The objective of this review is to
synthesize existing evaluative evidence and generate new
evidence on the quality of the Results Frameworks (RFs) of
development policy operations (DPOs). The study is organized
around a number of evaluative questions on various aspects
of DPO design, implementation, reporting, and evaluation.
Its focus is on the quality of RF, taking objectives and
coverage for granted. The study does not cover the scope and

Bhutan and Botswana share a number of
similarities. The two countries, land locked small states,
have grown rapidly over the past few decades, boosted by
sustained, large-scale inflows of foreign exchange.
Botswana’s annual real growth rate averaged 9 percent over
the past 40 years, driven by diamond exploration, whereas
Bhutan has taken full advantage of generous foreign aid
inflows to achieve an average growth rate of 8 percent per

Horizontal inequalities (HIs) within a
country, or inequalities among groups, have been shown to be
an important source of violent conflict. Relevant group
categorizations include religion, ethnicity, and region. HIs
can also be measured in different ways. Ethnicity, language,
religion, race, and region are examples of potentially
relevant and salient group categorizations. In this paper
the authors will review the prevailing HIs and their

Between 2008 and 2012 the urban/rural poverty divide substantially narrowed
down, which was the result of relatively stable rural and rising urban poverty rates. Over the same period, food inflation spiked, whereby strong links between domestic and global price movements were observed owed to major import dependence on food. The high shares of consumption that households dedicate to food, especially among the poor, leave limited scope to deal with food price surges by economizing on non-food

The international development community
is increasingly demanding better evidence on the
effectiveness of policies and programs across different
sectors. The forest sector is no exception. Governments and
donor agencies explicitly seek to link investment to proven
impact. Yet the evidence base necessary to inform
interventions in the forest sector that can successfully
enhance the livelihoods of the forest-dependent poor, foster

The report starts with an overview of
poverty and inequality estimates in chapter one, focusing on
the trends in poverty and the distributional pattern of
growth between 2002-3 and 2012-13. Chapter two then provides
a description of the poverty profile by geographical and
household characteristics, both in terms of the levels of
poverty and its rate of change. Consumption patterns are
presented in chapter three, and other socio-economic

Understanding Changes in Poverty brings
together different methods to decompose the contributions to
poverty reduction. A simple approach quantifies the
contribution of changes in demographics, employment,
earnings, public transfers, and remittances to poverty
reduction. A more complex approach quantifies the
contributions to poverty reduction from changes in
individual and household characteristics, including changes

Although weather shocks are a major
source of income fluctuation, most of the world's poor
lack insurance coverage against them. Absence of formal
insurance contributes to poverty traps, as investment
decisions are conflicted with risk management ones:
risk-averse farmers tend to underinvest and produce lower
yielding yet safer crops. In the past few years, weather
index insurance has gained increasing attention as an

Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, discusses promoting strong economic growth in developing countries. He speaks about the need to invest in people,
especially in education, health and to build social safety
nets and protections against both natural disasters and
pandemics to ensure that people don't remain trapped in
extreme poverty. He talks about the challenges in trying to
work in all kinds of complex political situations, so that

In conflict-prone situations, access to
markets is necessary to restore economic growth and generate
the preconditions for peace and reconstruction. Hence, the
rehabilitation of damaged transport infrastructure has
emerged as an overarching investment priority among donors
and governments. This paper brings together two distinct
strands of literature on the effects of conflict on welfare
and on the economic impact of transport infrastructure. The

Private investment in agriculture in
developing countries, both domestic and foreign, has been on
the rise for nearly two decades. This paper focuses on
large-scale agricultural projects in developing countries,
involving the lease of farmland, which rose sharply after
the food crisis of 2008. It is important that such
investments are sustainable not only in the long term, but
also beneficial in the short term with minimal risks or

This paper reviews international
practices for ‘bottom-up costing’ for medium-term
expenditure frameworks. Medium-term expenditure frameworks
are important because they incorporate the multi-annual
nature of the fiscal policy into the budget process,
mitigating its short-term bias. They also allow for the
incorporation of the effects of policy decisions and provide
for a comprehensive fiscal sustainability picture. However,