The study makes an irrefutable six-fold case for realizing the full potential of a most successful way of building: 'informal incremental urban settlement'. It describes procedures, by which millions of...
The objective of this policy paper is to identify and propose high-level legal and regulatory reforms to Colombia's financial system structure that would enhance efficiency and/or mitigate risks. Five...
This paper decomposes changes in inequality, which has in general been increasing in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, both by income source and socio-economic group...
The author studies the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) for manufacturing firms in Bangladesh using data from a recent survey. She obtains TFP measures by making use of firm-specific deflators...
Recent research highlights the relationship between economic development and productive diversification, which may be hindered by market failures. After identifying stages of diversification in disaggregated...
Despite sustained output growth since 1997, low-income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries (CIS-7) have not experienced growth in employment, a phenomenon observed elsewhere in transitional...
The authors analyze whether financial compensation is preferable to the current system of dispute settlement in the World Trade Organization that permits member countries to impose retaliatory tariffs...
Since the early 1990s, substantial resources and efforts have been spent on implementing market-oriented electricity reforms in developing countries. While there are important sectoral, economic, and social...
This paper describes and analyzes the effort to institute river basin management in the Tárcoles basin of Costa Rica. Located in west-central Costa Rica, the Tárcoles basin represents 4.2 percent of the...
Existing empirical studies on the relation between inequality and growth have been criticized for their focus on income inequality and their use of cross-country data sets. Schipper and Hoogeveen use two...
Studies use different conceptual and operational definitions of crises. The different crisis identifications can lead to inconsistent conclusions and policy formulation even if the same analytical framework...
Chilean legislation is quite conservative, especially compared with international practice. However, its application has not been free of criticism, and it proved necessary to seek mechanisms that combine...
The footwear case provides an example of the complexities of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on the use of safeguards, and of the interaction of multilateral and regional processes of liberalization...
This note provides a snapshot as of 2004 of the share of countries with an independent regulatory agency and with at least some private sector financing of its sectoral investment needs for electricity...
This paper uses micro data from the Indonesian Census of Manufacturing to analyze the causal relationship between foreign ownership and plant productivity. To control for the possible endogeneity of the...
Standards and technical regulations exist to protect consumer safety or to achieve other goals, such as ensuring the interoperability of telecommunications systems, for example. Standards and technical...
Around the world, factoring is a growing source of external financing for corporations and small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). What is unique about factoring is that the credit provided by a lender...
This paper reviews the evidence on the importance of finance for economic well-being, provides data on the degree of use of basic financial services by households and firms across a sample of countries...
This paper reviews the most important changes, both in the economy and in the legal and institutional framework, to deal with unfair trade practices that Costa Rica has experienced during its trade liberalization...
The authors describe and analyze an unconventional approach to river basin management in a developing country undergoing rapid economic, political, and institutional change. The founding of the Brantas...