Even under conservative assumptions, IDA will likely face a wave of country graduations by 2025. We project that it will lose more than half of its client countries and that the total population living in IDA-eligible countries will plunge by two-thirds. The remaining IDA-eligible countries will...

Many of the world’s poorest and most fragile states are joining the ranks of oil and gas producers. These countries face critical policy questions about managing and spending new revenue in a way that is beneficial to their people. At the same time, a growing number of developing...

Investors diversify their portfolios to boost returns and manage risk. However, the benefits of diversifying across geographic regions are reduced if markets are highly correlated. This paper examines trends over the past two decades and finds, as expected from global market integration, that...

Many of the world’s poorest and most fragile states are joining the ranks of oil and gas producers. These countries face critical policy questions about managing and spending new revenue in a way that is beneficial to their people. At the same time, a growing number of developing countries...

Scholars have compared and contrasted commercial and social entrepreneurship along a variety of dimensions, suggesting that entrepreneurial antecedents and outcomes differ within a social context. However, little is known about whether entrepreneurial processes differ within social contexts. In...

Ghana’s largest and most important creditor for the past three decades has been the International Development Association (IDA), the soft loan window of the World Bank. That will soon come to an end. The combination of Ghana’s rapid economic growth and the recent GDP rebasing exercise means...

Zimbabwe is embarking on a long, complex, and difficult journey to rebuild its economy, which has been shattered by years of neglect and destructive government policies. If the final political hurdles are overcome? hopefully sooner rather than later—the new coalition government will be faced...

Ghana can be considered a relative success story in Africa. We cite six variables—peace and stability, democracy and governance, control of corruption, macroeconomic management, poverty reduction, and signs of an emerging social contract—to suggest the country’s admirable political and...

The international goal for rich countries to devote 0.7% of their national income to development assistance has become a cause célèbre for aid activists and has been accepted in many official quarters as the legitimate target for aid budgets. The origins of the target, however, raise serious...

The launch of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) soon after September 11, 2001 has been predicted to fundamentally alter U.S. foreign aid programs. In particular, there is a common expectation that development assistance will be used to support strategic allies in the GWOT, perhaps at the expense...