The Government of Bangladesh, with help
from the World Bank and other donors, has provided aid to a
local agency called Infrastructure Development Company
Limited and its partner organizations to devise a credit
scheme for marketing solar home system units and making
these an affordable alternative to grid electricity for poor
people in remote areas. This paper uses household survey
data to examine the financing scheme behind the

Despite strong economic growth,
investment in basic urban infrastructure -- water supply,
wastewater removal and treatment, roads, and other
capital-intensive systems -- has failed to keep pace with
urban growth, leaving a critical urban infrastructure
deficit. At the same time, urban lands in these many
developing countries are among the most expensive in the
world. Much of this land is owned by public authorities.

In the standard model of corruption, the
rich are more likely to pay bribes for their children's
education, reflecting higher ability to pay. This prediction
is, however, driven by the assumption that the probability
of punishment for bribe-taking is invariant across
households. In many developing countries lacking in rule of
law, this assumption is untenable, because the enforcement
of law is not impersonal or unbiased and the poor have

This note on making livelihoods and
social protection approaches gender- sensitive is the
seventh in a series of guidance notes on gender issues in
disaster risk management (DRM) in the East Asia and the
Pacific region. Targeting World Bank staff, clients and
development partners, this note gives an overview of the
main reasons for including gender sensitive social
protection and livelihoods approaches in DRM; it identifies

The Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE)
was the first disaster ever recorded that included an
earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear power plant accident, a
power supply failure, and a large-scale disruption of supply
chains. On March 11, 2011 earthquake of magnitude 9.0
occurred in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan's
Tohoku region. The quake shook the ground as far away as
western Japan and lasted for several minutes. A half hour

Bhutan has undergone a major
socio-economic transformation over the past few decades.
Today, as a middle-income country guided by the unique
development philosophy of Gross National Happiness, it
continues to develop rapidly and become more integrated into
the global economy. Coinciding with its development, Bhutan
has also made considerable strides in closing gaps in gender
equality. The analysis of the Gender Policy Note (GPN)

Accelerating inclusive growth - the type
that creates more and better jobs and reduces poverty - is a
key challenge for the Philippines. Instead of rising
agricultural productivity paving the way for the development
of a vibrant labor-intensive manufacturing sector and
subsequently of a high-skill services sector, the converse
has taken place in the Philippines. Agricultural
productivity has remained depressed, manufacturing has

Kazakhstan aspires to become one of the
world s 30 most developed economies by 2050. The focus is on
laying the basis for the accelerated diversification of the
economy through industrialization and infrastructure
development, including enhancing human capital to drive
innovation and economic efficiency. This country economic
memorandum report adopts an analytical framework that looks
into options that will be explored to help authorities think

Kazakhstan aspires to become one of the
world s 30 most developed economies by 2050. The focus is on
laying the basis for the accelerated diversification of the
economy through industrialization and infrastructure
development, including enhancing human capital to drive
innovation and economic efficiency. This country economic
memorandum report adopts an analytical framework that looks
into options that will be explored to help authorities think

Over the last three decades Jordan has
made substantial investments in its human resources,
spending more than 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) on health and education. Like their male counterparts,
women and girls have benefitted from these policies and
their quality of life has improved. The Jordan Country
Gender Assessment (CGA) has two primary objectives. The
first is to assess gender imbalances in the areas of

This report presents the research
findings of the Justice Delivered Locally (JDL) initiative
of Solomon Islands' Ministry of Justice and Legal
Affairs, which was supported by the World Bank's
Justice for the Poor (J4P) program. JDL supports the Solomon
Islands Government (SIG) policy of reinvigorating
local-level justice systems. This is based on an
understanding that developmentally important local

The purpose of this report is to
document some of the aforementioned achievements over the
2000-2010 decade and to illustrate their collective impact
on poverty in Bangladesh. Analysis is undertaken to identify
which factors contributed to the rapid decline in poverty
over time. The main limitation of this report is that the
analysis is based on a limited number of data sources, which
do not cover all aspects of the poverty reduction process.