This book reports on the status and
evolution of human opportunity in Latin America and the
Caribbean (LAC). It builds on the 2008 publication in
several directions. First, it uses newly available data to
expand the set of opportunities and personal circumstances
under analysis. The data are representative of about 200
million children living in 19 countries over the last 15
years. Second, it compares human opportunity in LAC with

The specific objective of this policy
note is to derive insights that can contribute to rapid and
sustainable integration of small-scale farmers into the
livestock and horticulture value chains in Swaziland. It
seeks to do this by identifying constraints that may be
contributing to poor performance in the two value chains,
evaluating technological options that could improve
productivity, and identifying priority areas for future

When deciding who should receive welfare
benefits with the aim to increase household well-being, it
is necessary to understand the effects of the distribution
of power within the households at which the aid is directed.
Two primary household models have been used to study
intra-household bargaining and decision making: the unitary
model and the collective model. The unitary model seems to
fit Pakistan's context because the prevailing

This book provides an overview of the
World Bank's Eco2 cities : ecological cities as
economic cities initiative. The objective of the Eco2 cities
initiative is to help cities in developing countries achieve
a greater degree of ecological and economic sustainability.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one describes the
Eco2 cities initiative framework. It describes the approach,
beginning with the background and rationale. Key challenges

Following the transition to democracy in
2008, two very important political developments took place.
These were the announcement of the 7th National Finance
Commission Award, which was agreed upon in December 2009 in
Lahore, Pakistan, and the unanimous ratification by
Parliament of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution in
April 2010. Both developments have the potential of
fundamentally restructuring the way Pakistan is governed in

This article evaluates the effect of the
overdraft facility (or line of credit) policy by comparing a
large sample of overdraft facilitated firms and matched
non-overdraft facilitated firms from Eastern Europe at the
sector level. The sample firms are compared with respect to
rates of different performance indicators including:
technical efficiency (a Data Envelopment Analysis approach
is applied to estimate the technical efficiency level for

Burkina Faso is one of the priority
countries of the World Bank's Disaster Risk Management
(DRM) team for 2009 to 2011. this country note on Disaster
Risk Management and Adaptation to Climate Change (DRM/ACC)
is a baseline document for priority investments in those
areas, and for the support the World Bank will provide to
Burkina Faso through funds allocated under the "Global
Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery" (GFDRR).

This issue includes the following
headings: seeds and soil: smallholder agriculture;
innovation: pairing commercial buyers with rural producers;
grain storage: a ready role for public-private partnerships
(PPPs); agricultural clusters: powering Africas agricultural
potential; and interviews: AgDevCo, bill and Melinda gates
foundation, earth policy institute.

Following the cessation of hostilities
in May 2009, the Government of Sri Lanka has announced a
suitably ambitious macroeconomic vision to capitalize on the
peace dividend. Its goals include growing at 8 percent or
more per year and lowering government indebtedness from
around 80 to 60 percent of GDP by 2015. This paper's
main finding is that while some post-conflict bounce is only
to be expected, sustaining high growth presents significant

Europe and Central Asia have suffered a
setback in economic growth because of the recent global
crisis, which revealed fundamental structural weaknesses
previously hidden by the prosperity before the crisis. The
major weaknesses are the large savings deficits, the lagging
reforms in the social sectors, and the deterioration in
competitiveness. Policies can address these weaknesses by
taking into account the role of the behavior of firms,

The report is divided into two volumes.
The first volume includes the fundamental content of the
report. It is organized as follows. Chapter one provides a
conceptual framework to analyze risk and vulnerability and
provides a definition of social protection. Chapter two
assesses the main risks faced by the Malagasy population as
well as its vulnerability profile. Chapter three reviews
Madagascar's social protection policies, the

This paper examines whether the son
preference and fertility behavior of Muslim couples respond
to the risk of inheritance expropriation by their extended
family. According to traditional Islamic inheritance
principles, only the son of a deceased man can exclude his
male agnates from inheritance and preserve his estate within
the nuclear household. The paper exploits cross-sectional
and time variation in the application of the Islamic