What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

We revisit the relevance of the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA)against growth performance, with attention to possible biases arising from qualitative andquantitative changes in the CPIA methodology. The CPIA, introduced in the late 1970s, had aseries of extensive...

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Belize grew faster than its regional peers. By the mid-2000s, however, economic growth had slowed down to the regional average. A vicious circle of low growth and increasing public debt has been clouding Belize's outlook. This paper applies a growth diagnostic...

Despite starting as one of the poorest countries in the mid-1980s, Vietnam has achieved rapid developmental progress, reaching lower middle-income status in 2010. In line with rapid economic growth, Vietnam has achieved impressive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during...

The resumption of economic growth in Latin America is predicated on the successful restoration of fiscal discipline and stabilization. In restoring fiscal discipline, the mix of policy instruments should aim at maximizing efficiency in the use of domestic and foreign resources. Poverty...

Cabo Verde's economic achievements over the last thirty years have been spectacular and are unprecedented on the African continent. These achievements are remarkable given the unique challenges the country faces due to its small size, lack of scale for production of goods and delivery of...

This poverty assessment focuses on the evolution of poverty and other social indicators in Ethiopia between 2010-11 and 2015-2016 (henceforth referred to as 2011 and 2016). Using data from a variety of sources, mainly the twinned household living standards surveys (HCES and WMS), the Ethiopia...