"Private debt flows to developing countries surged to record levels over the period 2003-07. A few low-income countries have gained access to the international bond market but the bulk of the flows have continued to go to just a few large middle-income countries. Most low-income countries still...

"The authors revisit the debt overhang question. They first use nonparametric techniques to isolate a panel of countries on the downward sloping section of a debt Laffer Curve. In particular, overhang countries are ones where a threshold level of debt is reached in sample, beyond which (initial)...

"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...

"Workers' remittances to developing countries have become the second largest type of flows after foreign direct investment. The authors use data on workers' remittance flows to 99 developing countries from 1975-2003 to study the impact of remittances on financial sector development. In...

"The empirical literature on finance and development suggests that countries with better developed financial systems experience faster economic growth. Financial development-as captured by size, depth, efficiency, and reach of financial systems-varies sharply around the world, with large...

"The authors propose a "bottom up" approach to link public investment programs with a class of macro models recently developed to quantify Strategy Papers for Human Development (SPAHD) in low-income countries. The methodology involves establishing constant-price projections of investment outlays...

"This paper provides a review of the contradictions and conflicts in the literature on economic governance and sketches an approach to use some of the conceptual and empirical findings from that literature for development policy. The literature offers conflicting conclusions on big questions:...

"The authors present real per capita GDP growth forecasts for all developing countries for the period 2005-14. For 55 of these countries, representing major world regions and accounting for close to 80 percent of the developing world's GDP, they forecast the growth effects of the main forces...