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Poverty in Africa is largely the outcome of slow growth. With the region hosting 10 percent of the world's population but a staggering 30 percent of the world's poor, the challenges it faces are enormous but NOT insurmountable. The message of this book is clear - poverty-eradicating development in Africa is possible. In fact, there are indications that Africa is at a turning point, and there is growing momentum among front-runner economies in the region toward higher and sustained growth. This study challenges African countries and their development partners to consolidate and continue this momentum and to exploit the advantages of the continent as a latecomer, particularly in innovation and...
Annotation Showcases improvements in environmentally sustainable development indicators by using them to analyze policy-oriented issues. The World Bank is both a compiler and a user of environmentally sustainable development (ESD) indicators. Although the Bank is more a user than a compiler of indicators in general, it believes in ensuring proper communication between users and compilers, especially for users who are policymakers. It is essential that policymakers have at least rough indicators of whether environmental conditions are improving or deteriorating in broad areas of concern. This report showcases improvements in ESD indicators by using them to analyze policy-oriented issues. The report examines issues in developing indicators that are understood by compilers and users, including definitions, methodology, and practical considerations. It addresses the gray area where physical indicators of environmental conditions blend into policymaking and proposes a change in the role of national accounting, where poor measurement of environmental aspects can send distorted signals to decisionmakers.
Distinguished experts explain the economic trends and varied political goals at work in Southeast Asia. With China’s emergence as a powerful entity in Southeast Asia, the region has become an unlikely site of conflict between two of the world’s great powers. The United States, historically regarded as the protector of Pacific Southeast Asia—consisting of nations such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Malaysia—is now called upon to respond to what many would consider bullying on the part of the Chinese. These and other countries have become the economic and political engine of China. While certainly inclined to help the country’s former allies, the United States has grown un...
Unless the real rate of interest exceeds the growth rate of real wages by a significant margin, payment of a reasonable pension rate requires a high contribution rate or a high active worklife ratio.
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The world's ocean transport industry faces an unprecedented crisis. Fundamental changes in the seatrade markets and considerable discrepancies between tonnage supply and the demand for transport are the key reasons. The international fleet has become critically overaged and suffers from a deteriorating safety record. Serious retrenching and sharp long- term planning are needed but -- tampered by reduced freight earnings, rising insurance costs, and a shortage of investment capital.
Multilateral development banks are frequently accused of "defensive lending," the practice of extending new loans purely in order to ensure that existing loans are repaid. This paper empirically examine this hypothesis using data on lending by and repayments to the International Development Association (IDA), which is the largest provider of concessional development loans to low-income countries. The authors argue that key institutional features of IDA both (i) potentially create incentives for defensive lending, and (ii) enable particularly sharp tests of the defensive lending hypothesis. The authors find that there is a surprisingly robust partial correlation between disbursements on new IDA loans and repayments on existing loans. However, a closer look at the evidence suggests that defensive lending is unlikely to be a major explanation for this partial correlation.
Despite substantial debt relief to HIPC Initiative completion point countries, long-term debt sustainability remains a challenge. This paper examines a number of structural factors affecting external debt sustainability. It shows that in HIPC completion point countries (i) the export base broadly remains narrow; (ii) fiscal revenue mobilization lags behind in some countries; and (iii) policy and institutional frameworks are still relatively weak. Achieving and maintaining longterm debt sustainability in completion point countries will require continued structural reforms, timely donor support, and close monitoring of new non-concessional borrowing.