The private enterprise sector in Bosnia
and Herzegovina (BiH) has been expanding steadily, and
estimates are that it presently contributes close to 50
percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The BiH private
enterprise sector initially developed following the
privatization program starting in 1999. Under that program,
the majority of state owned enterprises (SOEs) that were
privatized were done so using the voucher privatization

This paper develops and tests a proposed
methodology that puts forward a new integrated method for
evaluating the performance of development finance
institutions. This methodology applies assessment criteria
that take into account both the social objective that the
development finance institution addresses and the subsidies
it received in order to achieve such an objective. This
methodology is applied to two pilot case studies-Banadesa

This history illustrates a number of
themes encountered in Swaziland that faces developing
countries and their external partners in Africa and beyond.
Firstly, the history relates the experience of a small and
comparatively insular country in addressing complex
challenges deriving from rapid urbanization and, as a
result, the growing need to adapt governance systems and
structures. A second key issue is the challenge that small

Indigenous peoples make up less than 5
percent of the world's population, yet comprise 15
percent of the world's poor. The indigenous population
of Latin America is estimated at 28 million. Despite
significant changes in poverty overall, the proportion of
indigenous peoples in the region living in poverty - at
almost 80 percent - did not change much from the early 1990s
to the early 2000s. Economic Opportunities for Indigenous

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

The overall objective of the
Comprehensive Assessment of the Agricultural Sector (CAAS)
is to provide an evidence base to enable appropriate
strategic policy responses by the Government of Liberia
(GoL) and its development partners in order to maximize the
contribution of the agriculture sector to the
Government's overarching policy objectives. Given the
strong relationship between growth in agricultural

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 was prepared in close
collaboration with the Bank of Albania. This report focused
on trade, services, and agriculture; however, the limited
scope of their operations still leaves a potentially large
unmet demand for credit in agriculture. This report focuses
on problems related to the operation of Immovable Property
Registry System (IPRS) and other institutions and the
formalization of property rights and inscription of

This paper compares how results using
various methods to construct asset indices match results
using per capita expenditures. The analysis shows that
inferences about inequalities in education, health care use,
fertility, child mortality, as well as labor market outcomes
are quite robust to the specific economic status measure
used. The measures-most significantly per capita
expenditures versus the class of asset indices-do not,

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

In a wide variety of settings, spiteful
preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation,
trade, and thus economic development. This paper shows that
spiteful preferences - the desire to reduce another's
material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing
one's relative payoff - are surprisingly widespread in
experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions
in India (Uttar Pradesh). In a one-shot trust game, the

The high levels of public debt and
persistent fiscal deficits limit Organization of Eastern
Caribbean States (OECS) governments' ability to pursue
counter-cyclical fiscal policies during future economic
downturns, leaving private investment as the key driver of
future growth. This study on private sector financing in the
OECS analyzes the issue of access to finance from three
different angles: the demand side; the supply side; and the