Macroeconomics & Growth

Mamo Mihretu on export-led manufacturing, economic reform and the macroeconomic foundations of a growing economy.

Dani Rodrik discusses the end of the manufacturing escalator – and what comes next.

Nancy Birdsall revisits the World Bank's landmark 1993 East Asian Miracle report, exploring how it navigated the politics of industrial policy, what it revealed about export-led manufacturing growth, and what its lessons mean for development policy today.

A timely assessment of current economic conditions is obtained by extracting common signals from high-frequency official macroeconomic indicators. This approach performs well even in data-scarce settings, serving as a blueprint for economic forecasts...

Rwandan industrial policy, which licensed and supported textile manufacturers to produce high-quality masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, successfully reduced mask prices, increased mask uptake, and slowed the spread of COVID-19. The intervention ave...

Central banks can lose credibility quickly when policy decisions are seen as politically driven. Evidence from Brazil shows that even a single ungrounded policy shift can unanchor inflation expectations and deteriorate inflation dynamics.

New research on China shows that entrepreneurs who start multiple firms are more productive on average – but this conceals a troubling pattern: some succeed not because of skill, but because of preferential access to finance.