President-elect Joseph Biden faces challenges both at home and abroad in the aftermath of the Trump administration. The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected the United States, with over 23.5 million reported cases by early 2021. Much like many nations under lockdown and reeling from supply...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected over 200 countries and territories, leading to well over 40 million confirmed cases and over 1.1 million deaths worldwide (covid19.who.int/). While many are hopeful, an effective vaccine is not yet assured, and the world still struggles with the so-called...

Participatory budgeting offers the promise of social accountability through citizens’ engagement in public sector budget allocations. The international evidence suggests that participatory budgeting initiatives can help produce more efficient and equitable budget allocations, but that the most...

Trade and investment flows into less advanced economies could bring about important technological spillovers that could boost firm-level productivity and bolster their long term economic growth. This brief paper outlines some of the motivations for public sector interventions to support learning...

Is a dramatic slowdown in global economic growth going to erase much of the progress in the last decade in terms of human development in the developing world‘ How might the crisis affect progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals‘ To address these questions, this paper...

In almost 30 years of implementation, the Sangguniang Kabataan, which is the Philippines’ version of the village youth council, has faced many challenges, from accusations of exposing ineffective and corrupt practices to young leaders to allegations of electoral malpractices such as...

Developing countries are presently experiencing or are shortly expected to see a “youth bulge” (a large number of young people in the national population) — some 71 in total and 11 in Asia alone — will face relatively greater employment and human capital investment challenges as a result...

The blue economy is a term used recently to emphasize the sustainable utilization of marine resources, spanning fisheries, energy and international trade, among other aspects. As a contribution to the policy discussions, this paper uses a regional public goods framework to analyze several cases...

Not all FDI are alike as far as their impact on various dimensions of human development is concerned. This paper focuses, in particular, on child labor and it undertakes a cross-country empirical analysis of this issue, using data on 100 countries spanning the period 1990-2009. Unlike earlier...

This paper provides a preliminary investigation of the education, migration, and employment preferences of the youth. It employs primary data consisting of the responses of 280 high school students to a specialized survey instrument. The paper places particular emphasis on identifying and...