Global gatherings from Addis Ababa to Glasgow are setting targets from climate through health and education to energy and transport that call for a lot of investment for sustainable development. But how much you can afford to invest depends on how much you’re paying for it. And that’s where the simp...

Simon Kuznets’ pathbreaking study of modern economic growth was published in 1966.[1] In it and in preceding monographs he identified the salient characteristics of economic change based on data from national accounts, the construction of which he pioneered.

The stakes are high for the African Development Fund (AfDF) as it kicks off its replenishment fundraising exercise this spring. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are still grappling with the health and economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis, with over 30 million of their citizens pushed into po...

With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting government balance sheets especially hard in low-income countries, the World Bank’s shareholders—including the United States—agreed to an advance replenishment of its grant and low-interest loan window, the International Development Association (IDA). By holding a ...

There is no shortage of investable capital in the global economy. However, while the opportunities exist for investment and while funds are available, few projects actually reach financial close. The basic premise of this note is that although technical assistance (TA) for project preparation, manag...

This paper discusses how fiscal policy can help foster more inclusive growth in developing Asia. On average, government expenditures in developing Asia are higher, as a share of gross domestic product, than those in Latin America and the Caribbean. Relative to Latin America, developing Asia spends m...

This paper discusses the evolution of key taxes in the past 20 years in developing Asia and fiscal challenges that these countries face in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents estimates of tax capacity and tax potential and discusses the productivity of key taxes in the region. The paper find...