There is an extensive literature noting that high inflation can add to income inequality, and a parallel literature assessing the effect of rising food prices on the poor. This paper attempts to combine these strands by dividing inflation into food and nonfood inflation and assessing whether...

Driving infrastructure development, notably mobilizing financial resources for infrastructure projects, has been challenging in many countries. This study includes two parts: an empirical analysis of macroeconomic risks associated with infrastructure booms, and a case study of four emerging...

Food prices are generally excluded from measures of inflation most closely watched by policymakers due either to their transitory nature or their higher volatility. However, in lower income countries, food price inflation is not only more volatile but also on average higher than nonfood...

Rising fuel subsidies have contributed to fiscal pressures in India. A key policy concern regarding subsidy reform is the adverse welfare impact on households, in particular poor households. This paper evaluates the fiscal and welfare implications of fuel subsidy reform in India. Fuel subsidies...

This paper focuses on the fact that the 2004-2005 conditionality review expands to include a review of the application of the new Guidelines on Conditionality, adopted in 2002. These guidelines were the culmination of a comprehensive and far-reaching review of conditionality that aimed to...

Books reviewed: Economic Geography and Public Policy, by Richard Baldwin, Rikard Forslid, Philippe Martin, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Frederic Robert-Nicoud, Yannis M. Ioannides, author A Primer on U.S. Housing Markets and Housing Policy, by Richard K. Green and Stephen Malpezzi, Edward Coulson,...

All over the world, people are prevented from participating fully in society through mechanisms that go beyond the structural and institutional barriers that rational choice theory identifies ( - poverty, exclusion by law or force, taste-based or statistical discrimination, and externalities...

All over the world, people are prevented from participating fully in society through mechanisms that go beyond the structural and institutional barriers identified by rational choice theory (poverty, exclusion by law or force, taste-based and statistical discrimination, and externalities from...

Asia's financial systems proved resilient to the shocks from the global financial crisis, and growth since then has been strong. But new challenges have emerged in the region's economies, including demographics and aging, the need to diversify from bank-dominated systems, urbanization and...