Over the past 25 years, significant levels of public debt and external finance are more likely to have enhanced macroeconomic vulnerability than economic growth in developing countries. This applies not just to countries with a history of high inflation and past default, but also to those in...

At the Frontlines of Development former World Bank country directors recount their experiences, both as managers of the World Bank's programs in global economic hotspots of the 1990s as well as throughout their careers in development economics. These essays detail, among many stories of...

Over the past 25 years, significant levels of public debt and external finance are more likely to have enhanced macroeconomic vulnerability than economic growth in developing countries. This conclusion applies not just to countries with a history of high inflation and past default, but also to...

"Over the past 25 years, significant levels of public debt and external finance are more likely to have enhanced macroeconomic vulnerability than economic growth in developing countries. This applies not just to countries with a history of high inflation and past default, but also to those in...

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund use the Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework to assess the sustainability of sovereign debt in about 75 low- and middle-income developing countries. It is overdue for a review, and this paper recommends that it be replaced for three...

The World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography (WDR 2009) was written to inform policy debates about urbanization, lagging areas, and globalization. During almost two years of consultations and dissemination, the report met with broad acceptance among government officials,...

Since we coined the term in 2006, “the middle income trap” has been the subject of scores of investigations. The investigators have generally tried to answer one of two questions: Is there evidence to support the existence of the trap, and what can middle-income countries do to spring free...

This paper is one of three country studies of successful anti-poverty measures during upper middle-income levels, the other two being South Korea and the United States. Japan’s welfare-through-growth strategy appears to have worked through much of its development process, especially during its...