How effective are public interventions in addressing significant regional disparities in formal manufacturing concentration in a developing economy? The authors examine the aggregate and sectoral geographic concentration of manufacturing industries for Indonesia, and estimate the impact of factors influencing location choice at the firm level. They distinguish between natural advantage, including infrastructure endowments, wage rates, and natural resource endowments, and production externalities, arising from the co-location of firms in the same or complementary industries.

The rapid urbanization in many
developing countries over the past half century seems to
have been accompanied by excessively high levels of
concentration of the urban population in very large cities.
Some degree of urban concentration may be desirable
initially to reduce inter- and intraregional infrastructure
expenditures. But in a mature system of cities, economic
activity is more spread out. Standardized manufacturing

This Country Economic Memorandum is the
first economic report in a decade. It gives priority to
updating knowledge about the evolution of social and
economic developments during the 1990s. It reviewareas of
progress in macroeconomic reforms and the lack of success in
governance and institutional reforms. Substantial reforms
were undertaken in this period , but the civil war continued
to have a serious negative impact on Sudan's people and

The authors describe and analyze river basin management in the most intensely urbanized and industrialized region of Brazil. The area covered by the Alto Tiete basin is almost coterminous with the Metropolitan Region of Sao Paulo. With a drainage area of 5,985 square kilometers (2.4 percent of the state's territory), the basin encompasses 35 of the 39 municipalities and 99.5 percent of the population of Greater Sao Paulo. Population growth and urban sprawl in Greater Sao Paulo have been rapid and uncontrolled in recent decades.

In conformity with its objective of
functioning as a local Government, Kathmandu Metropolitan
City (KMC) sought the assistance of the World Bank for the
preparation of a City Development Strategy (CDS). The
various sectoral as well as integrated strategies presented
in this document seem to be an overwhelming demand on KMC
with its limited manpower and money. A CDS is essential if
KMC is to focus its development potential. The optimism lies

Urbanization, which is almost completed
now in developed countries and even in Latin America, is now
proceeding in much of Asia at an unprecedented rate. Many of
the countries in the region have up to half their population
now living urban lifestyles and increasingly also living in
urban regions. The forms that urbanization is taking in the
developing countries, however, are problematic. Towns and
cities that were never planned to have large populations are

This poverty assessment for Romania
covers the period from 1995 to 2002, since the last World
Bank poverty analysis reviewed the evolution of poverty from
1989 to 1994, the early years of transition from a socialist
to a market economy. This assessment's objective is to
understand how poverty has evolved and how economic growth
and social protection programs, 10 percent of GDP, have
affected poverty, as Romania prepares for accession to the

Poverty and economic stagnation
characterize most rural areas in Peru. National growth has
been slow and uneven since the mid-1970s, benefiting urban
areas rather than rural ones. Between 1985 and 2000, the
number of poor people increased by 71 percent. The incidence
of poverty (67 percent) and extreme poverty (40 percent) is
highest in rural areas, reaching 73 percent (poverty) and 41
percent (extreme poverty) in the sierra. This means that 4.2

The reduction of infant and child
death is one of the eight millennium development goals
(MDGs). In addition, one of the goal one indicators is child
malnutrition. A central question for the development
community is to understand the factors underlying child
health and nutritional status. What are the determinants of
these indicators, which of these determinants are amenable
to policy intervention, and which are the most effective

The country's approach to poverty reduction is outlined in the 2003 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, and draws on a development approach in which growth and poverty reduction are mutually reinforcing. Three areas of focus are identified in the PRSP: (1) restoration of law and improvements in governance; (2) promotion of broad-based growth; and (3) promotion of systems for establishing human and material security. The DPR presents Madagascar's development policy agenda in an integrated framework within which issues of policy consistency, priorities, and sequencing could be addressed.

This study provides a review of the food
and agricultural sector in Ukraine. It assesses the current
status of the food and agricultural sector with special
reference to the agricultural policy regime and the form and
level of government support to the sector. The paper reviews
the sector's readiness to compete on open global
markets for food and agricultural products. Given the
importance and sensitivity of the food and agriculture

The proliferation of urban slums is due
in large part to obsolete regulatory, legal and
institutional frameworks at the local level governing land
use, development standards, land registration and titling.
These regulations are often exclusionary, insisting on
development norms and standards that are outside the realm
of the poor to pay and subdivision procedures are often over
burdensome, leading to informal land subdivision, thus