This is the first biography of a world-famous pioneering development economist, Sir Hans W. Singer, who is better known throughout the developing world than any other economist, living or dead. It gives a detailed account of the way in which the 'twists of fate' led him to becoming a leading development economist. It contains a thematic synthesis of all his major theoretical and conceptual work and of the many initiatives in which he has been involved to solve the problems of developing countries.

This report was prepared by a team led by Roberto Zagha, under the general direction of Gobind Nankani.

In the last thirty years, the developing world has undergone tremendous changes. Overall, poverty has fallen, people live longer and healthier lives, and economies have been transformed. And yet many countries have simply missed the boat. Why have some countries prospered, while others have failed? Stefan Dercon argues that the answer lies not in a specific set of policies, but rather in a key development bargain, whereby a country's elites shift from protecting their own positions to gambling on a growth-based future. Despite the imperfections of such bargains, China is among the most striking recent success stories, along with Indonesia and more unlikely places, such as Bangladesh, Ghana and Ethiopia. Gambling on Development is about these winning efforts, in contrast to countries stuck in elite bargains leading nowhere. Building on three decades' experience across forty-odd countries, Dercon winds his narrative through Ebola in Sierra Leone, scandals in Malawi, beer factories in the DRC, mobile phone licences in Mozambique, and relief programs behind enemy lines in South Sudan. Weaving together conversations with prime ministers, civil servants and ordinary people, this is a probing look at how development has been achieved across the world, and how to assist such successes.

The Research Department of the IDB (RES) performs innovative, comparative research on the development issues of greatest concern to the region today. It generates a wide variety of products based on this research and disseminates them to three principal audiences: the Bank, policymakers and the academic community. To commemorate its first decade of research, RES compiled a selection of the department's ten most influential papers, published through the Latin American Development Forum, a joint publications venture among the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the IDB, Stanford University Press and the World Bank.

This book presents evidence that public debts in the advanced economies have surged in recent years to levels not recorded since the end of World War II, surpassing the heights reached during the First World War and the Great Depression. At the same time, private debt levels, particularly those of financial institutions and households, are in uncharted territory and are (in varying degrees) a contingent liability of the public sector in many countries. Historically, high leverage episodes have been associated with slower economic growth and a higher incidence of default or, more generally, restructuring of public and private debts. A more subtle form of debt restructuring in the guise of "financial repression" (which had its heyday during the tightly regulated Bretton Woods system) also importantly facilitated sharper and more rapid debt reduction than would have otherwise been the case from the late 1940s to the 1970s. It is conjectured here that the pressing needs of governments to reduce debt rollover risks and curb rising interest expenditures in light of the substantial debt overhang (combined with the widespread "official aversion" to explicit restructuring) are leading to a revival of financial repression-including more directed lending to government by captive domestic audiences (such as pension funds), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, and tighter regulation on cross-border capital movements.

The report provides an overview of development finance with biodiversity-related objectives from a wide range of sources: bilateral Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members, non-DAC and South-South and triangular co-operation providers, multilateral institutions, private finance mobilised by development finance, and private philanthropy. The estimates are based on OECD statistical data.

Over the past ten years economic growth in Asia has contributed to a reduction of poverty as well as fertility rates, and greater prosperity has contributed to gains in life expectancy.

Human security has been advanced as an alternative to traditional state-based conceptualizations of security, yet controversies about the use and abuse of the concept remain. Investigating innovations in the advancement of the human security agenda over the past decade, this book identifies themes and processes around which consensus for future policy action might be built. It considers the ongoing debates regarding the human security agenda, explores prospects and projects for the advancement of human security, addresses issues of human security as emerging forms of new multilateralisms and examines claims that human security is being undermined by US unilateralisms. This comprehensive volume explores the theoretical debate surrounding human security and details the implications for practical application. It will prove ideal for students of international relations, security studies and development studies.