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World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim to Visit Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan
World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, will visit Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Jordan from June 1-4, to focus on the challenges and opportunities facing the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and underscore the Bank’s commitment and support. This
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Paul Krugman: A Plea for a Return to Basics in Finance
Author of no less than twenty books, over 200 scholarly essays in peer-reviewed academic journals and more than 750 articles as a columnist, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is not one to hide his mostly liberal opinions. As an economist, Mr
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Nicholas Brady: Soccer Finance and the Pragmatist Who Fixed a Debt Crisis
Back in the days when a top-scoring soccer player could be enticed for a few million, Brazilian attacker Romario set a record when PSV put down all of six million dollars to have him play for the club in Eindhoven,
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The World Bank: Local Currency Bonds Catch On as Countries Aim to Catch Up
Two years ago, the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation tried something that had never been done in the Dominican Republic. In a bid to increase access to finance to entrepreneurs and home-buyers, the Bank Group’s private sector arm became
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Restoring Public Confidence: Industrialising Delivery of Pension and Retirement Solutions
Over the past century, governments, as well as public and private sector pension and retirement providers, focused on expanding existing and introducing new systems with a core focus on payment of benefits. Strong investment performance limited the perceived need to
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Jacques Delors: Despite Design Flaws Euro Success Assured
Hindsight may offer some comfort and solace from contemporary reality. It is thus that Jacques Delors – aka Mr Euro – concludes that Europe’s much-maligned common currency suffers from a few design flaws. Those imperfections may even have doomed the
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MIGA (World Bank) – A New Boon for Emerging-Market Financing: Achieving Investment-Grade Bonds with MIGA’s Credit Enhancement
Many investors, lenders, and government officials are familiar with the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World Bank Group. For 25 years, the agency has insured investments in developing countries against political risk. This insurance facilitates productive foreign direct
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Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market: Foreign Investors Told “Not Just Yet”
The regulator of the Saudi Arabia stock market – by far the largest of the Gulf Region – isn’t making any promises to foreign investors yet. Former World Bank executive director Mohammed al-Sheikh, now chairman of the Capital Market Authority
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Otaviano Canuto, World Bank Group: Macroeconomics and Stagnation – Keynesian-Schumpeterian Wars
Policy makers in the advanced economies at the core of the global financial crisis can make the claim that they prevented a new “Great Depression”. However, recovery since the outbreak of the crisis more than five years ago has been
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Robert Shiller: Making Sense of the Irrationality of Markets
The question of what motivates a trader to buy or sell shares at any particular moment is probably as old as the stock market itself. Given that trading securities often is a pursuit largely devoid of rational behaviour – though
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