The Zambia Mining Investment and
Governance Review (MInGov) collects and shares information on
mining sector governance, its attractiveness to investors
and how its activities affect national development. It
reviews sector performance from the perspective of three
main stakeholder groups– government, investors in the mining
value chain and civil society – and identifies gaps
between declared and actual government policy and practice.

India's Uttar Pradesh Sodic Lands
Reclamation Project has two objectives. First, it seeks to
reverse the decline of productivity through sustainable
reclamation of sodic lands. Second, it is intended to
prevent additional increases in sodicity through
strengthening local institutions and enabling effective
management of such programs with strong beneficiary
participation and nongovernmental organization (NGO)

The Africa Competitiveness Report 2015
comes out at a promising time for the continent: for 15
years growth rates have averaged over 5 percent, and rapid
population growth holds the promise of a large emerging
consumer market as well as an unprecedented labor force that
- if leveraged - can provide significant growth
opportunities. Moreover, the expansion of innovative
business models, such as mobile technology services, is

Taking advantage of a historical quasi-experiment in Sri Lanka, this paper provides evidence on the effects of land market restrictions on wages and its spatial pattern. The empirical specification is derived from a general equilibrium model that predicts that the adverse effects of land market restrictions on wages will be less in remote locations. For identification, the study exploits the effects of historical malaria prevalence on the incidence of land restrictions through its effects on "crown land".

Once concentrated among a few large
economies, global flows of goods, services, and capital now
reach an ever-larger number of countries worldwide. Global
trade in goods and in services both increased 10 times
between 1980 and 2011, while foreign direct investment (FDI)
flows increased almost 30-fold. A value chain is global when
some of these stages are carried out in more than one
country, most notably when discrete tasks within a

Honduras is Central America’s
second-largest country with a population of more than 8
million and a land area of about 112,000 square kilometers.
The 20th century witnessed a profound economic
transformation and modernization in Honduras. Honduras’
persistent poverty is the result of long-term low per capita
growth and high inequality, perpetuated by the country’s
high vulnerability to shocks. First, over the past 40 years

Transformational engagements are a critical pillar of the World Bank Group’s strategy for achieving its twin goals of extreme poverty elimination and shared prosperity. This learning product uses evaluative evidence from the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) to understand the mechanisms and conditions for transformational engagements and the implications for the World Bank Group if it seeks to rely on such engagements to more effectively pursue its goals.

The expansion of international trade has
been essential to development and poverty reduction. Todays
economy is unquestionable global. Trade as a proportion of
global GDP has approximately doubled since 1975. Markets for
goods and services have become increasingly integrated
through a fall in trade barriers, with technology helping
drive trade costs lower. But trade is not an end in itself.
People measure the value of trade by the extent to which it

The countries comprising the Southern
African Customs Union (SACU) are currently not very
integrated into global value chains (GVCs), potentially
missing out on important development opportunities.
Accordingly, we explore high level options for promoting
their integration. Given East Asia’s spectacular success
with integrating into GVCs, we first assess the probability
that SACU can copy their flying geese pattern. That was

Twenty years after the end of the war,
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has yet to achieve shared
prosperity for its citizens and approach European living
standards. The country has been at peace since the end of
1995, but its development model needs adjustment if it is to
join the ranks of prosperous European economies. BiH has a
disproportionately large public sector that dates back to
Yugoslav times and has only been partly reformed since, and

The WBG’s Colombia Systematic Country
Diagnostic (SCD) analyzed key constraints and opportunities
that will impact Colombia’s development in the context of
three defining country characteristics. They include uneven
territorial development, a long standing armed conflict and
a growth process led by extractive industries. The Colombia
Country Partnership Framework (CPF) proposes to address
these complex development challenges with a flexible,

Turkey’s demographic and economic
transformation has been one of the world’s most dramatic,
with urban growth and economic growth proceeding hand in
hand. Distinguishing Turkey from many other developing
countries has been the pace, scale, and geographical
diversity of its spatial and economic transformation.
Fast-growing secondary cities bring added challenges that
define Turkey’s second-generation urban agenda. New and