Avoiding a Pacific Lost Decade: Financing the Pacific's COVID-19 Recovery
The Pacific's post-pandemic economic revival will rely on an internationalmulti-year recovery package of grants and loans led by Australia
Thursday 21 Jan 2021 | 21:46 | SYDNEY
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Jim Wolfensohn’s knowledge bank
Jim Wolfensohn, an Australian-turned-American who became president of the World Bank in 1995, was a mercurial character. His struggle to tackle the challenges of global development, relying on the weak reed of the World Bank, is a classic story of the heroic individual challenging global forces.&
Covid-19 and development banks in Asia
The Covid-19 pandemic means that more low- and middle-income economies are more reliant on multilateral development banks. Despite the media focus on “mask diplomacy” (or the lack of it) from individual countries, most notably China, development bank lending has been the largest external source
By Malcolm Cook
The new development banks: Paradigm shift or poor imitation?
2014 marked the 70th anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference, and it was a turning point for the global financial architecture. In July that year, the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – established the New Development Bank (NDB). A few months earlier, China
The future role of international financial institutions
The role of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and other international financial institutions (IFIs) is back in the policy spotlight.
The latest attention comes via the G20 Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Global Financial Governance, formed by G20 Finance Ministers at their meeting
The Asian Development Bank's unfinished business
In his recent Interpreter post, Richard Moore provides a handy summary of the work of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) over the past 50 years. He also poses questions about the future of the Bank. Moore is a former ADB Board member, so he is thoroughly familiar with debates about the Bank's role in
The Asian Development Bank at 50: A spent force?
In May, the Asian Development Bank celebrated its 50th anniversary with a big bash in Yokohama. Senior ADB figures repeatedly pointed to the record crowd of more than 6000 attendees as evidence of the meeting's success and the ADB's enduring relevance. Not all of the 6000 were convinced.
If there
Is the AIIB still ‘lean, clean and green’?
It is just over two years since the United Kingdom announced (to the surprise of everyone involved, most notably the United States, but also China) that it would join the new, China-led multilateral development bank known as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This triggered an
By Sam Geall
The future of the AIIB is bigger than Australian coal
The Australian has run a story, 'Power row engulfs Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank', about tensions between the Australian government and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) over the focus on renewable energy in the latter's proposed energy strategy. Most of the article
By Hannah Wurf
The G20 and the Future of International Economic Governance
The G20 has become a key international forum since it was set up in 1999. When Australia began its presidency of the 2014 summit in Brisbane, many commentators suggested that Australia’s chairing of the G20 would reinvigorate it. This timely book looks at what that meeting achieved and what has
US global economic leadership: Responding to a rising China
In this Analysis, Lowy Institute Research Fellow Tristram Sainsbury examines the evolving global economic leadership roles of the United States and China