This report—the product of a joint working group convened by the Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Development Bank—focuses on firms and labor markets in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 crisis and the highly uncertain recovery phase now underway. The ongoing Ru...

A well-known structural problem in Latin America is that firms are generally quite small and most workers in the region are concentrated in small firms. In recent years, about 32 percent of workers were self-employed, and of those working in firms, over 50 percent were in firms that employed 10 or f...

IMF and World Bank 2022 growth projections for emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), released in January this year, were not encouraging. They found that deteriorated macroeconomic fundamentals, partly resulting from policy responses to the pandemic, deep institutional deficiencies, and...

In the face of sudden economic shocks and natural disasters that limit the ability of economies to rapidly raise revenue, MDBs have the potential to play a leading role in crisis response to minimize the damage. One key factor in their success in this role is the speed of their financing instruments...

Sovereign bond guarantees (SBGs) are an effective but underutilized instrument available to the US government in support of developing country partners. By protecting bond purchasers in the event of a foreign issuer country’s default, SBGs substantially reduce borrowing costs for developing country ...

China has emerged as a leading participant in multilateral development organizations. In many ways, this is a welcome development. Today’s global challenges, including COVID-19 and climate change, require an international response and have prompted renewed calls for increased multilateral engagement...

A considerable body of recent research attempts to shed light on China’s bilateral aid and finance flows, but there have been fewer efforts focused on China’s participation in multilateral development channels. As a result, China’s role across the landscape of multilateral institutions and funds is ...