This paper starts by analyzing past growth trends and sources of growth in Togo, as well as the structure of the economic actors in the country. The second part explores the current binding constraints to rapid and sustainable growth. For increased international competitiveness and growth, Togo...

Prevailing economic ideas -- and fashions -- about development have influenced the International Development Association (IDA) since its creation in 1960. The creation of the organization itself is the result of two contemporaneous facts: an urgent need to channel development finance to...

Not only do Africa's fragile states grow more slowly than non-fragile states, but they seem to be caught in a"fragility trap". For instance, the probability that a fragile state in 2001 was still fragile in 2009 was 0.95. This paper presents an economic model where three features -- political...

This paper examines how financial expansion and contraction cycles affect the broader economy through their impact on eight real economic sectors in a panel of 28 countries over 1960-2005, paying particular attention to large, or sharp, contractions and magnifying and mitigating factors....

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it documents the changing global landscape before and after the crisis, emphasizing the shift towards multipolarity. In particular, it emphasizes the ascent of developing countries in the global economy before, during, and after the crisis. Second, it...

This paper provides an historical overview of both the evolution of the economic performance of the developing world and the evolution of economic thought on development policy. The 20th century was broadly characterized by divergence between high-income countries and the developing world, with...

This paper investigates the factors associated with foreign direct investment"surges"and"stops,"defined as sharp increases and decreases, respectively, of gross foreign direct investment inflows to the developing world and differentiated based on whether these events are led by waves in...

Modern economic development is accompanied by the structural transformation from an agrarian to an industrial economy and occurs through a process of continuous industrial and technological upgrading. Since the 18th century, all countries that industrialized successfully in Europe, North America...

Sub-Saharan Africa's dismal development outcomes -- growth collapse and declining real income -- are often used to highlight its sharp development contrast with other regions of the developing world. Drawing on a large cross-section analysis, this paper shows that Africa's underlying dismal...

This paper analyzes the drivers and consequences of sudden stops of capital flows. It focuses on the impact of external vulnerability on the depth and length of sudden stop crises. The authors analyze 43 developing and developed countries between 1993 and 2006. They find evidence that external...