Regulatory arbitrage—the practice whereby banks try to escape jurisdictions with more stringent regulations in favor of less stringent ones—has been a topic of active research interest. Previous research has shown that banks do indeed direct financial flows to countries with less strict regulations,...

Among IDA’s key substantive priorities is gender and development—which sits alongside human capital; fragility, conflict, and violence; jobs and economic transformation; and climate change as an overarching special theme. But despite IDA’s inclusion of gender equality as a theme beginning in 2016, i...

On the face of it, the case for a general capital increase for the World Bank should be obvious and urgent in our age of the polycrisis. It is a very efficient way to support an increase in development and climate lending by an order of magnitude. A $20 billion paid-in capital increase would support...

The world has never been more educated, our populations more connected. Technological advance in areas from solar and fusion power through batteries to satellites and cancer vaccines will help deliver sustained development. Ending extreme ($2.15 a day) poverty, while long overdue, is on a trajectory...

World Bank reform will involve tackling a set of institutional challenges, from mobilizing more financing to taking on more risk. But it will also need to reckon with the more fundamental trade-offs between providing public goods and addressing poverty.

Another spring and summer season of international meetings follows yet another dire warning on climate, with action again lagging pledges. We need a “spring cleaning” of global ambition to focus on practical goals that can be achieved this year. Each institution—multilateral and national, public and...

Fourth industrial revolution rhetoric aside, many developing countries are still struggling to take full advantage of digital technology. This was one of the final challenges that Benno Ndulu—former governor of the Reserve Bank of Tanzania, visiting scholar at Oxford, and a non-resident fellow at CG...