Liberia was decimated by 25 years of gross economic mismanagement and 14 years of brutal civil war. GDP fell by over 90% in less than two decades, one of the largest economic collapses in the world since World War II. This paper explores the challenges in reinvigorating rapid, inclusive, and...

The IMF began to play a prominent role in low-income countries in the late 1970s and 1980s when many countries faced overvalued exchange rates, growing budget deficits, high inflation, and low reserves. But times have changed, and many low-income countries no longer face these problems and do...

Most donors deliver aid in very similar ways across recipient countries even though recipients vary widely in the quality of their governance, commitment to strong development policies, degree of political stability, and level of institutional capacity. Aid effectiveness could be improved if...

Controversies about aid effectiveness go back decades. Some experts charge that aid has enlarged government bureaucracies, perpetuated bad governments, enriched the elite in poor countries, or just been wasted. Others argue that although aid has sometimes failed, it has supported poverty...

The US government's proposed $5 billion Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) could provide upwards of $250-$300m or more per year per country in new development assistance to a small number of poor countries judged to have relatively quot;goodquot; policies and institutions. Could this assistance...

Most donors deliver aid in very similar ways across recipient countries even though recipients vary widely in the quality of their governance, commitment to strong development policies, degree of political stability, and level of institutional capacity. Aid effectiveness could be improved if...

This paper provides an early diagnosis of the financial crisis in Asia, focusing on the empirical record in the lead-up to the crisis. The main goal is to emphasize the role of financial panic as an essential element of the Asian crisis. At the core of the crisis were large-scale foreign capital...

This paper examines the potential for success for trade-focused regional integration agreements in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on southern Africa. The paper surveys the existing literature on regional integration, and attempts to distill the most relevant lessons about success...