The global recovery is set to decelerate amid continued COVID-19 flare-ups, diminished policy support, and lingering supply bottlenecks. The outlook is clouded by various downside risks, including new virus variants, unanchored inflation expectations, and financial stress. If some countries eventually require debt restructuring, the recovery will be more difficult to achieve than in the past. […]
Digital technology is now so pervasive that it’s very hard to escape its influence, and with that growth comes fear. But whatever the news has told you about data and technology, think again. Data expert and tech insider Sam Gilbert shows that, actually, this data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to […]
From Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, a long-awaited memoir about home, belonging, inequality, and identity, recounting a singular life devoted to betterment of humanity.In Home in the World, these “homes” collectively form an unparalleled and profoundly truthful vision of twentieth- and twenty-first-century life. Here Sen, “one of the most distinguished minds of our time”, interweaves […]
This is the story of a race – not against other vaccines or other scientists, but against a deadly and devastating virus. On 1 January 2020, Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, read an article about four people in China with a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she and her team had designed […]
For years economists have spoken of ‘Africa rising’, and despite the global financial crisis, Africa continues to host some of the fastest growing economies in the world.Africa’s Shadow Rise however argues that the continent’s apparent economic ‘rise’ is essentially a mirage, driven by developments elsewhere – most particularly the expansion in China’s economy. While many […]
With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other inequality—not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country’s winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click.
The international organizations (IOs) authoring this report can strengthen their individual and joint work to support governments in this endeavor. While the brunt of this work lies with finance ministries, trade ministries, and sectoral and specialized agencies of national governments, international organizations have key roles to play. The four authoring institutions are examining ways to […]
This edition of the World Bank MENA Economic Update estimates that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s economies will grow by 5.2% in 2022, the fastest rate since 2016. However, uncertainty reigns with the unpredictable course of the war in Ukraine and the scientific uncertainty about the evolutionary path of the virus that […]
Disruptions to global value chains due to the COVID-19 pandemic have reinforced calls for greater self-sufficiency and reshoring of production. New World Bank research, however, shows that reshoring would be counterproductive and could contribute to a significant rise in global poverty. Instead, this report finds, that greater economic integration and strengthening of GVCs can spur […]
Overview: Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022 Correcting Course provides the first comprehensive analysis of the pandemic’s toll on poverty in developing countries It identifies how governments can optimize fiscal policy to help correct course.Fiscal policies offset the impact of COVID-19 on poverty in many high-income countries, but those policies offset barely one- quarter of the […]