Bangladesh represents a success story
among developing countries. Poverty incidence, which was as
high as 57 percent at the beginning of the 1990s, had
declined to 49 percent in 2000. This trend accelerated
subsequently, reducing the poverty headcount rate to 40
percent in 2005. The primary contributing factor was robust
and stable economic growth along with no worsening of
inequality. Respectable GDP growth that started at the

The objective of this report is to
analyze the important roles of labor markets, employment,
productivity, and labor income in facilitating shared growth
and promoting poverty reduction in Bangladesh. First, the
report provides a background discussion of poverty, reform,
and growth in Bangladesh. Following that, it gives an
overview of the labor market, describing the country's
demographics, the institutional structure of the labor

The workshop brings diverse perspectives
from outside the World Bank, providing a forum in which to
exchange ideas and debate in the course of developing the
World Development Report (WDR). Participants at the 2006
Berlin Workshop gathered to discuss challenges and successes
pertaining to agriculture and development. Agriculture is
the major sector contributing to economic development in
many poor countries. Three out of every four poor people in

Opium, Afghanistan's leading
economic activity, lies at the heart of the challenges the
country faces in state building, governance, security, and
development. With their narrow law enforcement focus and
limited recognition of development, security, and political
implications, current global counter-narcotics polices
impose a heavy burden on Afghanistan. This paper first
provides a summary overview of Afghanistan's opium

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

Environmental concern in developing
countries has risen rapidly over the past decade. At the
same time, decentralization and civic participation in
environmental policy-making have also burgeoned. This paper
uses data from the Brazilian Municipal Environmental Survey
2001 to examine the causal effect of municipio (county)
level environmental institutions on perceptions about
environmental problems in Brazil. Consistent with models of

Using individual level employment data
from Bangladesh, this paper presents empirical evidence on
the relative importance of farm and urban linkages for rural
nonfarm employment. The econometric results indicate that
high return wage work and self-employment in nonfarm
activities cluster around major urban centers. The negative
effects of isolation on high return wage work and on
self-employment are magnified in locations with higher

This publication offers crucial lessons
for policy makers and development experts who may be
considering using small area poverty maps as tools of
economic development and helps add to our array of tools for
dealing with the political economy issues of poverty. It
represents a major contribution to a little understood
aspect of the well-known adage "location, location,
location," demonstrating that the conceptualization of

This paper addresses labor markets in
Haiti, including farm and nonfarm employment and income
generation. The analyses are based on the first Living
Conditions Survey of 7,186 households covering the whole
country and representative at the regional level. The
findings suggest that four key determinants of employment
and productivity in nonfarm activities are education,
gender, location, and migration status. This is emphasized

The policy reforms called for in the
transition from a socialist command economy to a developing
market economy bring both opportunities and risks to a
country's citizens. In poor economies, the initial
focus of reform efforts is naturally the rural sector, which
is where one finds the bulk of the population and almost all
the poor. Economic development will typically entail moving
many rural households out of farming into more remunerative

O crescente posicionamento da China, de mera aquiescência para um manifesto activismo, no que concerne os assuntos africanos está a transformar a dinâmica do sistema pós-colonial (Braütigam 2009, Alden 2007; Taylor 2006). Desde o  início do processo de reforma interna, iniciada em 1978, que a fé maoísta e o altruísmo revolucionário deram lugar a empreendedores comerciais e a defensores das formas de mercado capitalista, agindo conscientemente em interesse próprio.

Because agriculture is the economic backbone of most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia, any meaningful sustainable development program in the continent must therefore be anchored in the sector. The concept for this study on agribusiness indicators was based on the vital role that agribusiness plays in agricultural development. The study focuses on agribusiness indicators (ABI) to identify and isolate the determining factors that lead private investors and other stakeholders to participate in agribusiness and to engage in discourse regarding its development.