The total amount of debt relief accorded to African countries in the framework of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative is expected to reach $43 billion concerning 33 countries. The 15 African countries presently qualified for this Initiative will benefit from restored creditworthiness....

Limited capacity to pay, large infrastructure needs and a huge backlog in the construction of sanitation facilities make recourse to cross-subsidies and government-funded subsidies a necessity in Africa. * This Policy Insights introduces the African Economic Outlook 2007.

International development assistance from richer to poorer (“developing”) economies accounts for major flows of capital, human resources and technical assistance. While the net direction of these flows remains a topic of hot debate, there have been several barriers identified to the...

Although hard to measure, informality is by all accounts high in Latin America: about half of the region’s working population can be considered informal. In Mexico, the only Latin American country that belongs to the OECD, up to 60 per cent of non-agricultural workers – almost 22 million...

China’s trade impact on Latin America is positive via an export boom and indirectly better terms of trade. Its emergence is also a wake up call for the region: more reforms are needed, especially in infrastructure, in order to maintain Latin America’s comparative advantage. The Chinese...

Households in the Black Sea Economic Co-operation (BSEC) and Central Asia (CA) regions have adopted coping strategies to withstand negative income shocks during the transition. The most common strategies include family and community support, emigration, and a wide range of activities in the...

The ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have created one of the most dynamic developing regions. They have unveiled the Blueprint for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) to achieve a “single market” by 2015. More recently, the full ratification of the ASEAN...

Have you ever wondered how many women are in paid employment compared to men? We know they get unequal wages, but just how unequal is their pay? Meanwhile, who are the managers, and what is their gender makeup? Are women and men entering the higher levels of state in equal numbers?

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been one of the principal beneficiaries of the liberalisation of capital flows over recent decades, and now constitutes the major form of capital inflow for many developing countries, including low-income ones like Chad, Mauritania, Sudan and Zambia. But while...

Latin American Countries vary widely in their institutional capacity to conduct economic policy analysis. Capacity for policy analysis is a necessary condition for economic reform but capacity for implementation is also needed. The point of contact between these two capacities - to analyse and...