The long-lasting, widespread COVID-19 pandemic has imposed huge challenges on public health as well as economic recovery. Governments must take an active role in designing and enforcing economic policies to address various problems that pure market forces cannot, such as externalities and the...

The World Development Report (WDR) has become such a fixture that it is easy to forget the circumstances under which it was born and the Bank's motivation for producing such a report at that time. In the first chapter of this essay, the authors provide a brief background on the circumstances of...

This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ("pre-confirmatory bias") and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves...

How does the lack of legitimacy of property rights affect the dynamics of the creation of the rule of law? The authors investigate the demand for the rule of law in post-communist economies after privatization under the assumption that theft is possible, that those who have "stolen" assets...

The 1999 Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, the eleventh anniversary, was held at the Bank on April 28-30, 1999. The discussions focused on three trends of development: 1) the emerging international financial architecture; 2) challenges to social development; and 3) lessons...

In an earlier paper, the authors presented a mathematical exposition of a theory that demonstrated that mass privatization without institutions to limit asset-stripping may not lead to a demand for the rule of law ["After the Big Bang? Obstacles to the Emergence of the Rule of Law in...

While global coordination is absolutely essential, success in achieving it may prove difficult because economic globalization has outpaced political globalization. If we are to succeed, we will have to manage coordination better than we have in the past

This book helps us to understand development economics in light of the past half-century's experience of development thought and practice. This volume is an outgrowth of an intergenerational symposium on "the Future of Development Economics," held in Dubrovnik in May 1999. It collects the papers...

Given the impact of the multipillar approach to pension reform and the diversity of its implementation, the authors, who presented papers at the 1999 conference on "New Ideas About Old Age Security," re-examine the evidence and thinking on pensions and retirement security. This report examines...

Initially, the intention of this book's work, was to take a fresh look at East Asia's regional experience during the 1990s, and to expand, and revise as necessary the findings of the World Bank's "East Asian Miracle", (published in 1993). However, while work began in 1997 - when the East Asian...