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Growth Trends in the Developing World : Country Forecasts and DeterminantsThe authors present real per capita GDP growth forecasts for all developing countries for the period 2005-14. For 55 of these countries, representing major world regions and accounting for close to 80 percent of the developing world's GDP, they forecast the growth effects of the main forces underpinning growth, assuming that these evolve following past trends. The authors find that for the average developing country the largest growth dividend comes from continued improvement in public infrastructure, followed by the growth contributions of rising secondary school enrollment, trade openness, and financial deepening. The joint contribution of these four growth determinants to average, annual per capita GDP growth in the next decade is estimated to be 1 percentage point. Failure to keep improving public infrastructure alone could reduce this growth dividend by 50 percent. The forecasted growth contributions differ by country qualitatively and quantitatively.
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Development Economics and the
 International Development AssociationPrevailing economic ideas -- and
 fashions -- about development have influenced the
 International Development Association (IDA) since its
 creation in 1960. The creation of the organization itself is
 the result of two contemporaneous facts: an urgent need to
 channel development finance to least-developed countries and
 an increasing pressure on World Bank management to directly
 address the issue of poverty in developing countries.
 Changing views, over time, have been a rationale -- and, at
 times, a justification -- for emphasizing poverty and social
 sectors; for providing grants to particular groups of
 countries; and for strategic choices and sectoral
 priorities. IDA has been influential in development debates
 and been an advocate for specific views about development
 policy. This paper gives an overview of these views and
 documents how they have shaped the activities of the
 organization since its creation. After a brief review of
 development thinking and of the organization of research at
 the World Bank, the paper documents the shifts that have
 taken place in country allocations and in sector emphasis in
 IDA over the past 50 years and highlights the strategic
 themes that have guided its development agenda: toward
 increasing country selectivity; from projects to programs;
 from conditionality to country ownership of reforms; and
 from input-based to results-based performance.
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The Growth Report and New Structural EconomicsDespite its heavy human, financial, and
 economic cost, the recent global recession provides a unique
 opportunity to reflect on the knowledge from several decades
 of growth research, draw policy lessons from the experience
 of successful countries, and explore new approaches going
 forward. In an increasingly globalized world where fighting
 poverty is not only a moral responsibility but also a
 strategy for confronting some of the major problems
 (diseases, malnutrition, insecurity and violence) that
 ignore boundaries and contribute to global insecurity,
 thinking about new ways of generating and sustaining growth
 is a crucial task for economists. This paper reassesses the
 evolution of knowledge on growth and suggests a new
 structural approach to the analysis. It offers a brief,
 critical review of lessons learned from growth research and
 examines the remaining challenges -- especially from the
 policy standpoint. It highlights how the 2008 Growth
 Commission Report identifies the stylized facts associated
 with sustained and inclusive growth. And it explains how the
 new structural economics provides a consistent framework for
 understanding the key findings of the Report.