are not poor by US standards. Although barely 80 million people...