The dominant hypothesis in the
literature that studies conflict is that poverty is the main
cause of civil wars. The authors instead analyze the effect
of institutions on civil war, controlling for income per
capita. In their set up, institutions are endogenous and
colonial origins affect civil wars through their legacy on
institutions. Their results indicate that institutions,
proxied by the protection of property rights, rule of law

The environment and security literature
has argued that freshwater scarcity often leads to
inter-state conflict, and possibly acute violence. The
contention, however, ignores the long history of
hydro-political cooperation exemplified by hundreds of
documented agreements. Building on a theory that considers
the relationship between scarcity and hydro-political
cooperation, this paper empirically investigates why

This paper uses a growth diagnostics
approach à la Hausmann, Rodrik, and Velasco (HRV) to
identify the most 'binding' constraints to private
sector growth in Mongolia - a small, low-income,
mineral-rich, transition economy. The approach of applying
the HRV methodology is useful in those cases where a lack of
data prevents us from estimating shadow prices to identify
the most 'binding' constraint to growth. We find

Yemen is the second poorest country in
the Middle East and North Africa region, with 42 percent of
its population counted as poor in 1998. GDP has stagnated at
around US$530 per capita in real terms since 2002.
Unemployment, estimated at 11.5 percent in 1999, is expected
to have worsened as the population has climbed at 3 percent
a year and the labor force has burgeoned. Extreme gender
inequalities persist. Malnutrition is so severe that Yemeni

In 2006 most of the people of Uganda,
with the notable exception of those in the conflict-blighted
Northern Region, enjoy a better quality of life and brighter
opportunities in a stable and growing economy. Uganda's
economy has bounced back beyond what could be regarded as
recovery, with real incomes per person now exceeding the
levels reached at Independence in 1962. The report structure
is as follows: volume one synthesizes the conclusions from

The basic framework for the background study on building export competitiveness in Laos is based on the National Growth and Poverty Eradication Strategy (NGPES), which appropriately stresses the need to: (i) improve the business climate by creating a predictable and transparent policy environment; (ii) streamline administrative procedures and regulations that are an obstacle to domestic and foreign private investment; and (iii) strengthen market institutions, including most notably those related to dispute resolution and contract enforcement.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Montenegro's economic reform program reached momentum in the early 2000s. Its reform program rested on two broad pillars: macroeconomic stabilization, and market-oriented structural reforms. However, the macroeconomic and structural reforms have yielded modest economic recovery and transition, holding a current account deficit, which although still high, is improving; yet its principal human welfare indicators such as poverty, life expectancy, and adult literacy remained moderate and stable. But significant challenges remain.

The authors compare the welfare effects of in situ slum upgrading programs with programs that provide slum dwellers with better housing in a new location. Evaluating the welfare effects of slum upgrading and resettlement programs requires estimating models of residential location choice, in which households trade off commuting costs against the cost and attributes of the housing they consume, including neighborhood attributes. The authors accomplish this using data for 5,000 households in Mumbai, a city in which 40 percent of the population live in slums.

Although sharecropping has long
fascinated economists, the determinants of this contractual
form are still poorly understood and the debate over the
extent of moral hazard is far from settled. The authors
address both issues by emphasizing the role of landlord
supervision. When tenant effort is observable, but at a cost
to the landlord, otherwise identical share-tenants can
receive different levels of supervision and have different

Drawing on an integrated mixed methods
research design, the authors explore the dynamics of the
development-conflict nexus in rural Indonesia, and the
specific role of development projects in shaping the nature,
extent, and trajectories of "everyday" conflicts.
They find that projects that give inadequate attention to
dispute resolution mechanisms in many cases stimulate local
conflict, either through the injection of development

This paper has been prepared in
accordance with the terms of reference for a study on power
system planning in India: incorporating externality costs
and benefits. It reviews estimates of the external costs of
power in international studies as well as in India and
compares the figures available. It also comments on the
validity of the external cost estimates available and the
use made of them in power system planning and regulation

Through an analysis of selected topics,
this study aims to offer inputs for a successful recovery
strategy for the city and the metropolitan region of Sao
Paulo (MSRP) in Brazil. The study first presents an analysis
of the underlying factors of the economic transition in the
MRSP, highlighting the factors behind the recent performance
of the MRSP in terms of job creation and growth. Then, four
inputs that would lead to a 'recovery strategy'