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The COVID-19 crisis, which has sent economies in South Asia and around the world into a deep recession, has highlighted South Asia’s rising debt levels and sizable hidden liabilities. State-owned enterprises, state-owned commercial banks, and public-private partnerships have been at the center of the rising debt wave and the latest pandemic response. Historically,South Asia has relied on these direct public interventions more than other regions. The interventions have helped governments tackle key development challenges and rapidly deliver relief measures during crises. However, because of their inefficiencies and weak governance, the interventions are also a significant source of public i...
During the 1990s, Emerging Europe and Central Asia (ECA) chose a model of rapid financial development emphasizing bank credit expansion often funded by foreign capital. Although boosting financial inclusion of firms and households, the model was accompanied by lower efficiency and increased financial vulnerability. After two waves of crises, in the late 1990s and after 2008, ECA’s banking systems again face major stress. The crises and stresses have eroded trust in banks and job creation in credit-dependent firms. ECA’s shallow and illiquid capital markets offer no additional support. Stagnating income growth, particularly of middle- to lower-income earners, has led to increasing dissati...
In a dramatic departure from its voluntary origins, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is rapidly shifting to hold multinational companies accountable for more than traditional shareholder performance. This CSR movement is embracing new environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks that both promote global sustainability goals and enhance accountability for negative impacts businesses can have on ‘planet and people’. This collection of essays by leading businesspeople, international civil servants, legal practitioners, academics, and other experts offers a forward-looking and pragmatic perspective that illuminates the major themes in this movement towards increasingly sustaina...
This paper proposes a sovereign asset and liability management framework for analyzing the inter-relationships between debt management, fiscal and monetary policies. It illustrates the consequences of uncoordinated policy mix and extends Sargent and Wallace (1981 and 1993) by including debt management. Examples of policy games played by fiscal, monetary, and debt management authorities reinforce the importance of policy separation and coordination to prevent domination by one authority over another which could lead to inconsistent policy mix.
'Economic losses from natural disasters totaled $92 billion in 2015.' Such statements, all too commonplace, assess the severity of disasters by noother measure than the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production. But $1 in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person that it does to a poor person; the gravity of a $92 billion loss depends on who experiences it. By focusing on aggregate losses—the traditional approach to disaster risk—we restrict our consideration to how disasters affect those wealthy enough to have assets to lose in the first place, and largely ignore the plight of poor people.This report moves beyond asset and production losses an...
Developing countries face massive infrastructure needs, but public spending on infrastructure is inadequate, and public investment has been declining in recent years. Rising debt levels and tightening fiscal and monetary conditions are putting further pressure on the funds available for infrastructure, heightening the importance of increasing the efficiency of infrastructure spending. Off the Books: Understanding and Mitigating the Fiscal Risks of Infrastructure shows that however governments deliver infrastructure—through direct public provision, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), or public-private partnerships (PPPs), the risk of fiscal surprises is high in both good times and bad. As a res...
This Selected Issues paper analyzes Russia’s fiscal framework and the oil-price shock. Russia has relied heavily on its abundant natural resource wealth to finance fiscal deficits since the global financial crisis in 2008–09. The pace of adjustment of the oil-price benchmark could be increased by including future prices in its calculation. Although converting oil revenues using a backward-looking average of the exchange rate could also lead to a more rapid fiscal adjustment, it also implies additional technical and communication challenges. In addition, the fiscal anchor could be more ambitious to safeguard intergenerational equity. Expressing the fiscal rule in terms of a minimum “structural" balance could promote greater savings.
This book focuses on current key issues of international security from an actor-centered approach. The volume is divided into 3 sections: the first part analyses an array of security issues in Europe, the second one explores how those security issues play out in the Americas, and the third focuses on Africa. Each of the chapter authors outlines the relevant ideas, interests and institutions. The volume provides an overview of how global, regional, and national actors, differ in their management approaches, capacity levels, and how these differences translate into cross-regional cooperation on security issues.
The South Asia Economic Focus is a biannual economic update presenting recent economic developments and a near term economic outlook for South Asia. It includes a Focus section presenting more in depth analysis of an economic topic of relevance for stability, growth and prosperity in the region as well as country briefs covering Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It concludes with a data section providing key economic indicators for South Asia "at a glance". Overall, it aims at providing important background information and timely analysis of key indicators and economic and financial developments of relevance to World Bank Group operations and interaction with counterparts in the region, particularly during annual and spring meetings.
This book explores the philosophical, and in particular ethical, issues concerning the conceptualization, design and implementation of poverty alleviation measures from the local to the global level. It connects these topics with the ongoing debates on social and global justice, and asks what an ethical or normative philosophical perspective can add to the economic, political, and other social science approaches that dominate the main debates on poverty alleviation. Divided into four sections, the volume examines four areas of concern: the relation between human rights and poverty alleviation, the connection between development and poverty alleviation, poverty within affluent countries, and ...