Global Development Prospects 2005

This report was prepared by the International Finance Team of the Development Prospects Group (DECPG). Substantial support was also provided by staff from other parts of the Development Economics Vice-Presidency, the World Bank operational regions and networks, the International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

The principal author was Jeffrey Lewis, with direction by  Uri Dadush. The report was prepared under the general guidance of World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President Francois Bourguignon. Core team members were:

Jeffrey D. Lewis is Manager of the International Finance team in the Development Prospects Group in the World Bank, which is responsible for monitoring global financial market trends and their implications for developing countries. He previously worked as Economic Adviser in the Trade Department and Prospects Group on issues of global trade policy, regionalism, and country trade and macro policy, and as Lead Economist for South Africa, including analysis of South African growth prospects, the macro impact of HIV/AIDS, trade reform, and SADC regional integration. He has also worked on issues of country risk and creditworthiness in the Bank's Financial Policy and Risk Management Department, and as a country economist on Indonesia, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. Prior to joining the Bank in 1993, he was an Institute Associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) for nine years, including five years as a resident advisor on macro, fiscal, trade, and debt issues in the Indonesian Ministry of Finance. He has consulted in Colombia, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Turkey, Uganda, and Zambia, and has carried out extensive research in areas including economic modeling, exchange rates and trade policy, stabilization and structural adjustment policies in developing economies, and regional trade arrangements. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.

Dilek Aykut is an Economist and FDI specialist. Dilek is conducting research on FDI related issues including trends, determinants, South-South FDI, sectoral analysis etc. and maintaining regular contact with colleagues working on FDI in the Bank and other institutions (IMF, OECD, UNCTAD). Dilek's previous experience includes: Consultant, World Bank Trade Department; Graduate Research Fellow, University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research; Instructor, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Economics.

Andrew Burns  is a Senior Economist with the Development Prospects Group. He is involved with the production, drafting and communication of the Global Economic Outlook, the Bank's twice yearly world forecast published in Global Economic Prospects and Global Development Finances. Before joining the Bank, Mr. Burns worked with the OECD where he was Head of Desk for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and France. His principal responsibilities included supervising and writing the OECD's Economic Survey's for these countries. He also played a lead role in the OECD's Jobs Study, supervising the evaluation of labor market policies in each of the organization's 30 member countries. Mr. Burns holds degrees from the University of Manitoba and McGill University in Canada.

Neil Bush is a research analyst and specialist on official flows to developing countries. He is responsible for the monitoring of trends and prospects of concessional and nonconcessional lending from bilateral governments and multilateral organizations. His previous experience includes an examination of the proposed International Finance Facility, the effects of the War and Terror on aid flows and the changing role of Export Credit Agencies. He is on secondment from the Bank of England.

  Mansoor Dailami is a lead economist and task manager of  the Global Development Finance 2004 report. Mansoor focuses on policy and institutional aspects of development finance, including multilateral regulatory initiatives, private sector innovations, and official approaches to sovereign debt restructuring. trade liberalization and financial infrastructure. Since joining the Bank in 1986, Mr. Dailami has served in team leader capacity in WBI and in the South Asia region, where he also headed the Economic Unit of the Bank's office in India. Before joining the Bank, he worked at the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and New York University.

Douglas Hostland  is a Senior Economist with the Development Prospects Group. He is the International Finance Team's specialist on official flows to developing countries. His responsibilities involve monitoring of trends and prospects of concessional and nonconcessional lending from bilateral governments and multilateral organizations. Before joining the World Bank, Mr. Hostland worked at the Department of Finance in Canada and at the Bank of Canada in a number of positions relating to monetary and fiscal policy and international finance. Mr. Hostaland holds degrees from the University of Alberta and the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Himmat Kalsi  is a Financial Economist who monitors financing activities of emerging markets in international capital markets and analyzes variety of issues associated with syndicated credit, bond financing, equity placement and structured financing, including that for trade and infrastructure. Assesses prospects and risks in global capital markets and their potential effects on emerging market finance. Maintains relations with network of participants in capital markets and undertakes capital market surveillance missions. In addition, he serves as an institutional anchor for resource and information on capital flows, domestic and international financial markets, investor profiles and country creditworthiness.

Eung Ju Kim is a Research Analyst, focusing on monitoring trends in FDI flows and project finance. His duties include monitoring of trends and prospects of FDI flow and infrastructure & project finance, and preparing commercial debt restructuring appendix and capital flow forecasting as a part of GDF exercise. In addition, he provides diversified sets of data and analytics for senior management briefings and ad-hoc requests. He has also prepared several briefing notes on a variety of issues associated with FDI trends, Brady bonds, Infrastructure finance, and international bond markets. Mr. Kim's previous experience includes examining the impact of sovereign credit ratings on capital flows (wrote a section for GDF 2000) and monitoring trends in privatization activities (for GDF2001); work on several cross-support projects, including lending review & the strategy paper ("Demand for World Bank Lending"), the policy note on the International Development Goal for poverty reduction, and strategic directions paper for SRMVP (Middle-income Countries Task Force Report).

Dilip Ratha is a Senior Economist. Dilip writes topical chapters in the GDF, monitors global capital markets, and prepares medium-term forecasts of capital flows to developing countries. His previous experience includes sovereign risk analysis in FINCR, and state enterprise reforms in China in the research department. He has held the position as an Asia Regional Economist with Credit Agricole Indosuez; been an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad; an Economist with The Policy Group in New Delhi; and a Lecturer at the Indian Statistical Institute also in New Delhi.

Hans Timmer  is the Lead Economist and manager of the Global Trends team in the Bank’s Development Prospects Group. Hans supervised the production of chapter 1 "Global Outlook and the Developing Countries" on this year's Global Development Finance. He is responsible for short-term monitoring, medium-term forecasting and policy analysis, and long-term scenario analysis of the global economy. Before joining the Bank in May 2000, he was head of international economic analysis at Central Planning Bureau (CPB) for ten years. In this role, he supervised the development of two world models: a long-term model of the world economy, and an econometric medium-term model of OECD economies. He has had a vast experience working with the European Commission, IPCC and the OECD, as well as with the Indian Planning Commission and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He has participated in international modeling groups like LINK and GTAP. Mr. Timmer studied Econometrics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has been a researcher at the University of Lodz in Poland and at the Netherlands Economic Institute.

Neeltje Van Horen is a Consultant, analyzing the importance of trade credit as a source of finance for firms in emerging markets. Neeltje is examining the evolution and significance of factoring in trade finance. Research in market integration, financial liberalization, contagion, and the role of trade credit in firms' finance. Previously Neeltje worked in the World Bank Research Group.