This report is the result of a technical
and economic assessment of the fisheries sector in Cape
Verde. While originally focusing particularly on the
long-term development and governance strategy of the sector,
the authors, faced with the increasingly apparent need for
fundamental restructuring of the sector, redirected their
attention to what has become an assessment of how to create
a viable fishing sector that can effectively reach realistic

China has been the most rapidly growing
economy in the world over the past 25 years. This growth has
fueled a remarkable increase in per capita income and a
decline in the poverty rate from 64 percent at the beginning
of reform to 10 percent in 2004. At the same time, however,
different kinds of disparities have increased. Income
inequality has risen, propelled by the rural-urban income
gap and by the growing disparity between highly educated

Traditionally both national and regional
development planning in Vietnam has been driven by
'top-down' Central Government social and economic
targets based on limited analytical investigation. However,
with the advent of the free market economy in Vietnam since
the late 1980s, vigorous global economic competitiveness and
Vietnam's membership to the World Trade Organization
(WTO), changes in national policy in Vietnam have now

The Poverty Reduction Strategy of the
Government of Rwanda seeks to unlock the growth and poverty
reduction potential of the tea sector through the
privatization of tea estates. This paper uses the logic of
causal inference and data from the 2004 Quantitative
Baseline Survey of the tea sector to assess the potential
impact of the privatization program. This entails a
normalized comparison of productivity outcomes to account

Nicaragua is a small, open economy that
is vulnerable to external and natural shocks. With an
estimated Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of US$1000
in 2006, and a total population of 5.2 million, it is one of
the poorest countries in Latin America. Forty six percent of
the population lived below the poverty line in 2005 (while
15 percent lived in extreme poverty), and the incidence of
poverty is more than twice as high in rural areas (68

The detailed analysis of current
cropping areas in Africa presented here reveals significant
climate sensitivities of cropland density and distribution
across a variety of agro-ecosystems. Based on empirical
climate-cropland relationships, cropland density responds
positively to increases in precipitation in semi-arid and
arid zones of the sub-tropics and warmer temperatures in
higher elevations. As a result, marginal increases in

Interest in investment climates has
emerged relatively recently. In the 1960s and 1970s,
governments in many countries believed they should play a
direct role in rural credit, input supply, production,
trade, transport, distribution, and even marketing. However,
in the 1980s and 1990s, government-dominated systems fell
into disgrace because of poor performance. For the rural
sector, the primary focus had traditionally been on

This paper analyzes poverty in Haiti
based on the first Living Conditions Survey of 7,186
households covering the whole country and representative at
the regional level. Using a USD1 a day extreme poverty line,
the analysis reveals that 49 percent of Haitian households
live in absolute poverty. Twenty, 56, and 58 percent of
households in metropolitan, urban, and rural areas,
respectively, are poor. At the regional level, poverty is

This report on a key to poverty
reduction in Peru identifies a number of cost-effective
policy interventions that could be adopted in the short and
medium term to support sustainable development goals as the
Government of Peru attempts to combat the problems of
inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene; urban air
pollution; natural disasters; lead exposure; indoor air
pollution; land degradation; deforestation; and inadequate

This study examines the impact of
climate change on cropland in Africa. It is based on a
survey of more than 9,000 farmers in 11 countries: Burkina
Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger,
Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The study uses
a Ricardian cross-sectional approach in which net revenue is
regressed on climate, water flow, soil, and economic
variables. The results show that net revenues fall as

The Africa Development Indicators 2007 essay explores the patterns of growth in Sub- Saharan Africa over the past three decades. It finds that the volatility of growth-an outcome of conflict, governance, and world commodity prices-has been greater than in any other region. Volatility has dampened expectations and investments-and has obscured some periods of good performance for some countries. The essay shows that pickups in growth were seldom sustained- indeed, that they were often followed by ferocious declines, and hence, Africa's flat economic performance over 1975-2005.

This paper examines the determinants of
remittance behavior for Vietnam using data from the 2004
Vietnam Migration Survey on internal migrants. It considers
how, among other things, the vulnerability of a
migrant's life at the destination, their link to
relatives back home, and the time spent at the destination
affect remittances. The paper finds that migrants act as
risk-averse economic agents and send remittances back to the