World Development

1973 - 2026

Current editor(s): O. T. Coomes

From Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

Access Statistics for this journal.
Is something missing from the series or not right? See the RePEc data check for the archive and series.

Volume 206, issue C, 2026

The environmental smile curve: input-output evidence on the pollution haven hypothesis

Giovanni Dosi, Federico Riccio and Maria Enrica Virgillito

The impact of the Tigray war on child education and labor in Ethiopia

Yemareshet Hailu Demeke and Dainn Wie

The two sides of migration in Central America: aggregate and distributional impacts in Guatemala

Luis Escalante, Emerta Aragie and Manuel A. Hernandez

No need to wait for reporting − Examining learning from results-based management practices in development cooperation

Janet Vähämäki, Annika Hilgert, Kathrin Wolf and Martin Bruder

Long panel studies of small-scale rural societies in the Global South: What is their value, why are they rare, and suggestions to make them happen

Jonathan Bauchet, Ricardo Godoy, William R. Leonard, Victoria Reyes-García, Asher Y. Rosinger, Susan Tanner and Eduardo A. Undurraga

FDI and coal lock-in: The Global South’s development dilemma

Xinya Hao, Lin Zhang and Huanhuan Zheng

Unintended consequences of externally aided projects on fiscal transfers: a subnational study of India

Vadlamannati Krishna Chaitanya and Iacono Roberto

Corporate governance in microfinance institutions: A systematic review of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and empirical evidence

Giovanni Cardillo, Alessandra Cavallo and Giuseppe Torluccio

The mobilization curse? How oil wealth affects the composition of resistance episodes

Thea Johansen and Charles Butcher

Is there a business case for banks to increase lending to women and women-led firms? Cross-country evidence on financial performance

Christoph Sommer

Informal institutions and global trade: Real effects of the elusive

Eiji Fujii

Patrilocal residence and young women’s status: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Deborah S. DeGraff and Kone A.P. Siddhisena

The impact of trade integration on the business cycles synchronization in West African Countries: Implications for the AfCFTA

Ahmed Racine Yago, Samba Diop, Cheikh Tidiane Ndiaye and Simplice A. Asongu

Brazil’s pacifying police units revisited: A failed democratic policing project and lessons for institutional reforms

Julia Maia Goldani and Mariana Mota Prado

Diamonds aren’t forever: manufactured substitutes, irreversible substitution, and the new resource curse

Dwayne Woods

The disconnects between trade policy and the rhetoric of inclusive trade December 2025

Amrita Saha, Mattia Di Ubaldo, Amrita Bahri and L. Alan Winters

Heat after the Harvest: Farmer Choices and Perceptions of Crop Residue Burning in Thailand

Witsanu Attavanich, Adrian A. Lopes, Sailesh Tiwari and Ajalavat Viriyavipart

Not gone with the wind: Long-run impact of herbicidal warfare in Vietnam

Gaku Ito, Duc Tran and Yuichiro Yoshida

Here comes the rain: Precipitation shocks and economic outcomes in Ecuador

Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza, Alejandro Puerta-Cuartas and Andrey Ramos

EU climate aid and trade interests: strategy or byproduct of closer ties?

Alexandra Bögner and Gabriele Spilker

Volume 205, issue C, 2026

Urban community-led total sanitation: opportunities, barriers and lessons from Nanded, India

Lyla Mehta, Ruth Kennedy-Walker, Apeksha Vohra, Tanvi Bhatkal, Pallavi Harshe, Veena Jadhav and Seema Kulkarni

Inequality and social unrest in India

Mathieu Couttenier, Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti and Lore Vandewalle

Trade openness, global value chain integration and firms’ adoption of environment-friendly strategies

Isabel Maria Bodas Freitas, Fulvio Castellacci, Keun Lee and Matthias Staessens

Toward a clean drinking water act for India: A review of drinking water quality standards

Atul Singh, Aditya Shrinivas, Anil Suraj and Gopal Naik

Development and interdisciplinarity: additional insights on the ‘economics silo’

Matthias Aistleitner

Catalysts for third-country market entry: The role of preferential trade agreements

Qiugu He and Xuan Luo

Land tenure conflicts in Ghana and Zimbabwe: An institutional perspective

Abel Gwaindepi and Helen Akolgo-Azupogo

Feeding the accelerator: A metabolic historical analysis of the US food regime

Stefano Menegat

Public support for military conservation: Understanding public opinion to the ‘war on poachers’ in three countries

Lauren Yehle, Aksel Sundström, Patrik Michaelsen and Sverker C. Jagers

Measuring forest-related depth in preferential trade agreements: the forest provisions depth index

Michelle Márcia Viana Martins, Alan Leal and Rodrigo Fagundes Cezar

Volume 204, issue C, 2026

Reinventing reproductive labor: childcare in rural China under collectivization (1956–1961)

Jing Zhai

Digital financial inclusion and transitory consumption: Household-level evidence from India

Abhishek Kumar, Sushanta Mallick and Apra Sinha

Weak by design: How agribusiness organize in congress to trap environmental reforms in Brazil and Chile

Belén Fernández Milmanda

Rebuilding after disaster in Haiti: effects of expecting external, diaspora, and local support

Tracy Kijewski-Correa, William Kakenmaster, Debra Javeline, Alexandros Taflanidis and Karen Richman

The double-edged impact of e-commerce participation on farm’s Income: Evidence from China

Yingjie Zhu, Naixi Liu, Yu Li and Yijun Han

Substitute or complement? Quantity–quality effects of agricultural production diversity and market access on diets

Jiaqi Xuan, Xiaoxi Wang, Changzheng Yuan, Songqing Jin and Xu Tian

Assessing distribution disputes over land expropriation compensation in China’s macro-regions using the conflict analysis model

Xiaolu Ni and Ying Chen

Can dollarization mitigate the macroeconomic cost of populism? Lessons from Latin America

Nicolás Cachanosky, John Gibson and Emilio Ocampo

Increasing responsiveness of civil servants. A field experiment on freedom of information compliance

Carlos Scartascini and Paula Zamora

Exploring synergistic pathways between urbanization, water use efficiency, and renewable energy adoption in enhancing food security in Sub-Saharan Africa: A causal analysis using temporal causal modeling

Dennis Afriyie, Wei Wu, Ayimadu Edwin Twum and Yonas Derebe Derso

Open for business: mapping private sector investment incentives in Sub-Saharan Africa

Steffi Hamann

Rethinking development as structural transformation: a new structural economics perspective

Jiajun Xu

Electoral cycles in female sterilization

Simeon Nichter and Dario Toman

Past stateness, present strength: How (the lack of) state experience shapes today’s fragile states

Andrea Vaccaro and Rachel M. Gisselquist

A trapped green industrial policy? The challenges to lithium and green hydrogen development in Chile

Sebastián Carrasco, Cristian Flores, Antoine Maillet, Daniela Tapia, Valentina Cariaga and Carol Muñoz

Institutional capacities for GVC-oriented policies

Carlo Pietrobelli

Good for business, not so much for the environment? Entry into importing and the energy intensity of Indian plants

Michele Delera, Nanditha Mathew and Tania Treibich

Shocks and reconfiguration in global value chains: A complex network perspective on the global south

Roy Cerqueti, Pierluigi Montalbano, Silvia Nenci and Saverio Storani

Education on the cheap and early child development: Evidence from the free compulsory education reform in rural China

Xinwu Zhang, Xiyuan Jia and Yue Ma

Sibling correlations in schooling around the world: A new database

Ercio Muñoz Saavedra and Gabriela Jaque

Gun violence and the political economy of forced labor investigations in Brazil

Gabriel Cepaluni and Jamil Civitarese

Teetering on the brink of debt and hunger: Empirical examination of the linkages between external debt and food security in Africa

Assem Abu Hatab and Emmanuel Orkoh

Corrigendum to “Unsustainable global freshwater consumption driven by economic growth” [World Dev. 196 (2025)107185]

Vito Frontuto, Tommaso Felici, Silvana Dalmazzone, Benedetta Falsetti, Rosaria Ignaccolo, Francesco Laio and Marco Maria Bagliani

Does crisis lending help China win friends and influence people?

David A. Steinberg, Selim Erdem Aytaç and Daniel McDowell

The Indigenous land titling trap: adaptive practices and the limits of climate governance

Maritza Paredes, Danitza Gil and Anke Kaulard

Who should be served first? Multidimensional prioritization in a Bolivian cash transfer program

Gabriel Rios and Ricardo Nogales

Beyond the tap: the limited value of democracy for delivering universal safe water access in low- and middle-income countries

Evan Lieberman and Naomi Tilles