Cross-regional Development Experiences and Lessons for Sub-Saharan Africa: An Overview

While within-region diversity of country experiences is undoubtedly large, there are certain distinct modes and trends of policies and outcomes followed by countries within a region, for reasons that probably have to do as much with economics and geographical proximity as with a common culture and history. Hence taking stock of regional development experiences in a quickly changing world is a useful exercise at the turn of the century. This article reviews the papers published in this volume on cross-regional and international development experiences with the aim of deriving lessons for Sub-Saharan Africa. Making use of large and newly made available cross-country data sets, the studies gathered here focus on various dimensions of world development: the design and implementation of macroeconomic and structural reforms, the links between macroeconomic and financial policy performance and growth, the evolution of poverty and income distribution along growth paths, and the changing role of the state in economic development.