This paper focuses mainly on official bilateral and multilateral financing for countries that have rescheduled their debts to official bilateral creditors. In contrast to the approaches taken by private lenders, official creditors have continued to provide new financing on a large scale to countries with debt-servicing difficulties that implement adjustment and reform programs. Financial support bas been provided through a wide variety of instruments and channels. For the low-income rescheduling countries as a group, total financial assistance has been about as large as these countries' own export earnings in every year since 1986. The recent trends in official financing have important ramifications for developing countries. Access to external financing from official sources is likely to remain high for those countries whose adjustment and reform efforts provide assurances that resources will be used efficiently. Conversely, countries with uneven records of policy implementation (particularly as regards payments arrears) are likely to find difficulty in attracting financial support.

World Development Report 1994 examines the link between infrastructure and development and explores ways in which developing countries can improve both the provision and the quality of infrastructure services. In recent decades, developing countries have made substantial investments in infrastructure, achieving dramatic gains for households and producers by expanding their access to services such as safe water, sanitation, electric power, telecommunications, and transport. Even more infrastructure investment and expansion are needed in order to extend the reach of services - especially to people living in rural areas and to the poor. But as this report shows, the quantity of investment cannot be the exclusive focus of policy. Improving the quality of infrastructure service also is vital. Both quantity and quality improvements are essential to modernize and diversify production, help countries compete internationally, and accommodate rapid urbanization. The report identifies the basic cause of poor past performance as inadequate institutional incentives for improving the provision of infrastructure. To promote more efficient and responsive service delivery, incentives need to be changed through commercial management, competition, and user involvement. Several trends are helping to improve the performance of infrastructure. First, innovation in technology and in the regulatory management of markets makes more diversity possible in the supply of services. Second, an evaluation of the role of government is leading to a shift from direct government provision of services to increasing private sector provision and recent experience in many countries with public-private partnerships is highlighting new ways to increase efficiency and expand services. Third, increased concern about social and environmental sustainability has heightened public interest in infrastructure design and performance.

Global growth is in low gear, and the drivers of activity are changing. These dynamics raise new policy challenges. Advanced economies are growing again but must continue financial sector repair, pursue fiscal consolidation, and spur job growth. Emerging market economies face the dual challenges of slowing growth and tighter global financial conditions. This issue of the World Economic Outlook examines the potential spillovers from these transitions and the appropriate policy responses. Chapter 3 explores how output comovements are influenced by policy and financial shocks, growth surprises, and other linkages. Chapter 4 assesses why certain emerging market economies were able to avoid the classical boom-and-bust cycle in the face of volatile capital flows during the global financial crisis.

This pamphlet is adapted from Chapter 1 of Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979-89, by the same author. That book is full of history of the evolution of the Fund during 11 years in which the institution truly came of age as a participant in the international financial system.

The September 2011 edition of the World Economic Outlook assesses the prospects for the global economy, which is now in a dangerous new phase. Global activity has weakened and become more uneven, confidence has fallen sharply recently, and downside risks are growing. Against a backdrop of unresolved structural fragilities, a barrage of shocks hit the international economy this year, including the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami, unrest in some oil-producing countries, and the major financial turbulence in the euro area. Two of the forces now shaping the global economy are high and rising commodity prices and the need for many economies to address large budget deficits. Chapter 3 examines the inflationary effects of commodity price movements and the appropriate monetary policy response. Chapter 4 explores the implications of efforts by advanced economies to restore fiscal sustainability and by emerging and developing economies to tighten fiscal policy to rebuild fiscal policy room and in some cases to restrain overheating pressures.

“The crisis has deeply impacted virtually every economy in the world, and although growth has returned, much progress in the fight against poverty has been lost. More difficult international conditions in the years to come will mean that developing countries will have to place even more emphasis on improving domestic economic conditions to achieve the kind of growth that can durably eradicate poverty.� —Justin Yifu Lin, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President The World Bank 'Global Economic Prospects 2010: Crisis, Finance, and Growth' explores both the short- and medium-term impacts of the financial crisis on developing countries. Although global growth has resumed, the recovery is fragile, and unless business and consumer demand strengthen, the world economy could slow down again. Even if, as appears likely, a double-dip recession is avoided, the recovery is expected to be slow. High unemployment and widespread restructuring will continue to characterize the global economy for the next several years. Already, the crisis has provoked large-scale human suffering. Some 64 million more people around the world are expected to be living on less than a $1.25 per day by the end of 2010, and between 30,000 and 50,000 more infants may have died of malnutrition in 2009 in Sub-Saharan Africa, than would have been the case if the crisis had not occurred. Over the medium term, economic growth is expected to recover. But increased risk aversion, a necessary and desirable tightening of financial regulations in high-income countries, and measures to reduce the exposure of developing economies to external shocks are likely to make finance scarcer and more costly than it was during the boom period. As a result, just as the ample liquidity of the early 2000s prompted an investment boom and an acceleration in developing-country potential output, higher costs will likely yield a slowing in developing-country potential growth rates of between 0.2 and 0.7 percentage points, and as much as an 8 percent decline in potential output over the medium term. In the longer term, however, developing countries can more than offset the implications of more expensive international finance by reducing the cost of capital channeled through their domestic financial markets. For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org/gep2010. To access Prospects for the Global Economy, an online companion publication, please visit www.worldbank.org/globaloutlook.

This edition of the World Economic Outlook explores how a dramatic escalation of the financial crisis in September 2008 provoked an unprecedented contraction of activity and trade, despite active policy responses. It presents economic projections for 2009 and 2010, and also looks beyond the current crisis, considering factors that will shape the landscape of the global economy over the medium term, as businesses and households seek to repair the damage. The analysis also outlines the difficult policy challenges presented by the overwhelming imperative to take all steps necessary to restore financial stability and revive the global economy, and the longer-run need for national actions to be mutually supporting. The first of two analytical chapters, "What Kind of Economic Recovery?" explores the shape of the eventual recovery. The second, "The Transmission of Financial Stress from Advanced to Emerging and Developing Economies," focuses on the role of external financial linkages and financial stress in transmitting economic shocks.

Major macroeconomic realignments are affecting prospects differentially across the world’s countries and regions. The April 2016 WEO examines the causes and implications of these realignments—including the slowdown and rebalancing in China, a further decline in commodity prices, a related slowdown in investment and trade, and declining capital flows to emerging market and developing economies—which are generating substantial uncertainty and affecting the outlook for the global economy. Additionally, analytical chapters examine the slowdown in capital flows to emerging market economies since their 2010 peak—its main characteristics, how it compares with past slowdowns, the factors that are driving it, and whether exchange rate flexibility has changed the dynamics of the capital inflow cycle—and assess whether product and labor market reforms can improve the economic outlook in advanced economies, looking at the recent evolution and scope for further reform, the channels through which reforms affect economic activity under strong versus weak economic conditions, reforms’ short- to medium-term macroeconomic effects, and sequencing of reforms and coordination with other policies to maximize their potential quantitative economic benefits. A special feature analyzes in depth the energy transition in an era of low fossil fuel prices.

This chapter discusses various past and future aspects of the global economy. There has been a huge transformation of the global economy in the last several years. Articles on the future of energy in the global economy by Jeffrey Ball and on measuring inequality by Jonathan Ostry and Andrew Berg are also illustrated. Since the 2008 global crisis, global economists must change the way they look at the world.