Although emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) weathered the global recession a decade ago relatively well, they now appear less well placed to cope with the substantial downside risks facing the global economy. In many EMDEs, the room for monetary and fiscal policies to respond to...

Investment growth in emerging market and developing economies has slowed sharply since 2010. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the causes and implications of this slowdown and presents a menu of policy responses to improve investment growth. It reports four main results. First, the...

Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) have experienced an extraordinary decline in inflation since the early 1970s. After peaking in 1974 at 17.3 percent, inflation in these economies declined to 3.5 percent in 2017. Despite a checkered history of managing inflation among many EMDEs,...

Against the background of continued growth disappointments, depressed inflation expectations, and declining real equilibrium interest rates, a number of central banks have implemented negative interest rate policies (NIRP) to provide additional monetary policy stimulus over the past few years....

This paper presents a systematic analysis of the availability and use of fiscal space in emerging and developing economies. These economies built fiscal space in the run-up to the Great Recession of 2008-09, which was then used for stimulus. This reflects a more general trend over the past three...

Little is known about the situation facing widows and their dependent children in West Africa especially after the widow remarries. Women in Malian society are vulnerable to the loss of husbands especially in rural areas. Households headed by widows have significantly lower living standards on...

This paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size. Poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities. This basic pattern is generally robust to choice of poverty line....

Poor rural women in the developing world spend considerable time collecting water. How then do they respond to improved access to water infrastructure? Does it increase their participation in income earning market-based activities? Does it improve the health and education outcomes of their...