The overall goal of this report is to
assist the World Bank Group (WBG) to achieve greater impact
for women from its current activities in agribusiness in
Papua New Guinea (PNG), and to provide clear recommendations
on additional interventions aimed at improving outcomes for
women. The report focuses on the supply chains for coffee,
cocoa, and horticultural products (fresh produce), as there
is a wealth of knowledge on these supply chains and on

Measuring poverty and tracking it over
time is an important prerequisite to national economic
planning. Absence of official data on household expenditure
or poverty line hampered the ability of Iraqi policymakers
to understand the extent of the problem, analyze their
causes, and devise appropriate policies. Iraq household
socioeconomic survey (IHSES) 2006-07 was the first survey of
its kind since 1988 to cover all 18 governorates. The survey

In the 20th Century, Brazil rapidly
urbanized and is now not only an urban nation but a
metropolitan one. Brazils sprawling regioes metropolitanas
(metropolitan regions, or RMs, which are municipal clusters)
are now home to almost 50 million people and much of the
countrys economic vitality. The RM spatial level and its
supporting governmental institutions have thus become
critical to Brazils future development. While challenges

Myanmar is a country in transition with
great regional diversity. It is still a relatively young
country with the highest share of its population at active
working age. Myanmar’s more pressing needs are the
following: a) reducing the incidence of poverty and
improving human development outcomes, with a particular
emphasis on reaching the poor and vulnerable. Children from
poor families fare worse when it comes to nutrition, and

This paper discusses how catastrophe
crop risk models can be used to assess food security needs
at the sovereign level for the purpose of risk transfer. The
rationale for a system to evaluate food security needs at
the national level is discussed. The role of technology and
remote sensing data availability as an enabler of
catastrophe crop risk models is discussed followed by a
description of the framework of catastrophe crop models for

China has used two main spatial policies
to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted
labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration
system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a
96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper
develops a structural new economic geography model to
examine the impacts of these policies. Fitting the model to
available data allows simulating counterfactual scenarios

This issue of Handshake focuses on
natural resource PPPs that are making a difference. In
Cartagena, Colombia, a hybrid public-private agency is
profiled that has standardized water service to residents
while restoring the coast, and in the process, contributed
to political stabilization. Around Africas Lake Victoria, an
environmental management initiative with the potential to
reduce the pollution and resource footprint of industrial

Central place theory predicts that
agglomeration can arise from external shocks. This paper
investigates whether gold mining is a catalyst for
proto-urbanization in rural Ghana. Using cross-sectional
data, the analysis finds that locations within 10 kilometers
from gold mines have more night light and proportionally
higher employment in industry and services and in the wage
sector. Non-farm employment decreases at 20–30 kilometers

This paper provides new empirical
insights on the joint distribution of consumption, income,
and wealth in three of the poorest countries in the world —
Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda — all located in Sub-Saharan
Africa (SSA). The first finding is that while income
inequality is similar to that of the United States (US),
wealth inequality is barely one-third that of the US.
Similarly, while the top of the income distribution (1 and

Africa has great potential for
agriculture. Although international commodity prices have
been buoyant, Africa’s supply response seems to be weak. A
variety of constraints may exist. Using the case of
Tanzania, the paper examines the impact of market
connectivity, domestic and international, on farmers’ crop
choices. It is shown that the international market
connectivity, measured by transport costs to the maritime

Nepal depends entirely on imports for
meeting its demand for petroleum products, which account for
the largest share in total import volume. Diesel is the main
petroleum product consumed in the country and accounts for
38 percent of the total national CO2 emissions from fuel
consumption. There is a general perception that the country
would economically benefit if part of imported diesel is
substituted with domestically produced jatropha-based

The contribution of women to labor in
African agriculture is regularly quoted in the range of 60
to 80 percent. Using individual-disaggregated, plot-level
labor input data from nationally representative household
surveys across six Sub-Saharan African countries, this study
estimates the average female labor share in crop production
at 40 percent. It is slightly above 50 percent in Malawi,
Tanzania, and Uganda, and substantially lower in Nigeria (37