The average developing country lives off exporting commodities like oil, gas, copper, cocoa or soybeans. The sale of these resources brings both revenue to the government and foreign currency to import what is not produced at home -- which, in these places, tends to be most things. So whatever happens...

Every year, for the past 35 years, the World Bank has published the World Development Indicators, a fine collection of data on developing countries. The just-released 2013 issue of "the WDI" is unusually telling. Deep into the report, there is a table that shows the status and the...

Rich countries have been giving money to poor ones for many decades and for many reasons -- from geopolitics to post-colonial guilt to altruism. Much of that money was meant for development, that is, to build the schools, hospitals and roads that, over time, would make the recipients less poor....

It is an old debate. Back in the '50s and '60s, from Asia to Latin-America, an idea caught fire among development economists: governments should try to create industries. Typically, civil servants would pick industries that could employ lots of people or substitute imports, required huge upfront investments, were considered strategic,...

You are visiting a poor village somewhere in the developing world. No paved roads, no electricity, no running water, no clinic and only a thatch-roofed shack for a school. You soon hear stories of malnutrition, disease and illiteracy -- all symptoms of no or lousy public services. But you know...

Say that your country is blessed with natural resources. Oil, gas, minerals -- it has it all. New technologies are leading to even more discoveries. Your president is on television on an almost daily basis signing new exploration deals -- likely with foreign companies -- or happily announcing new finds....

How would you feel if you were on an airplane and the pilot made the following announcement: "This is your captain speaking. I'm happy to report that all of our engines checked fine, we have just climbed to 36,000 feet, will soon reach our cruising speed, and should get to...

In the average developing country, most people work outside the law -- they have no contract, are not registered, carry no license, pay no tax or make no pension contribution. They get no social benefits or labor protection either. They are "informal."

Think of the small farmer toiling on...

Have you ever wondered why, sometimes, poverty continues to increase in countries that grow super-fast? Take the case of India, a model of economic take-off. The number of Indians living on less than $1.25 a day (yes, $1.25 a day, that's how poor the extremely poor are) went up in...

Think back to the 1990s. The Soviet Union had just disintegrated. The American economy was on a roll. Technology and the Internet were starting to connect people. And democracy was spreading fast, especially among developing countries that never had it before. The headlines were about fresh new presidents and voters...

Africa does not produce all the food it needs. In fact, as more Africans leave their rural villages and move into cities, more maize, rice, wheat and other staples have to be shipped in from outside the continent. The cost is huge -- well above $20 billion per year --...

By some estimates, 350 million people qualify as "indigenous" -- individuals bound together by their ancestry, lands, culture, language and, ultimately, self-identification. Think of Bolivia's Aymara, Canada's Inuit, Congo's Pygmy, India's "Scheduled Tribes," Laos' Hmong, New Zealand's Maori, Niger's Touareg, or the United States' Navajo. Common wisdom has...

Fifteen years ago, Mexico did something that, until then, only rich countries had dared to do -- it began to transfer cash directly to its poor. The payments were conditional: the recipients had to help themselves by keeping their children in school and vaccinating them. Today, some 70 developing countries...

She was born in 1930. The child of poor European immigrants, she married the son of other poor European immigrants. They settled in one of Buenos Aires' many barrios, those aspiring working-class neighborhoods where the children of immigrants used to settle. A life as a housewife would follow: husband, kids,...

Case One. An African country spends four percent of its GDP every year paying for the gasoline consumed by its relatively few rich people. That would be enough money to double the budget for public education or triple the construction of hospitals -- all services mostly used by the poor....

It is accepted wisdom among economists that no country can out-compete China -- it will always be cheaper, faster and tougher than any other. No matter how technologically sophisticated a country's industries are, when their Chinese peers enter the market, they can out-price, out-speed and out-live anyone. If that's the...

Travel around Africa these days and you'll feel a sense of expectation, a sense that prosperity is just around the corner. High prices for -- and new discoveries of -- oil, gas and minerals are turning much of the continent into one giant boom town. Investors are snapping up assets...

Wouldn't you want to know how much money your government gets from the companies that exploit your country's oil, gas or minerals? It doesn't have to be exact, but a ball-park figure? And how about taking a peek at the contracts that your leaders sign on your behalf (remember, you...

You were a civil servant. You had four-week vacations, free health care and job security. You looked forward to retiring at fifty-something. And, like the rest of your countrymen, your family enjoyed services that were heavily subsidized -- from electricity to transport to college, you never paid the real cost...

The scene repeats itself daily. At a remote border crossing between two east African countries, a woman carrying an impossibly-heavy load of eggs on her back is harassed -- or worse -- by custom officials. She arrived on foot, and the eggs are the produce from her meager farm miles...