The benefits of financial development and globalization have come with continuing fragility in financial sectors. Periodic crises have had real but heterogeneous welfare impacts and not just for poor people; indeed, some of the conditions that foster deep and persistent poverty, such as lack of connectivity to markets, have provided a degree of protection for the poor. Past crises have also had longer-term impacts for some of those affected, most notably through the nutrition and schooling of children in poor families. As in other areas of policy, effective responses to a crisis require sound data and must take account of incentives and behavior. An important lesson from past experience is that the short-term responses to a crisis-macroeconomic stabilization, trade policies, financial sector policies and social protection-cannot ignore longer-term implications for both economic development and vulnerability to future crises.
View the official document from the Development Research Group:
Lessons from World Bank research on financial crises