The government of Afghanistan has an
opportunity in the coming months to turn the country around.
It is now opportune to improve security, governance, and
development. Unprecedented international military support,
political attention and aid are available to Afghanistan.
The government is inheriting years of good economic
performance, notable progress on social outcomes, and
continuing strong support from the international community.

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

The objective of the Bhutan Investment
Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment
climate in Bhutan in all its operational dimensions and
promote policies to strengthen the private sector. This ICA
consists of two volumes. Volume 1 summarizes the main
results. Volume 2 presents a more detailed analysis of each
of the three main themes of the report: labor productivity
and skills, access to finance, and business government

The authors use recent data from the
2006 National Family Health Survey of India to explore the
relationship between religion and demographic behavior. They
find that fertility and mortality vary not only between
religious groups, but also across caste groups. These groups
also differ with respect to socio-economic status. The
central finding of this paper is that despite their
socio-economic disadvantages, Muslims have higher fertility

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 is on the findings of a major international research project examining the links between trade, gender, and poverty. Trade liberalization can create economic opportunities, but women and men cannot take advantage of these opportunities on an equal basis. Women and men differ in their endowments, control over resources, access to labor markets, and their roles within the household.

This paper applies a growth diagnostics
approach to identify the most binding constraints to
private-sector growth in Malawi - a small, landlocked
country in Southern Africa with one of the lowest per capita
incomes in the world. The approach aims to identify the
constraints (in terms of public policy, implementation, and
investments) most binding on marginal investment, and
therefore whose relaxation would have the largest impact on

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 worldwide concern with deforestation
of Brazilian Amazonia is motivated not only by the
irreversible loss of this natural wealth, but also by the
perception that it is a destructive process in which the
social and economic gains are smaller than the environmental
losses. This perception also underlies the diagnosis,
formulation and evaluation of public policies proposed by
government and non-governmental organizations working in the

The transformation of work during
China s rapid economic development is associated with a
substantial but little noticed re-allocation of traditional
farm labor among women, with some doing much less and some
much more. This paper studies how the work, time allocation,
and health of non-migrant women are affected by the
out-migration of others in their household. The analysis
finds that the women left behind are doing more farm work

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

The study includes four sections: i)
brief production background; ii) description of the
Argentine soybean value chain; iii) evolution of the main
policies and institutional regimes in Argentina; iv) lessons
learned related to the political economy and the industrial
organization. The study describes the main policies
implemented in Argentina during the last two decades which
had impact on the structure of the soybean value chain and