Read all posts for ‘world bank’

Since the end of the 1970s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have advised developing countries to adopt pro-growth policies, supposed to be a vector for jobs and well-being. But in many cases, these reforms have led to growth without jobs. The English economist John Williamson named […]

The educational system in Africa used to be the envy of the western world, but what has changed? Why is education so expensive these days when it should be free? At one stage I read about the University of Sierra Leone (Fourah Bay College) not being able to provide the […]

Peter, his wife and their two small children are a middle class family who own a two-bedroom apartment in a central location in Varna, Bulgaria’s third largest city. They have two cars and go on vacation twice a year. Peter has a degree in economics and used to work for […]

The World Bank defines governance as “the exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society’s problems and affairs.” As we move forward in the second decade of the 21st century, the question of good governance is particularly important. Defining good governance (a nebulous term) as […]

Strawberry nouveaux riches We’ve invented a new word and a social category for them. We call them “capsunari” – which roughly translates as “strawberry-picker,” a term which doesn’t, however, convey the tone of scorn and disdain we usually put into it.  About three million Romanians (13 percent of the country’s […]