The World Bank Development Report (World Bank, 1989) provides an excellent synthesis of current wisdom about the relationship between financial systems and economic development. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the proposals presented in that Report. The Report addresses four sets of...

The origins of European populism are two socio-economic divergences that began around 1980 and have been at their most extreme in Britain. One is spatial, the other educational.

Cette étude propose de définir les Etats fragiles par les caractéristiques qui les éloignent de l'Etat d'intérêt commun et de l'autocratie répressive. Les « Failed states » constituent un des plus grands défis du développement car ils ont peu de raisons de tendre vers ces deux formes...

Many poor countries are now discovering valuable non-renewable natural resources. Unlike most other sources of tax revenue, the government revenues from the depletion of these resources are both unsustainable and volatile. Each of these features implies that the savings rate appropriate for...

In many African countries a market for private provision of formal sector mass housing is largely absent. This is not inevitable, but is the consequence of policy failure surrounding five key issues. The affordability of housing, with costs often inflated by inappropriate building regulations...

The financial sector is becoming more important because of the natural resource booms. The taxation of natural resource exports will generate large increases in revenues and this will transform the ability of governments to borrow in the markets for sovereign debt. These constitute temporary...

1. IntroductionNecessarily, all donors will focus increasingly on fragile states. The more successful countries in Africa have achieved growing tax bases and are consequently now gaining access to global capital markets. For such countries, aid is becoming marginal. In contrast, fragile states,...

I discuss how aid can support growth in small, isolated economies. Small markets frustrate scale economies and competition. Combined with high transport costs, essential inputs become prohibitively expensive. Breaking the coordination problem requires pioneering investment. Since this generates...

As aid diminishes in importance, donors need a capacity that enables governments to improve the quality of their public spending. In this study I suggest three such organizational innovations: independent ratings of spending systems, Independent Public Service Agencies, and Sovereign Development...