Lessons from six case studies illustrate
the complex relationships between international trade,
vulnerable ecologies and the poor. The studies, taken from
Africa, Asia and Latin America and conducted by local
researchers, are set in places where the poor live in close
proximity to ecologies that are important to global
conservation efforts, and focus on the cascading
consequences of trade policy for local livelihoods and

This paper examines whether and to what
extent amendments in inheritance legislation impact
women's physical and human capital investments, using
disaggregated household level data from India. The authors
use inheritance patterns over three generations of
individuals to assess the impact of changes in the Hindu
Succession Act that grant daughters equal coparcenary birth
rights in joint family property that were denied to

This paper examines international
experience with mobilizing funding for both capital and
recurrent costs for municipal infrastructure with a view to
identifying areas where India could improve its system of
financing infrastructure in cities. Based on international
data, the analysis shows that there is indeed a wide range
of models for funding municipal infrastructure across a
group even as relatively homogeneous as the European Union.

This paper estimates the relationship
between initial village inequality and subsequent household
income growth for a large sample of households in rural
China. Using a rich longitudinal survey spanning the years
1987-2002, and controlling for an array of household and
village characteristics, the paper finds that households
located in higher inequality villages experienced
significantly lower income growth through the 1990s.

In May 2008, the commission on growth
and development (the growth commission) issued its report
entitled 'the growth report'. In it the commission
attempted to distill what had been learned in the past two
decades, from experience and academic and policy research,
about strategies and policies that produced sustained high
growth in developing countries. It became clear in the
course of the work that politics, leadership, and political

The Tajik government in its Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper for 2010-12 set an ambitious target
of doubling Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in a decade.
Tajikistan clearly has the potential to grow at more than
seven percent a year as it has done in the recent past, but
it is not going to be easy. The potential for
'catch-up' growth from the depths of the recession
of the 1990s is largely exhausted, the external environment

This report argues that in the future
Moldova will need to develop a second engine of growth from
exports of goods and services. We argue that Moldova needs
to resurrect agro-based exports, to raise their value by
exporting to higher value markets, and develop service
exports in order to provide job opportunities for
underemployed tertiary graduates. To be successful in doing
so, the government will need to implement deep fiscal and

This report undertakes a comprehensive
assessment of Ukraine's growth experience over the past
decade. It shows how vulnerabilities were allowed to
accumulate during the economic boom. And how growth,
averaging seven percent annually between 2000 and 2008, was
achieved without tackling Ukraine's well known
weaknesses in the investment climate and public sector
governance. The report also traces the emergence of large

Economic growth in Solomon Islands since
the end of civil conflict in 2003 has been driven by rapid
expansion of the forestry sector and large increases in
international aid flows. Stocks of natural forest logs are
nearing exhaustion and, as the security situation improves,
aid flows are likely to flatten off. The Solomon Islands
Government asked the World Bank to investigate future growth
prospects. This note summarizes the findings and presents a

Togo is one of the smallest countries in
mainland Africa, with an area of 57,000 k

Cambodia's growth over 1998-2008
has been remarkable (almost 10 percent per annum for a
decade). This paper applies a "growth diagnostic"
approach to understand how this happened and how it can be
sustained. Past growth has been driven by the coincidence of
a set of historical and geographic factors (including
opportunistic policy responses), together with the use of
natural assets (although in a non sustainable way) and the

East Asia and the Pacific is a region of
dynamic growth. Women have contributed significantly to this
growth and have benefited from it through active
participation in the labor market. However, women are still
disproportionately represented in the informal sector and in
low paid work. Efforts to identify barriers to women's
business and entrepreneurial activities in the region are
critical not only to facilitate inclusive growth in a