One objective of fiscal policy is to stabilize a country’s macroeconomic environment. Countercyclical fiscal measures intend to offset the effects of the economic cycle on a country’s economy. For…

Jose Luis Diaz Sanchez, Joana Monteiro da Mota |

The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens the uneven recovery of East Asia and Pacific. The invasion comes on top of the economic distress caused by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, the financial…

Aaditya Mattoo, Ekaterine T. Vashakmadze, Ergys Islamaj |

Today, on the occasion of the World Youth Skills Day , we are pleased to announce the winners of the Blog4Dev 2021 competition.

Hafez Ghanem, Ousmane Diagana |

The COVID-19 pandemic is devastating lives and livelihoods globally. Before the pandemic, the World Bank projected that 35 million people in East Asia and the Pacific would escape poverty in 2020…

Victoria Kwakwa |

“We are truly free, and as long as the tractor is working and helping us generate income, there’s no going back.” On my recent trip to Chad, I was impressed by the optimism and confidence of women…

Annette Dixon |

Construction of a sky train in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Seksan Pipattanatikanunt/World Bank In the past, procurement (purchasing) was not considered to be a specialist function but one of the…

Adu-Gyamfi Abunyewa |

Students at Beijing Bayi High School in China. Photo: World Bank In 1950, the average working-age person in the world had  almost three years of education, but in East Asia and Pacific (EAP), the…

Michael Crawford |

There is a lot that development practitioners don’t know about the Pacific Islands. When it comes to the laws of these small island nations scattered throughout the ocean separating Asia and the…

Katrin Schulz, Yasmin Bin-Humam, Nayda L. Almodóvar-Reteguis, Paula Tavares, Isabel Santagostino Recavarren |

The United Nations has declared 2014 as the International Year of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), in recognition of the contributions this group of countries has made to the world, and to…

Ivan Rossignol |

Travelling across Africa these days you are likely to run into increasing numbers of mining, oil, and gas industry personnel engaged in exploration, drilling, and extraction across the continent. …

Anand Rajaram |