The Changing Landscape of International Development: An Introduction

Pascaline Dupas, Pinelopi Goldberg and Rohini Pande

No 34943, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Since the late 1980s, extreme poverty has declined sharply, life expectancy and schooling have increased, and electoral democracy has expanded. However poverty reduction has slowed in recent years, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, amid intensifying conflict, fragility, climate risks, democratic backsliding, and the erosion of global trends—including trade integration and geopolitical stability—that once supported growth. These dynamics raise three interrelated questions: what barriers impede further progress; where will future growth in lower-income countries come from; and how can growth be broadly shared. Taking stock of 15 chapters forthcoming in Volume 6 of the Handbook of Development Economics, we discuss how external conditions, state capacity and policy choices shape development; analyze the shifting growth drivers, including trade, technology and the rise of services; discuss persistent inequality and distributional tensions; and conjecture that investing in institutions and people pays off.

JEL-codes: O1 O4 P0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
Note: DEV
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34943.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Changing Landscape of International Development: An Introduction (2026)
Working Paper: The Changing Landscape of International Development: An Introduction (2026)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34943

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34943
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().