Industrial parks are as popular as they
are controversial, in India and globally. At their best they
align infrastructure provision and agglomeration economies
to jolt industrial growth. More often, they generate
negative spill-overs, provide handouts, sit empty, or simply
do not get built. This paper disaggregates how parks are
built and how they fail. It contextualizes parks in India,
followed by a thick case study of an innovative scheme that

While the real sector and governments
(along with a few micro economists) have long recognized the
core economic role that the insurance function plays, the
mainstream economics profession has largely treated it as
invisible background. This literature review of the relevant
research, most of which has been carried out in the past few
decades, demonstrates that the insurance sector contributes
at a basic level to inclusive economic growth and the

The World Bank Group (WBG) has a long
experience in engaging in biodiversity with world-class
expertise in the field. It has been the single largest
funder of biodiversity investments since the late 1980s. The
WBG investments have largely been of two kinds: (1)
investments in biodiversity, aimed at the conservation and
sustainable use of species, habitats, and ecosystems that
sustain healthy ecosystems, while enhancing people's

Over the past century or so, a wide
assortment of pre-harvest agreements, joint ventures, deals,
and pledges that can be termed contract farming have been
brokered between farmers and buyers. During the 1980s and
1990s, contract farming was frequently criticized as a
potentially exploitative arrangement, which favored the more
powerful buyer and left the small-scale farmer and the
environment vulnerable to abuse. More recently, there is

Developed under the auspices of the
Partnership for Market Readiness (PMR) and with advice and
input from its Baselines Working Group, this document offers
guidance and options for the development of emissions
baselines, a key component for assessing the emission
reductions in in both market and non-market based
mechanisms. In the context of this document, a baseline
refers to a scenario that describes expected or desired

This paper uses a stochastic dynamic
programming model to characterize the optimal
savings-consumption decisions and the role of livestock
inventories as a buffer stock in rural Ethiopia. The results
show that relatively land-rich households use accumulation
and liquidation of cattle and other animal inventories for
partial consumption smoothing, while low-income households
appear not to do so. The results highlight the need for

Nepal needs a new economic model to
achieve faster and sustained growth as well as further
improvements in human development and poverty outcomes.
Economic growth, while ro¬bust at around 4 percent annual
average since 2005, is far from the level needed to achieve
the government s ambitious targets. The economy, highly
dependent on remittances, lacks the nec¬essary dynamism.
While substantial gains have been made to reduce poverty and

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

According to the United Nations
population fund, the world is undergoing the largest wave of
urban growth in history, with more people now living in
cities than in rural areas. Cities are also responsible for
a high proportion of global carbon emissions, which are the
main driver of anthropogenic climate change. By taking the
lead on low carbon development, cities have the opportunity
to engage in an important dialogue about sustainable

What is the relationship between
employment and conflict in fragile states? Although this
question cannot be definitively answered, a large body of
research suggests that in countries emerging from conflict,
peace is likelier to endure if growth can be rapidly
restored and translated into economic opportunities for
large segments of the population. With a focus on
Sub-Saharan Africa, this report attempts to address the

This strategic environmental assessment
(SEA) is a technical piece intended to assist in the current
and future identification of priority industrial pollutants
and economic instruments to minimize industrial waste. This
industrial sector SEA is one of six pieces of technical
support envisioned by the Himachal Pradesh (HP) inclusive
green growth (IGG) development policy loan (DPL) to fill
knowledge gaps and strengthen operational success of the

Accelerating inclusive growth - the type
that creates more and better jobs and reduces poverty - is a
key challenge for the Philippines. Instead of rising
agricultural productivity paving the way for the development
of a vibrant labor-intensive manufacturing sector and
subsequently of a high-skill services sector, the converse
has taken place in the Philippines. Agricultural
productivity has remained depressed, manufacturing has