Multidimensional assessment of human development is increasingly recognized as playing an important role in assessing well-being. The focus of analysis is on the indicators measuring the three dimensions of Human Development Index (HDI) - standard of living, education and health, and their...

This paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with a financial accelerator which captures key features of low-income countries (LICs). The predominance of supply shocks in LICs poses distinct challenges for policymakers, given the negative correlation between...

This paper estimates agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) in 162 countries between 1991 and 2015 and aims to understand sources of cross-country variations in agricultural TFP levels and its growth rates. Two factors affecting agricultural TFP are analyzed in detail - imported...

This paper examines the impact of international trade on industrialization in developing agricultural economies. The findings show that developing agricultural economies that increased their openness during 1970-95 experienced an increase in their share of industrial production at the expense of...

This paper assesses the additional spending required to make substantial progress towards achieving the SDGs in Pakistan. We focus on critical areas of human (education and health) and physical (electricity, roads, and water and sanitation) capital. For each sector, we document the progress to...

This paper documents the additional spending that is required for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to achieve meaningful progress in SDGs by 2030. Benin and Rwanda are presented in detail through case studies. The main lessons are: i) average additional spending across SSA is significant, at 19 percent...

Continuing the empirical debate on the effects of IMF-supported programs on participating countries' macroeconomic performance, we focus on the issue of whether these programs accelerate conditional AY-convergence among low-income countries (LICs). We use an unbalanced panel dataset for 85 LICs...

An improvement in the quality of public expenditures is needed in many countries, given binding macroeconomic and fiscal constraints, and poverty reduction and distributional objectives. This process involves a reassessment of methodology used for this purpose by countries and international...

Our proposal draws on the premise that the availability of stable demand deposits for bank lending, in the process of which inside money is created, does not require any act of intentional saving. The mechanism allowing banks to lend deposits does not function well in low-income countries, owing...

The paper reviews the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) approach and efforts to build institutional statistical capacity to permit evidence-based monitoring of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Integrating the PRS approach and statistical development strategies could provide...