First tested in Mexico in 2003, and most
recently applied in 2009 in Argentina, the World Bank has
developed a model to incorporate gender equity into private
sector organizations while simultaneously enhancing their
business. Under the model, participating organizations
conduct a self-diagnosis to identify gender biases and gaps
in the operations. This baseline is then used to create and
subsequently implement an action plan to address these

The Government of Cameroon has declared
poverty reduction through strong and sustainable economic
growth the central objective of its socioeconomic policy.
This paper uses available household survey data to assess
the performance of the economy with respect to this
objective over the period 1996-2007. The authors use
counterfactual decompositions based on both the Shapley
method and the generalized Oaxaca-Blinder framework to

The consensus among scholars and
policymakers that "institutions matter" for
development has led inexorably to a conclusion that
"history matters," since institutions clearly form
and evolve over time. Unfortunately, however, the next
logical step has not yet been taken, which is to recognize
that historians (and not only economic historians) might
also have useful and distinctive insights to offer. This

This paper presents counterfactual
decompositions based on both the Shapley method and a
generalization of the Oaxaca-Blinder approach to identify
proximate factors that might explain differences in the
distribution of economic welfare in Cameroon in 1996-2007.
In particular, the analysis uses re-centered influence
function regressions to link the growth incidence curve for
2001-2007 to household characteristics and account for

How should Tajikistan adapt to ongoing
and future climate change, in particular given the many
pressing development challenges it currently faces? The
paper argues that for developing countries like Tajikistan,
faster economic and social development is the best possible
defense against climate change. It presents some key
findings from a recent nationally representative household
survey to illustrate the strong public support for more

The paper assesses the costs and
household level benefits of migrating overseas from
Bangladesh. The authors survey households who have had
overseas migrants to assess their characteristics compared
to non-migrants. They also compute various types of
migration and remittance related transaction costs and
discuss the channels by which overseas migration is
financed, remittances sent and the constraints faced by the

Nigeria's vision of 2020 is a bold
desire to be among the top twenty economies by the year
2020. The economy has posted impressive growth figures since
2003 driven by higher oil prices and a series of home-grown,
economic reforms. The country is now firmly on the road to
middle-income status. This Investment Climate Analysis is
built on a 2,300 firm survey and provides evidence-based
recommendations designed to support the vision 2020. Survey

The issue of regional differences in
development has moved to the center of the development
debate in Sri Lanka, partly after the release of regional
poverty data. For the past many years, there have been
significant and increasing differences between the Western
province and the rest of the country in terms of per capita
income levels, growth rates of per capita income, poverty
rates, and the structure of provincial economies. The

Ethiopia's rural non-farm sector is
significant and participation is increasing. The sector is
particularly important for women and poorer households.
Non-farm enterprises provide income-earning opportunities to
those lacking alternative options and supplementary income
for farming households. This report is organized into seven
chapters. The first chapter lays the analytical groundwork
for assessing the rural investment climate in Ethiopia and

Measuring the poverty and distributional
impact of the global crisis for developing countries is not
easy, given the multiple channels of impact and the limited
availability of real-time data. Commonly-used approaches are
of limited use in addressing questions like who are being
affected by the crisis and by how much, and who are
vulnerable to falling into poverty if the crisis deepens?
This paper develops a simple micro-simulation method,

The authors use recent data from the
2006 National Family Health Survey of India to explore the
relationship between religion and demographic behavior. They
find that fertility and mortality vary not only between
religious groups, but also across caste groups. These groups
also differ with respect to socio-economic status. The
central finding of this paper is that despite their
socio-economic disadvantages, Muslims have higher fertility

This study documents the long-term
welfare effects of household non-traditional agricultural
export (NTX) adoption. The analysis uses a unique panel
dataset, which spans the period 1985-2005, and employs
difference-in-differences estimation to investigate the
long-term impact of non-traditional agricultural export
adoption on changes in household consumption status and
asset position in the Central Highlands of Guatemala. Given