The Horn of Africa (HoA) region has many
security and development challenges whose origins and
consequences go well beyond the borders of individual
countries. It is also a region with many human assets and
resource endowments, and some of the most dynamic economies
in the world. Despite its numerous challenges, the Horn of
Africa offers significant potential to address cross-border
issues that can help transform its countries and the region.

The trend toward ever greater
urbanization continues unabated across the globe. According
to the United Nations, by 2025 closes to 5 billion people
will live in urban areas. Many cities, especially in the
developing world, are set to explode in size. Over the next
decade and a half, Lagos is expected to increase its
population 50 percent, to nearly 16 million. Naturally,
there is an active debate on whether restricting the growth

This paper takes stock of the current
state of banking systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and
discusses recent developments including innovations that
might help Africa leapfrog more traditional banking models.
Using an array of different data, the paper documents that
African banking systems are shallow but stable. African
banks are well capitalized and over-liquid, but lend less to
the private sector than banks in non-African developing

A disproportionately large number of
Roma in Europe today face deep poverty, social exclusion,
and poor living conditions. Improving these is critical to
achieving the targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy, the
European Union s 10-year growth strategy, which aims to
reduce poverty, social exclusion, early school leaving, and
increase school attainment and employment by 2020. The EU
Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies (NRIS) up

The great 21st-century migration into
cities will present both a great challenge for humanity and
a significant opportunity for global economic growth. This
paper describes the diverse patterns that define this
metropolitan migration. It then lays out a framework for
understanding the costs and benefits of new arrivals through
migration's externalities and the challenges and policy
tradeoffs that confront city stakeholders. The paper

Uganda is one of the poorest countries
in Africa with a gross national income (GNI) per capita in
2010 of United States (U.S.) $500 compared with the
Sub-Saharan regional average of $1,170. Uganda's
population growth of over 3 percent per year, one of the
highest in the world, puts a considerable strain on public
sector service delivery, not just for water and sanitation
but also in other areas such as health, education, and

Rapid urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa
places immense pressure on urban services to meet the needs
of the burgeoning urban population. Although several
country- or city-level reports offer insight into the
housing challenges of specific places, little is known about
regional patterns affecting housing markets. This lack of
clear knowledge on the relative importance of the factors
influencing households' housing demand in countries in

Many developing countries display
remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are
incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost
of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be
very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and
productivity growth. One strand of the theoretical
literature suggests that such high levels of concentration
may be the result of restrictive trade policies that trigger

Urbanization is the single most
important transformation that the African continent will
undergo this century. More than half of Africa's
population will live in its cities by 2040. In the face of
rapid urbanization, there is a narrow window of opportunity
to harness the potential of cities as engines of economic
growth, and use this as a powerful leverage to achieve
sustainable development and poverty reduction. Despite its

This report looks at the growth poles
policy in Romania to determine ways to increase its
effectiveness and efficiency for the next programming cycle
(2014-2020). The growth poles policy in Romania has been
initiated in 2008, as a means to support a balanced economic
development of the country, while still targeting
investments to maximize economic impact. A total of seven
growth poles have been designated and are currently

This paper examines the employment
growth of Indian districts from 2000 to 2010 in the
manufacturing and services sectors. Specialization and
diversity metrics that combine industries in both sectors
are calculated and related to subsequent job growth. The
analysis finds robust and consistent evidence that the
diversity of industries in the district across the two
sectors links to subsequent job growth. Somewhat

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