Cross-border banking has been a critical part of Africa's financial history since colonial times. While the period after independence saw a wave of nationalization across the continent, with many of the colonial banks exiting, this trend was reversed in the 1980s with the arrival of financial...

Africa's financial systems face challenges across many dimensions, as discussed in the report financing Africa: through the crisis and beyond. The analysis in that report was based partly on several detailed background papers that are included in this volume. The next six chapters are written by...

Making Finance Work for Africa presents a coherent policy approach that addresses African priorities and can work in African conditions. It challenges the applicability of some conventional views on a range of issues from securities markets and banking regulation to the organization of...

The report is organized as follows. Chapter one sets out the strategic context for Iraq, including the evolving political situation, macroeconomic context, and poverty and social conditions. Chapter two analyzes the trends in, and composition of, public expenditure, both from economic and...

Countries everywhere are divided into two distinct spatial realms: one urban, one rural. Classic models of development predict faster growth in the urban sector, causing rapid migration from rural areas to cities, lifting average incomes in both places. The process continues until the marginal...

This issue of the MENA quarterly brief assesses the macroeconomic performance of seven of the MENA countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen and Libya. All of these countries experienced rapid economic growth during 2000-10, and suffered a sharp economic slowdown in the aftermath...