The objective of the Botswana Investment
Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment
climate in Botswana in all its operational dimensions and
promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The
investment climate is made up of the many location specific
factors that shape the opportunities and incentives for
firms to invest productively, create jobs, and expand. These
factors include macroeconomic and regulatory policies; the

This report combines a study undertaken in two phases of the Benin financial sector. Phase 1 of the study, conducted in 2003, provided a diagnostic of the financial system and focused on the state and performance of commercial banks, microfinance institutions, insurance companies and the pension fund system. Phase 2 of the study, conducted in the first half of 2004, focused on analyzing the access to finance issue identified during the diagnostic study. The lack of access to financial services by the majority of the population in Benin was the main issue revealed by the study.

Throughout the 20th century, the debate on women's rights and their role in Afghan society has been closely interlinked with the national destiny. Women not only carry the burden of symbolizing the honor of the family, but often are seen as embodying the national honor as well. Gender has thus been one of the most politicized issues in Afghanistan over the past 100 years, and attempts at reform have been denounced by opponents as un-Islamic and a challenge to the sanctity of the faith and family.

Just as equality of opportunity becomes an increasingly prominent concept in normative economics, the authors argue that it is also a relevant concept for positive models of the links between distribution and aggregate efficiency. Persuasive microeconomic evidence suggests that inequalities in wealth, power, and status have efficiency costs. These variables capture different aspects of people's opportunity sets, for which observed income may be a poor proxy.

The purpose of this study is to update
the review of World Bank experience in Irrigation (IEG 1994)
and to broaden the scope of evaluation to include all water
lending for agricultural development. Since that first
study, the proportion of World Bank lending for agricultural
water management continued to decline, a trend that started
in the late 1970s when the sub-sector received 11 percent of
the lending, is falling to less than 2 percent in 2001-03.

The authors examine the impact of growth
of key policy and institutional reforms: macroeconomic
stabilization, trade liberalization, deregulation of
finance, privatization, deregulation of utilities,
modernization of the public sector with a view to increasing
its effectiveness and accountability, and the spread of
democracy and decentralization. They draw lessons both from
a policy and institutional perspective and from the

This volume analyzes the economic
challenges confronting Turkey in its quest to accede to the
European Union (EU). It focuses on the extent to which
Turkey is ready to join the Single Market, comply with the
EU's body of economic regulations and directives, the
Acquis Communautaire, and meet the Maastricht criteria for
fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies. This book
also provides an assessment of Turkey's national

The book presents estimates of total
wealth for nearly 120 countries, using economic theory to
decompose the wealth of a nation into its component pieces:
produced capital, natural resources and human resources. The
wealth estimates aims to provide a unique opportunity to
look at economic management from a broader and comprehensive
perspective. The book's basic tenet is that economic
development can be conceived as a process of portfolio

Amid a shifting policymaking environment
from private to public, volume one of this report discusses
how public policies could attract more and better private
investments. In attracting back private capital, this report
argues that Brazil must do three things. First, it must
eliminate remaining regulatory bottlenecks and policy
uncertainties in selected sectors. Secondly, design
infrastructure concessions to avoid "excessive"

Using cross-country and panel regressions, the authors show that financial sector development significantly reduces undernourishment (hunger), largely through gaining farmers and others access to productivity-enhancing equipment, translating into beneficial income and general effects. They show specifically that a deeper financial sector leads to higher agricultural productivity, including higher cereal yields, through increased fertilizer and tractor use. Higher productivity in turn leads to lower undernourishment.

This paper looks at Singapore's efforts to transform the economic growth base from one that is predominantly efficiency-driven to one that is more innovation-driven. To accelerate the transition process, the government is aggressively investing in "innovation infrastructure"-systems and institutions that make the city a more conducive environment for innovations. The modus operandi, with a distinctive "winner-picking" flavor, mirrors that of its earlier strategic industrial policy in building up the manufacturing sector.

This paper uses the Ricardian approach
to examine how farmers in 11 countries in Africa have
adapted to existing climatic conditions. It then estimates
the effects of predicted changes in climate while accounting
for whatever farmer adaptation might occur. This study
differs from earlier ones by using farmers' own
perceptions of the value of their land. Previous research,
by contrast, has relied on either observed sale prices or