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Latest blog posts from The World Bank Blog

Annual Meetings expectations
The rise in food and energy prices coupled with the financial crisis will guarantee a lot of attention this year on the IMF and the World Bank. Here are a few views on this year's Annual Meetings: Barry Eichengreen and Richard Baldwin:Global economic and financial leaders are convening this... Read more...
Published a hour ago

Are prediction markets the way to attract social investments?
Prediction markets have been a popular theme on this blog (see for example here and here). We also talked about the lack of reliable performance data as a factor that deters potential investors into social innovation. A short piece in the Harvard Business Review now suggests that prediction... Read more...
Published 4 hours ago

What to watch for at the Annual Meetings
Robert Zoellick leads off with the opening press conference of the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank and IMF (video after the jump). Zoellick argues that developing countries now face a triple hit: "In July, at the G8 summit, I said that developing countries were facing... Read more...
Published 5 hours ago

The economics of Schadenfreude
Esther Duflo takes aim at bankers. Money quote:If paying the bankers (a lot) less or taxing them (a lot) would certainly be more desirable from a moral point of view (not to mention considerations of equity), would it be harmful in terms of economic efficiency, as many economists suggest? Is... Read more...
Published a day ago

Payment systems and systemic risk
Martin Wolf has an excellent piece today in the Financial Times, provocatively called Asia's Revenge. Wolf explains how the liberalization of international finance and the savings glut generated by emerging economies came together to help produce the current financial crisis. Preventing a... Read more...
Published a day ago

Development 2.0: submit your ideas
After the UK's Social Innovation camp, the development 2.0 competition wave has crossed the pond (ironically, all of this happens as talks of the "madness of the crowd" seem to be far more popular than any reference to its "wisdom"). USAID has just announced the launch of the "Development 2.0... Read more...
Published a day ago

The lessons of creative destruction
Fareed Zakaria has a rather sanguine view about what the world will make of the subprime crisis (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan):Capitalism is now a global phenomenon, powered by the actions of companies and governments all over the world. Countries will continue to rely on free markets and free trade... Read more...
Published 4 days ago

Creative destruction ctd.
Last month I speculated about the effects that the subprime crisis might have on developing countries in a post called Creative destruction on Wall Street. What lessons would emerging markets take from government interventions in the U.S. and Europe? Bill Easterly picks up where I left off in a... Read more...
Published 4 days ago

Banking on Mobiles: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
While mobile banking has recently been getting some high end exposure (see the recent posts on the Clinton Global Initiative), a recent conference sponsored by CGAP provided a welcome counterpoint by getting into the nitty gritty of actually implementing the m-banking model on the ground. Titled... Read more...
Published a week ago

More m-banking at the Clinton Global Initiative
Brian Richardson wasn't the only one talking about mobile banking at the Clinton Global Initiative. Elizabeth Littlefield, CEO of CGAP, also made an appearance (Hat tip: Jim Rosenberg). Video of her talk can be seen here - first appearance is around 27:30. And here's a little excerpt:In fact, the... Read more...
Published a week ago

Measuring human opportunity
The World Bank yesterday released its new Human Opportunity Index report. This first round focused on Latin America because of the extremes of inequality presented by the region; however, future rounds will be extended to other parts of the world. According to the press release:The study also... Read more...
Published a week ago

What a difference six years make...
Speaking of mobile banking (see the previous post), it might be useful to see just what mobile coverage looks like in South Africa. Fortunately, the UNDP provides heat maps with exactly this data. Here is one from 2000 (which also appears in an earlier post called UNDP discovers the private... Read more...
Published a week ago