International Financial Institutions

As it approaches its 75th anniversary that’s the question I put to Shanta Devarajan, the Bank’s Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa in our latest CGD podcast. 

This weekend’s spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF take place in the context of a fragile global recovery and the need to balance the risks of asset bubbles caused by expansive monetary policy with those of slowing growth through hiking interest rates. 

What does it mean when a majority of the World Bank’s shareholders (measured by voting shares) decides to put capital in a new multilateral development bank (MDB) and not the World Bank itself? The flood of countries joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is unavoidably a soul...

The African Development Bank almost wasn’t. Twenty years ago, the Bank lost its crucial AAA credit rating and its future was very much in doubt. Yet now it is held up as one of the largest sources of infrastructure finance for the region, a multilateral financing institution owned by 53 Africa...