By Pedro Perfeito da Silva and Marina Zucker-Marques The spread of FinTech—technology-driven innovation in financial services—is changing how people and businesses save, invest, make payments, access credit and manage their finances. While studies highlight FinTech’s potential to promote financial inclusion and efficiency, it also creates new risks for developing countries, from financial instability to currency […]
Since the crisis of the Bretton Woods order, capitalist economies have experienced a pervasive impulse to financialization, characterized by the growing importance of financial practices and motives alongside the dissemination of market reforms such as the removal of capital controls and the erosion of financial regulation. Beside the negative implications for growth and income distribution, […]
Latin American and Caribbean countries are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to their varied geography, dependence on economic sectors that will be adversely impacted by changes in hydrometeorological conditions and entrenched structural weaknesses. At the same time, the region lacks the fiscal space to ramp up public policies to mitigate climate […]
By Rachel Thrasher and Samantha Igo Established in 2018, the Working Group on Trade Treaties and Access to Medicines was convened by the Boston University Global Development Policy Center (GDP Center) to advance an evidence-based understanding of the impacts of trade and investment treaties on access to medicines. The goal of the Working Group—which was comprised […]
By Fahmida Khatun, Syed Yusuf Saadat, Afrin Mahbub and Zazeeba Waziha Saleh Following the conclusion of the 2025 International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Group Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C., the fiscal constraints faced by least developed countries (LDCs) in meeting their external debt obligations are a key topic of conversation, alongside the growing impacts of […]
Bangladesh’s external debt servicing record has historically been stellar as a least developed country. The country has comfortably met its external debt servicing obligations, largely thanks to its strong export performance. However, Bangladesh has taken on a large volume of foreign debt to finance multiple infrastructure mega-projects. The country has struggled with macroeconomic management in […]
By Tim Hirschel-Burns With the 2025 International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Group Annual Meetings underway in Washington, D.C. from October 13-18, the agenda is noticeably light. At the meetings, the World Bank will continue to focus on its jobs strategy. At the Spring Meetings in April, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on the IMF […]
There is a vanishing window to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Meeting this urgent challenge will require a tremendous mobilization of resources for a major investment push toward new economic growth paths that are low-carbon, socially inclusive and climate- resilient. This challenge is all the more urgent given that intersecting crises of the […]
By Marina Zucker-Marques, Laurissa Mühlich, and Barbara Fritz In a world beset by lower growth prospects, unprecedented uncertainty in international trade and high debt service pressures, access to timely financial resources is essential for central banks and governments in order to stabilize their economies without compromising spending on domestic priorities. This crisis financing comes from […]
Over the past 12 months, efforts to tackle a warming planet have lost momentum. There has already been a dialing back on climate initiatives at the Western-led Bretton Woods Institutions and by private financiers, with meaningful progress on the climate financing challenge stalling at the very moment greater effort is urgently needed. As a result, […]