The World Bank's strategy for
Africa's future recognizes the central importance of
industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the consequent
creation of productive jobs for Africans, which have long
been a preoccupation of African leaders and policy makers.
This book represents an attempt to address these issues. The
book stresses that, while the recent turnaround in
Africa's economic growth is encouraging, this growth

The majority of firms in most developing
countries are informal. The authors of this paper conducted
a field experiment in Sri Lanka that provided incentives for
informal firms to formalize. Offering only information about
the registration process and reimbursement for direct
registration costs had no impact on formalization. Adding
payments equivalent to one-half to one month's profits
for the median firm led to registration of around one-fifth

La Oficina Regional de la FAO para América Latina y el Caribe, con la colaboración de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) y la Organización Internacional de Trabajo (OIT) realizó durante los años 2009-2011 una investigación regional titulada Políticas de mercado de trabajo y pobreza rural. En el marco de esta investigación se profundizó el análisis sobre las condiciones laborales en un sector que concentra una importante proporción de mano de obra femenina.

The female population deficit in India
has been explained in a number of ways, but the great
heterogeneity in the deficit across districts within India
still remains an open question. This paper argues that
across India, a largely agrarian economy, soil texture
varies exogenously and determines the workability of the
soil and the technology used in land preparation. Deep
tillage, possible only in lighter and looser loamy soils,

Green growth is about making growth
processes resource-efficient, cleaner and more resilient
without necessarily slowing them. This paper aims at
clarifying these concepts in an analytical framework and at
proposing foundations for green growth. The green growth
approach proposed here is based on (1) focusing on what
needs to happen over the next 5-10 years before the world
gets locked into patterns that would be prohibitively

This paper revisits the role of land
measurement error in the inverse farm size and productivity
relationship. By making use of data from a nationally
representative household survey from Uganda, in which
self-reported land size information is complemented by plot
measurements collected using Global Position System devices,
the authors reject the hypothesis that the inverse
relationship may just be a statistical artifact linked to

Interest in farmland is rising. And,
given commodity price volatility, growing human and
environmental pressures, and worries about food security,
this interest will increase, especially in the developing
world. One of the highest development priorities in the
world must be to improve smallholder agricultural
productivity, especially in Africa. Smallholder productivity
is essential for reducing poverty and hunger, and more and

Around the world, countries are becoming
urbanized at an astonishing pace. As countries develop
economically, their economies shift from mainly rural and
agrarian to increasingly urban and nonagricultural. This
rural-urban transformation presents both opportunities and
challenges for development. When managed effectively, the
transformation spurs growth and reduces poverty. When
managed poorly, however, the process can result in stark

This book challenges policy makers who
oversee the rice sector in Southeast Asia to reexamine
deep-rooted precepts about their responsibilities. As an
essential first step, it calls on them to redefine food
security. Fixating on national self-sufficiency has been
costly and counterproductive. In its stead, coordination and
cooperation can both improve rice production at home and
structure expanding regional trade. To enhance regional food

The World Development Report (WDR) has
become such a fixture that it is easy to forget the
circumstances under which it was born and the Bank's
motivation for producing such a report at that time. In the
first chapter of this essay, the authors provide a brief
background on the circumstances of newly independent
developing countries and summarize some of the main strands
of the emerging field of development economics. This

This report looks beyond the current
global financial crisis to the restoration of dynamic
long-run growth in Serbia. The answer in this report is that
Serbia will need to fundamentally alter its growth model to
compete effectively in world markets. The past model relying
on excessive inflows of capital and credit that, in part,
fuelled a consumption boom has run its course in all
European countries. Serbia must shift to a greater export

The Government of Malawi has since 2005
been pursuing a growth strategy mainly based on increasing
the volume of agricultural exports. This entails that Malawi
should endeavor to improve the competitiveness of its
agricultural commodities so as to gain an increasing share
of the regional and international markets. This paper
analyzes the competitiveness of the country's key
agricultural commodities -- tobacco, maize, cotton, and rice