East Asia entered the COVID-19 pandemic first and is likely to be the first region to recover. The region can turn this crisis to its long-term advantage by adopting bold and imaginative policies…

Victoria Kwakwa |

Closing Plenary of the Investor Forum. © World Bank “Private capital is often an important source of sustainable finance. Public finance alone may not be sufficient to meet the demands for…

Ceyla Pazarbasioglu |

© Dominic Chavez/Global Financing Facility [[tweetable]]Still today, in almost all societies around the world, women are less well-off than men.[[/tweetable]] Women are still paid less than men;…

Kristalina Georgieva |

Myanmar in 2012, when we started our financial sector engagement, and Myanmar today seem like two different worlds. Back then, sim cards cost close to US$500, visitors carried wads of crisp, new…

Nagavalli Annamalai |

Understanding macroeconomic volatility part 3Read parts 1 & 2
There’s good evidence that a country’s level of financial development affects the impact of volatility on economic growth,…

Francisco G. Carneiro, Ha Minh Nguyen, Rei Odawara |

Understanding Macroeconomic Volatility: Part 2 The fact is that a government can soften a recession by increasing spending (the counter-cyclical approach) to raise demand and output. If government…

Francisco G. Carneiro, Ha Minh Nguyen, Rei Odawara |

Volatility in financial markets gets wide attention in the public eye. Less noticed is what we in the development world call macroeconomic volatility—faster-than-desired swings in the broad forces…

Francisco G. Carneiro, Ha Minh Nguyen, Rei Odawara |

Globally, around 2 billion people do not use formal financial services. In Southeast Asia, there are 264 million adults who are still “unbanked”; many of them save their money under the mattress…

José de Luna-Martínez |