Access to energy is essential for economic, social and political development. Despite its enormous potential in fossil and renewable energy sources, Africa suffers from major energy deficits. The continent’s resources are underexploited or exported in raw form or wasted in the course of...

Pension reform in Latin America has helped deepen capital markets, but with mixed results in terms of increasing national savings. Private pension funds have a still untapped potential to help to improve corporate governance of the companies in which they invest.

Africa is unlikely to reach the drinking water and sanitation Millennium Development Goals. Disparities among countries are large, and the deficit in sanitation is greater than that for drinking water. Serious reforms in institutions, legal frameworks, and policies are needed.

This policy insight introduces the Gender, Institutions and Development Data Base: a new tool to determine and analyse obstacles to women's economic development.

Since the credit crisis first erupted, relatively little attention has been given to the consequences of the financial crisis on low-income countries’ indebtedness. Although in recent years developing countries as a group have benefited from increasing private flows (particularly FDI and...

Citizens in OECD countries quite unambiguously support more solidarity and justice at the international level; however, despite the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their governments in 2000, they remain insufficiently informed and educated about global development...

The inaugural Policy Insight, "Towards an East Asian Free Trade Area", by Shujiro Urata, looks at the progress towards and consequences of an East Asian FTA, not only for the region itself, but also the world economy and for non members of the FTA. It discusses a topic of immediate relevance to...

Bond financing has replaced bank loans and other sources of capital flows as a major source of funding for emerging markets. This shift has been particularly impressive in Latin America. Disentangling the dynamics of emerging bond markets and the information flow about them has attracted the...

Growth will accelerate for net oil exporters and weaken slightly for oil importers, strengthening the trends projected in African Economic Outlook 2006. For the oil importers, moreover, inflation is moving to double-digit levels. Budget deficits in oil-importing countries appear to have...

The Centre has highlighted in particular four areas where OECD countries can make a difference: maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment with affordable interest rates; helping to mitigate risks; enhancing trade opportunities through improving the coherence of their own policies ;and...