Women's contributions to poverty
reduction, economic growth, and private sector development
are increasingly recognized globally. A growing amount of
research demonstrates the link between women's
empowerment and societal well-being. Yet research also
indicates that woman's economic contributions continue
to lag behind their achievements in health and education,
and a variety of barriers still prevent women in many parts

The past eight years witnessed
China's phenomenal growth and integration into the
world economy, expedited by its accession to the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in 2001. The accession greatly
accelerated China's domestic reforms. By the end of
2007, China was ranked the second largest exporter and third
largest trader in the world after its exports grew at over
20 percent per year for the sixth year in a row. The

Improving the investment climate is a
key pillar of the World Bank's private sector
development strategy. Without a good investment climate,
firms and entrepreneurs of all types-from farmers to
micro-enterprises to local manufacturing concerns and
multinationals-have few opportunities and incentives to
invest productively, create jobs, and expand, enter and
remain in the formal economy, and thereby contribute to

The Niger Diagnostic Trade Integration
Study (DTIS) has been prepared under the Integrated
Framework (IF) for trade related technical assistance to
least developed countries in response to a request from the
Government of Burkina Faso. The study is to build the
foundation for accelerated growth by enhancing the
integration of its economy into regional and global markets.
This Diagnostic Trade Integration Study (DTIS) is intended

The remote and sparsely populated
provinces of Papua and West Papua face a time of great
change. Monetary transfers from Jakarta have grown
extraordinarily in recent years, by more than 600 percent in
real terms and 1300 percent in nominal terms since 2000,
greatly increasing demand for goods and services. The high
price of imports in the interior is producing pressure to
improve roads in order to lower transport costs. Pressure is

How global emissions reduction targets
can be achieved equitably is a key issue in climate change
discussions. This paper presents an analytical framework to
encompass contributions to the literature on equity in
climate change, and highlights the consequences -- in terms
of future emissions allocations -- of different approaches
to equity. Progressive cuts relative to historic levels --
for example, 80 percent by industrial countries and 20

This paper proposes a parametric
approach to estimating a dynamic binary response panel data
model that allows for endogenous contemporaneous regressors.
This approach is of particular value for settings in which
one wants to estimate the effects of an endogenous treatment
on a binary outcome. The model is next used to examine the
impact of rural-urban migration on the likelihood that
households in rural China fall below the poverty line. In

The consensus among scholars and
policymakers that "institutions matter" for
development has led inexorably to a conclusion that
"history matters," since institutions clearly form
and evolve over time. Unfortunately, however, the next
logical step has not yet been taken, which is to recognize
that historians (and not only economic historians) might
also have useful and distinctive insights to offer. This

Doing Business 2011: making a difference
for entrepreneurs is the eighth in a series of annual
reports investigating regulations that enhance business
activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business
presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and
the protection of property rights that can be compared
across 183 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over
time. A set of regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of

This report summarizes the findings of
the study on Competitive Commercial Agriculture for Africa
(CCAA). The objective of the CCAA study was to explore the
feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and
growth in African agriculture through the identification of
products and production systems that can underpin rapid
development of a competitive commercial agriculture. The
CCAA study focused on the agricultural potential of

The objectives of this Country
Environmental Analysis (CEA) were to assess the
environmental quality in the Philippines with a focus on how
this affects human welfare and sustainability, measure and
analyze the biophysical significance and monetary cost of
environmental degradation and derive priority areas of
action, assess the Philippines government's capacity to
manage the environmental challenges identified, and identify

This paper assesses the impact of water
supply variability on treaty cooperation between
international bilateral river basin riparian states. Climate
change is anticipated to change the variability of water
supply, as well as its expected magnitude. Previous studies
have focused mainly on water scarcity, measured in terms of
mean precipitation or per capita water availability in the
country, as a trigger for conflict or cooperation. The water