In the post-9/11 era, a new focus on failing states and their ability to threaten global security has influenced US foreign policy and aid policy. This paper explores the links between failing states and transnational threats such as terrorism, weapons proliferation, organized crime, and global...

Many existing classifications of developing countries are dominated by income per capita (such as the World Bank’s low, middle, and high income thresholds), thus neglecting the multidimensionality of the concept of ‘development’. Even those deemed to be the main ‘alternatives’ to the...

Does openness in trade and the free flow of capital promote growth for the poor? In this Working Paper, Nancy Birdsall discusses the inherent asymmetries in globalization, and the implications those inequalities have for poverty reduction. She suggests that global trading rules work less well...

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through...

Jenny Aker and Isaac Mbiti examine the growth of mobile phone technology over the past decade and consider its potential impacts upon quality of life in low-income countries, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. They first provide an overview of the patterns and determinants of mobile...

We examine the growth of mobile phone technology over the past decade and consider its potential impacts upon quality of life in low-income countries, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. We first provide an overview of the patterns and determinants of mobile phone coverage in...