The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative, a major innovation in development finance, was designed to relieve the high external debt of some of the world's poorest nations. The Initiative was put in place by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996 and enhanced in 1999. The HIPC Debt Initiative addresses a key obstacle to economic growth and poverty reduction, but it also contains multiple and overly-ambitious objectives. 'Debt Relief for the Poorest' is an independent evaluation which assesses the progress and prospects of the HIPC Debt Initiative achieving its objectives. This review makes recommendations which address the strategic issues confronting the Initiative.

Debt Relief for the Poorest: An OED Review of the HIPC Initiative (Independent Evaluation Group Studies)

Business & Money

Gautam, Madhur

Economics

World Bank Publications

Rising agricultural productivity has driven improvements in living standards for millennia. Today, redoubling that effort in developing countries is critical to reducing extreme poverty, ensuring food security for an increasing global population, and adapting to changes in climate. This volume presents fresh analysis on global trends and sources of productivity growth in agriculture and offers new perspectives on the drivers of that growth. It argues that gains from the reallocation of land and labor are not as promising as believed, so policy needs to focus more on the generation and dissemination of new technologies, which requires stepping up national research efforts. Yet, in many of the poorest nations, a serious research spending gap has emerged precisely at the time when the challenges faced by agriculture are intensifying. The book focuses on how this problem can be redressed in the public sector, as well as on reforms aimed at mobilizing new private sector actors and value chains, particularly creating a better enabling environment, reforming trade regulations, introducing new products, and strengthening intellectual property rights. On the demand side, the book examines what recent research reveals about policies to reduce the barriers impeding smallholder farmers from adopting new technologies. Harvesting Prosperity is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.

Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture

Goyal, Aparajita

Maloney, William F.

Fuglie, Keith

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Books by Gautam, Madhur