The ongoing financial crisis has raised questions about the underpinnings of development assistance and the role of international financial institutions. A new development assistance framework, grounded in partnership, is emerging. That is the backdrop for this year's review, which--as in past...

A recent study of house price behavior in U.S. cities by Gyourko, Mayer, and Sinai (2006) raises questions about so-called superstar cities in which housing is so inelastically supplied that it becomes unaffordable, as higher-income families outbid residents. We consider the case of Accra,...

Designing a mortgage system which protects lenders' interests in an inflationary environment and provides continued accessiblity to credit for borrowers has been a challenge during the past decade. Approaches which addressed either the concerns of lenders (through indexation to inflation) or...

A new perspective on financial repression has recently been developed that stresses the public finance aspects of this policy. In this view, financial repression is seen as an implicit tax that generates "benefits" for government in the form of substantial amounts of government revenues,...

"In 1986 the World Bank prepared a strategy for low-income housing in developing countries. This work grew out of the Bank's efforts to support the urban poor through an extensive housing assistance program that was launched by Bank President McNamara's speech on urban poverty. By that time, the...