Promoting shared prosperity is at the center of the new World Bank Group Strategy. To this effect, a shared prosperity index will help monitor the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population in every developing country. However, many developing countries exhibit substantial economic...

The great transition from farm to city is filled with economic, social, and political promise. Cities are the product of a triad of forces. This Economic Premise explores how the three forces of spatial transformation—physical infrastructure, human interactions, and public policy—come...

In recent decades, as integration of global trade and investment has accelerated, many countries—both developing and developed—have experienced widening disparities of output and income across regions within their borders. The emergence of entrenched “leading” and “lagging” regions...

Emerging market economies (EMEs) are making important strides in developing long-term finance capital market vehicles to support investment in strategic areas such as infrastructure. However, since last year, EMEs have suffered from big shifts in terms of market sentiment. While EMEs’...

South Asia has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, yet it is also home to the largest concentration of people living in debilitating poverty. How do the two coexist? The paradox of South Asia is that growth has been instrumental in reducing poverty rates, but poverty rates have...

Understanding how to rebuild resilient states in postconflict countries is an urgent priority for the international community. A new cross-country study of public financial management reforms in postconflict situations shows that substantial progress is possible even in difficult circumstances,...

The global financial crisis has led to a range of reform proposals concerning the regulatory framework governing the banking sector—collectively referred to as “Basel III.” Although the proposed reforms are expected to generate substantial benefits by reducing the frequency and intensity...

Services can now be stored and traded digitally, and they are not subject to many of the trade barriers that physical exports have to overcome. Services are no longer exclusively an input for trade in goods, but have become a “final export” for direct consumption. It is important to note...

Over the last century, the world has seen a sustained decline in the proportion of people living in poverty. However, there is an increasing concern that climate change could slow or possibly even reverse poverty reduction progress. Given the complexities involved in analyzing climate change...

In the past two decades, there has been a growing engagement between development and human rights practitioners and thinkers. But are participants in this dialogue still mainly talking past each other? Or has there been valuable cross-fertilization and learning—the Millennium Development Goals...