Why are fertilizer prices so high, and what can countries in Central America do about this?

Luis Flores, Viviana Perego, Diego Arias |

Costa Rica lost the momentum for poverty reduction towards the end of the twentieth century. This makes Costa Rica an outlier in a region that conti…

Jacobus de Hoop, Agustin Arakaki |

Central America and the Dominican Republic have a good track record of economic growth. Between 1991 and 2019, Central America grew by an average of 4.5% per year, and the Dominican Republic by an…

Michel Kerf |

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 |

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 |

Running from event to event to partnership dialogue here in the beautiful island of Upolu, Samoa, while listening to delegates to the 3rd annual Small Island Developing States Conference, two…

Valerie Hickey |

When economists think about price shocks, they consider how a change in price will affect the supply and demand of a product. But when that product is human – i.e., a worker – interpreting the…

Elizabeth Ruppert Bulmer, Claire H. Hollweg |

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 |

It is July 2012 and cattle farmers in Nicaragua are worried because Guatemala has enacted a series of laws that restrict beef trade. These so-called “non-tariff measures, ” or NTMs, require that…

Jose Daniel Reyes, Maria Jose Gonzalez Rivas |

También disponible en español Since the Great Recession of 2008, there has been a widespread sense of malaise among the American middle class. Their incomes are close to stagnant, employment has…

Francisco Ferreira |