Since we coined the term in 2006, “the middle income trap” has been the subject of scores of investigations. The investigators have generally tried to answer one of two questions: Is there evidence to support the existence of the trap, and what can middle-income countries do to spring free...

Because of the lack of reliable data, it is difficult to reliably answer the questions that many people are asking about China's activities in Africa: are the modes and magnitudes of Chinese finance creating unsustainable public finance and economic trajectories and — if they are — whose...

Several smaller economies such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Senegal are showing that African transformations can be as rapid as those in Asia. These economies deserve international recognition and support because they will inspire others through example. But Sub-Saharan Africa's prospects will...

Several African countries are headed into another debt crisis, just a decade or so after their slates had been wiped clean by debt relief. This is based on an assessment of country-specific debt dynamics: the debt to GDP ratios, the rate of growth of debt, the terms at which debt is being...

Since 2014, almost all African countries have experienced an increase in public debt and a change in its nature. The ratio of public debt to GDP has doubled, and sovereign debt is changing from concessional credit provided by official agencies to market-based loans from private institutions....

This paper is one of three country studies of successful anti-poverty measures during upper middle-income levels, the other two being Japan and the Republic of Korea. Though the US did not advance an explicit anti-poverty agenda until the 1960s, assisting the economically distressed was a key...

This paper is one of three country studies of successful anti-poverty measures during upper-middle-income levels, the other two being Japan and the United States. South Korea may well be the most successful case of economic development in recorded history. Within two generations, it was...

This paper summarizes what developing countries that are on the cusp of high income can learn from the approaches to poverty reduction adopted by the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea. China is almost as well-off today as the United States was in 1960, Japan in 1980, and South Korea...

This paper is one of three country studies of successful anti-poverty measures during upper middle-income levels, the other two being South Korea and the United States. Japan’s welfare-through-growth strategy appears to have worked through much of its development process, especially during its...

First, this paper discusses how AI-based technologies that are powering the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” are similar in their speed, effects and prerequisites to general purpose technologies (GPTs) that came before and how they are different. AI-based technologies are similar to the steam...