Whether Bangladesh succeeds in meeting its challenges will depend on its ability to improve its infrastructure and tax collection, its willingness to deal with governance and corruption, and to deepen economic inclusion. Few would, on the record of the last 20 years, bet against it.
Read More »Afghanistan-Pakistan Treaty on the Kabul River Basin?
Both Pakistan and Afghanistan would benefit from a treaty to manage the Kabul river basin, but deep mistrust, scaremongering, and a lack of preparation is damaging the chances.
Read More »Water Scarcity May Hit Economic Growth: World Bank
The negative impacts of climate change on water could be neutralized with better policy decisions with some regions standing to improve their growth rates by up to 6 percent with better water resource management.
Read More »What the AIIB Can Learn from World Bank Shortcomings
China pursuing the AIIB and other initiatives that do not include the US, while the TPP negotiations do not involve China, creates a risk of competing blocs and institutions. But the most likely outcome is that the world ends up with a more robust and inclusive set of institutions.
Read More »Dragon Power on Display
With even U.S. allies scrambling to get on board the AIIB, China looks set to lead the global economy.
Read More »The Mixed Blessing of Asia’s Growing Middle Class
A growing middle class in Asia can mean more people lifted out of poverty and leading comfortable and productive lives. It can also mean more social inequality, more pollution, more congestion, and more loss of natural capital and public goods.
Read More »Causes and Consequences of Plunge in Oil Prices
While volatility in oil markets will likely persist, prices are expected to remain soft over the next few years. The declining prices present a unique window of opportunity to reform inefficient fossil fuel subsidies everywhere, says a new World Bank estimate.
Read More »Asiaphoria or Asiaphobia?
The rise of Asia might be better conceived as the re-emergence of a world in which population size and economic size are closely linked. The global diffusion of technology, and institutions, has given poor but populous countries an opportunity to catch up.
Read More »India, Nepal Sign Deal to Build Another Mega-dam
As Nepal signs a deal with India to build another 900 MW dam during the Indian prime minister’s visit to Kathmandu, concerns grow that the rush to develop hydropower is misguided
Read More »The Trouble With Statistics About Africa
Bad and incomplete data bedevils African statistics. Seventeen African countries have not conducted a census in the past decade and five have not done so in 20 years.
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