The question of money, how to provide it, and how to acquire it where needed is axiomatic to development. The realities of global poverty and the inequalities between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ are clear and well documented, and the gaps between world’s richest and the world’s poorest are ever-increasing. But, even though funding development is assumed to be key, the relationship between finance and development is contested and complex. This book explores the variety of relationships between finance and development, offering a broad and critical understanding of these connections and perspectives. It breaks finance down into its various aspects, with separate chapters on aid, debt, equity, microfinance and remittances. Throughout the text, finance is presented as a double-edged sword: while it is a vital tool towards poverty reduction, helping to fund development, more critical approaches remind us of the ways in which finance can hinder development. It contains a range of case studies throughout to illustrate finance in practice, including, UK aid to India, debt in Zambia, Apple’s investment in China, microfinance in Mexico, government bond issues in Chile, and financial crisis in East Asia. The text develops and explores a number of themes throughout, such as the relationship between public and private sources of finance and debates about direct funding versus the allocation of credit through commercial financial markets. The book also explores finance and development interactions at various levels, from the global structure of finance through to local and everyday practices. Global Finance and Development offers a critical understanding of the nature of finance and development. This book encourages the reader to see financial processes as embedded within the broader structure of social relationships. Finance is defined and demonstrated to be money and credit, but also, crucially, the social relationships and institutions that enable the creation and distribution of credit and the consequences thereof. This valuable text is essential reading for all those concerned with poverty, inequality and development.

The author develops a theory which deals with public finance at the international level. He describes his view of the elements of an international public finance system i.e. international taxation, the regulation of the global commons and their generation of revenues for international use, and monetary and other measures, including the use of the special drawing rights and gold holdings of the International Monetary Fund.

This book explores the evolution of the 30 functioning multilateral development banks (MDBs). MDBs have their roots in the growing system of international finance and multilateral cooperation, with the first recognisable MDB being proposed by Latin America in financial cooperation with the US in the late 1930s. That Inter-American Bank did not eventuate but was a precursor to the World Bank being negotiated at Bretton Woods in 1944. Since then, a complex network of regional, sub-regional, and specialised development banks has progressively emerged across the globe, including two significant recent entrants established by China and the BRICS. MDBs arrange loans, credits, and guarantees for investment in member states, generally with the stated aim of fostering economic growth. They operate in both the Global North and South, though there are more MDBs focusing on emerging and developing states. While the World Bank and some of the larger regional banks have been scrutinised, little attention has been paid to the smaller banks or the overall system. This book provides the first study of all 30 MDBs and it evaluates their interrelationships. It analyses the emergence of the MDBs in relation to geopolitics, development paradigms and debt. It includes sections on each of the banks as well as on how MDBs have approached the key sectors of infrastructure, human development, and climate. This book will be of particular interest to researchers of development finance, global governance, and international political economy.

Developing countries need additional, cross-border capital channeled into their private sectors to generate employment and growth, reduce poverty, and meet the other Millennium Development Goals. Innovative financing mechanisms are necessary to make this happen. 'Innovative Financing for Development' is the first book on this subject that uses a market-based approach. It compiles pioneering methods of raising development finance including securitization of future flow receivables, diaspora bonds, and GDP-indexed bonds. It also highlights the role of shadow sovereign ratings in facilitating access to international capital markets. It argues that poor countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, can potentially raise tens of billions of dollars annually through these instruments. The chapters in the book focus on the structures of the various innovative financing mechanisms, their track records and potential for tapping international capital markets, the constraints limiting their use, and policy measures that governments and international institutions can implement to alleviate these constraints.

The Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated the tension between large development needs in infrastructure and scarce public resources. To alleviate this tension and promote a strong and job-rich recovery from the crisis, Africa needs to mobilize more financing from and to the private sector.

Improved understanding of the key role of financial aspects in the growth and development of economic systems is an important aspect of economic analysis. This first textbook on development finance provides a comprehensive coverage of this new area of economics. The book integrates relevant theoretical approaches and their policy applications. A unique perspective combines transaction cost economics and neoclassical economics. The author also treats important policy issues of national and international relevance.

Senegal, like all African countries, needs better and more jobs for its growing population. The main message of Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth is that broader use of productivity-enhancing technologies by households and enterprises can generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. Adoption of better technologies can support both Senegal’s short-term objective of economic recovery and its vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. But this is not automatic. This book leverages a novel survey instrument that measures adoption of technologies at the firm level. Results from this survey show that there is a large average technological gap in Senegal relative to firms in Brazil, in the range of 36 and 30 percent for extensive (whether firms use it at all) and intensive (the most frequently applied) uses of better technologies such as for business administration. Except for a small number of firms, enterprises still mostly use manual, analog technologies to perform general and sector specific business functions. Micro-size informal enterprises lag even further. The benefits from technology adoption are significant. Digital technologies are an enabler of economy-wide productivity and jobs growth by catalyzing adoption of complementary technologies, including many not accessible without digital infrastructure. For households, mobile internet coverage is associated with 14 percent higher total consumption, as well as a 10 percent lower extreme poverty rate—and jobs with higher earnings. Firms with better technologies have higher levels of productivity, generate more jobs, and increase the share of lower-skilled workers on their payroll, on average: an increase in technological sophistication across general business functions that the firm uses most intensively, such as using standard software rather than writing by hand for business administration, is associated with a 14 percent higher jobs growth rate. For these and other inclusive growth benefits to be realized, Senegal should focus on ensuring availability of affordable digital infrastructure and implementing targeted incentives to promote use by firms of better technologies as well as policies to narrow deepening digital divides across enterprises and households.