The workshop brings diverse perspectives
from outside the World Bank, providing a forum in which to
exchange ideas and debate in the course of developing the
World Development Report (WDR). Participants at the 2006
Berlin Workshop gathered to discuss challenges and successes
pertaining to agriculture and development. Agriculture is
the major sector contributing to economic development in
many poor countries. Three out of every four poor people in

The global monitoring report 2008 comes
at an important time. This year marks the halfway point in
the effort to achieve the millennium development goals
(MDGs) by 2015. This is also an important year to work
toward a consensus on how the world is going to respond to
the challenge of climate change, building on the foundation
laid at the conference in Bali in December 2007.
Successfully meeting this challenge will be essential for

This book argues that Peru faces an
unprecedented opportunity to become the next success story
in Latin America. In the coming five years, policy making
could put the country on a development path similar to the
one that, say, Chile, Costa Rica, or Spain have followed
over the last two decades. This book includes 32
sector-specific chapters and 2 historical perspectives that
precede them. The beginning chapter, a synthesis, builds a

This paper provides the results of an
international survey of practitioners with experience in
facilitating the participation of African smallholder
farmers in supply chains for higher-value and/or
differentiated agricultural products. It explores their
perceptions about the constraints inhibiting and the impacts
associated with this supply chain participation. It also
examines their perceptions about the factors affecting the

Income inequality in China has risen
rapidly in the past decades across regions, between rural
and urban sectors, and within provinces. The dynamics of
divergence across these sub-national areas have taken the
form of a "race to the top" - meaning that all
segments of the population, including the poor with low
education in lagging inland rural areas, have experienced
gains in average income. The largest gains have been

This report examines the legal,
administrative, and regulatory barriers that are preventing
women in Kenya from contributing fully to the Kenyan
economy. Building on the 2004 Foreign Investment and
Advisory Service (FIAS) report, "Improving the
Commercial Legal Framework and Removing Administrative and
Regulatory Barriers to Investment," this study looks at
the bureaucratic barriers facing women in Kenya through a

Water policy is an important topic on
the agenda of the international community, and efficiency
and equity in the allocation of water have emerged as
important factors to be considered. Water pricing can be
used to mitigate both the quantity and quality dimensions of
water scarcity. This paper reviews partial equilibrium
models and general equilibrium models that are relevant to
irrigation water management issues. The most widely

Levels of economic development vary
widely within countries in the Americas. This paper argues
that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial
era. Colonizers engaged in different economic activities in
different regions of a country, depending on local
conditions. Some activities were "bad" in the
sense that they depended heavily on the exploitation of
labor and created extractive institutions, while

The Government of China has placed
strong emphasis on addressing problems related to
agriculture, farmers, and rural society, with the
development of a "new socialist countryside"
designated as a top priority for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan
(2006-2010). The financing of public services in rural
areas will be a key determinant of the Plan's success.
This report analyzes the performance of the

Trade policies can promote aggregate
efficiency, but the ensuing structural adjustments generally
create both winners and losers. From an incomes perspective,
trade liberalization can raise gross domestic product per
capita, but rates of emergence from poverty depend on
individual household characteristics of economic
participation and asset holding. To fully realize the growth
potential of trade, while limiting the risk of rising

There is compelling evidence of the
importance of gender equality for poverty reduction and
sustainable growth. So it should come as no surprise that
most development actors-international agencies, bilateral
donors, and most developing countries, have an official
policy for promoting gender equality. Millennium Development
Goal 3 (MDG3) on gender equality and women's
empowerment is shared global commitment. With only seven

The objective of this report is to
identify ways of enhancing competitiveness through sector
reforms in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali (the
Cotton-4). The report promotes best practices to manage cost
and define sales strategies so as to enhance the
contribution of the cotton sector to shared growth and
lessen the risk of contingent liabilities borne by the
countries. Areas of improvement, investigated in the report,