The Philippines is among the strongest performers in the region, bucking the trend. In the first half (H1) of 2015, among the major economies in the region, the only countries to accelerate their quarterly growth rates were the Philippines, from 5 to 5.6 percent, and Vietnam. In spite of this acceleration, for the two quarters combined, Philippine growth rate came out at 5.3 percent—its lowest half year growth rate since 2011. On the demand side, the strong performance of private domestic demand at 8.1 percent, supported by record low inflation and robust remittances, drove GDP growth.

New qualitative fieldwork in eight
countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) indicates that
the dramatic declines in poverty in much of the region over
the last decade do not appear to be registering very
favorably with men and women on the ground. This paper
provides a gender analysis of findings from equal numbers of
sex-specific focus groups with employed and jobless
individuals. The methodology featured a standardized package

Affordable housing will be instrumental
to helping Vietnam achieve its goals for increasing
productivity and inclusive urban growth. Since Doi Moi, the
country has experienced impressive economic growth, averaged
at 7.4 percent per annum from 1990 to 2008, lowering to an
average of 6 percent per annum from 2007 to 2013. Strong
economic growth has supported a substantial reduction in
poverty, from 58 percent in 1993 to 17 percent in 20121.

In July 2013, the World Bank Group
launched its Strategy, outlining how it will partner more
effectively with clients to help them achieve the ambitious
goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting shared
prosperity through economic growth, inclusion,
sustainability and resilience. In April 2014, the World Bank
Group Corporate Scorecard was launched for the first time
and the World Bank Scorecard revised to monitor the

The Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) brings together ten countries with over 620
million people and a combined gross domestic product of more
than USD 2.5 trillion. These countries are well integrated
into the global economy and have benefited from this
integration. And, as evidenced by their adoption of the
ambitious goal of forming an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)
by 2015, they are committed to even deeper regional

This assessment of Moldova current state
of compliance with the Basel core principles for effective
banking supervision (BCPs) was undertaken as part of a joint
International Monetary Fund (IMF) - World Bank mission in
connection with a broader financial sector assessment
program exercise. This version of the assessment has a
greater focus on risk management policies and practices
implemented by supervised institutions and their assessment

This paper presents early evidence from
the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land
formalization program. The study examines the links between
land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a
model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The
demarcation process involved communities in the mapping and
attribution of land rights; cornerstones marked parcel
boundaries and offered lasting landmarks. Consistent with

Growing research and policy interest
focuses on the misallocation of output and factors of
production in developing economies. This paper considers the
possible misallocation of financial loans. Using plant-level
data on the organized and unorganized sectors, the paper
describes the temporal, geographic, and industry
distributions of financial loans. The focus of the analysis
is the hypothesis that land misallocation might be an

The paper analyzes the design of
simplified small business tax regimes in Eastern Europe and
Central Asia and the impact of such regimes on small
business tax compliance. Although many approaches for tax
simplification exist, a general trend in the region is to
offer small businesses the option to be taxed based on their
turnover instead of net income. The study finds that many of
the regimes in place are overly simplistic and neither take

Social norms affect almost every aspect
of people’s lives, and can be an obstacle to or support
economic development. This paper outlines what social norms
are and how they work, providing examples from everyday life
and from development case studies. Sometimes not much can be
done about changing undesirable social norms. In those
cases, development economists need to be aware of how the
existence of those norms can impact the effects of the

The Myanmar Economic Monitor (MEM) aims
to periodically take stock of economic development and
highlight economic prospects and policy priorities in
Myanmar. Myanmar grew at an estimated 8.5 percent in real
terms in 2014/15. The MEM touches on continued recovery in
growth, public consumption, private investment, services,
investment in manufacturing and industry, rebound in
agriculture and the impact of floods. The monitor examines

This study estimates the impact of
Kenya’s post-election violence on individual risk
preferences. Because the crisis interrupted a longitudinal
survey of more than five thousand Kenyan youth, this timing
creates plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to civil
conflict by the time of the survey. The study measures
individual risk preferences using hypothetical lottery
choice questions, which are validated by showing that they