The forestry sector in Moldova faces
significant governance and sustainability challenges. The
insufficient level of forest coverage in Moldova has a
serious impact on environment and overall economic growth in
the country. The situation is exacerbated by the reportedly
intense pressure on forest resources exerted by the human
factor. Illegal logging and grazing are considered as
significant factors that contribute to forest loss. There is

The Congo Basin is among the most poorly
served areas in terms of transport infrastructure in the
world, and it faces a challenging environment with dense
tropical forests crisscrossed by numerous rivers that
require construction of numerous bridges. Given such
complexities, constructing transport infrastructure as well
as properly maintaining it is certainly a key challenge for
the Congo Basin countries. Recent studies indicate that

This paper uses mirror statistics and
research in the field to estimate the magnitude of
Tunisia's informal trade with Libya and Algeria. The
aim is to assess the scale of this trade and to evaluate the
amount lost in taxes and duties as a result as well as to
assess the local impact in terms of income generation. The
main findings show that within Tunisian trade as a whole,
informal trade accounts for only a small share (5 percent of

The Government of Bangladesh, with help
from the World Bank and other donors, has provided aid to a
local agency called Infrastructure Development Company
Limited and its partner organizations to devise a credit
scheme for marketing solar home system units and making
these an affordable alternative to grid electricity for poor
people in remote areas. This paper uses household survey
data to examine the financing scheme behind the

This paper examines spending plans
suggested by the recent literature regarding Dutch disease
and examines their implications to Niger relative to its
expanding mineral sector. The key to the benefits of
significant mineral revenue lies with the productivity and
supply responses of spending. If significant output gain is
ensured, then there is little difference across the spending
plans in their effects on real consumption. The overshooting

This paper contributes to the
long-standing debate on the merits of decentralized
beneficiary targeting in the administration of development
programs, focusing on the large-scale Malawi Farm Input
Subsidy Program. Nationally-representative household survey
data are used to systematically analyze the decentralized
targeting performance of the program during the 2009-2010
agricultural season. The analysis begins with a standard

While self-assessments of welfare have
become popular for measuring poverty and estimating welfare
effects, the methods can be deceptive given systematic
heterogeneity in respondents' scales. Little is known
about this problem. This study uses specially-designed
surveys in three countries, Tajikistan, Guatemala, and
Tanzania, to study scale heterogeneity. Respondents were
asked to score stylized vignettes, as well as their own

This paper pilots an approach to
identifying, categorizing, and mapping public land owned by
the central, state, and local government in urban developed
areas of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. The methodology uses
information on plot sizes, location, and ownership that is
publicly available for all areas covered by town planning
schemes. The study examines the extent of unutilized and
underutilized public land, which excludes all cemeteries,

This paper presents simulations for the
period 2013-2030 of measures that permit increased spending
on infrastructure and human development, the priority areas
in Liberia's 2013-2017 "Agenda for
Transformation" and for its national vision, Liberia
Rising 2030. The simulations are carried out with a Liberian
version of MAMS (Maquette for Millennium Development Goals
Simulations), a Computable General Equilibrium model.

In Africa, farmers have been reluctant
to take up new varieties of staple crops developed to boost
smallholder yields and rural incomes. Low fertilizer use is
often mentioned as a proximate cause, but some believe the
problem originates with incomplete input markets. As a
remedy, African governments have introduced technology
adoption programs with fertilizer subsidies as a core
component. Still, the links between market performance and

This report summarizes the findings of
the Uganda Sustainable Land Management Public Expenditure
Review (SLM PER). The SLM PER was undertaken to achieve six
main objectives: (i) establish a robust data base on
SLM-related public expenditure that can support credible
empirical analysis; (ii) develop a sound methodology for
conducting SLM PERs, which could guide similar work in the
future; (iii) analyze the level and composition of SLM

This report explores the role of trade
facilitation and logistics in driving export and ultimately
national competitiveness. It posits that this area of trade
consists of three interrelated pillars: (i) transport
infrastructure and logistics services; (ii) regulatory
procedures for exports and imports; and (iii) supply chain
organization. Transport infrastructure and logistics
services relate to the physical aspects of trade flows.