This report was prepared as part of the
World Bank engagement in the Philippines to support Islamic
Finance and Financial Inclusion. It provides an overview on
the context for the development of Islamic finance in the
Philippines and is accompanied by two focused reports
providing further detail and suggestions on enhancing
financial inclusion in the Philippines through Islamic
microfinance and assessment of the status of financial

Over the past two decades,
community-based approaches to project delivery have become a
popular means for governments and development agencies to
improve the alignment of projects with the needs of rural
communities and increase the participation of villagers in
project design and implementation. This paper briefly
summarizes the results of an impact evaluation of the
National Solidarity Program, a community-driven development

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

Bulgaria experienced strong economic
growth prior to and shortly after joining the European Union
(EU) in 2007. Under the better regulation program, the
government adopted over 100 measures to reduce the
regulatory and administrative burden, but no formal
mechanism was introduced to regularly monitor and review its
implementation at the national or municipal level. Some
areas, in which entrepreneurs expected to see improved

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

This paper presents trends in monetary
and nonmonetary dimensions of wellbeing in Ethiopia using
data from the Household Consumption and Expenditure and
Welfare Monitoring surveys implemented in 2000, 2005, and
2011. The paper provides evidence on changes in overlapping
deprivations using a non-index approach to multidimensional
poverty. It assesses the performance of various dimensions
in education, health, and living standards, taking one

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

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic,
fiscal, and governance impact of gold mining in Mali. The
analysis finds that, at the national level, mining plays an
important role by contributing to export earnings and
overall government fiscal revenue. In 2013, the mining
sector represented 7 percent of gross domestic product,
contributed 1.5 percent to growth in total gross domestic
product, and accounted for 65 percent of total export

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

This document presents the Systematic
Country Diagnosis (SCD) for Mali. The SCD was prepared
following a consultative process within and outside the
World Bank. It identifies constraints and opportunities for
achieving the twin goals of ending poverty and improving
shared prosperity by 2030 while acknowledging (i) the need
for selectivity in pro-poor interventions, and (ii) the many
competing ‘binding’ reasons for poverty in Mali. The

This paper estimates the effect of
income inequality on real gross domestic product per capita
using a panel of 104 countries during the period 1970–2010.
The empirical analysis addresses endogeneity issues by using
instrumental variables estimation and controlling for
country and time fixed effects. The analysis finds that, on
average, income inequality has a significant negative effect
on transitional gross domestic product per capita growth and

This note is a summary of a report that
considers urban areas as the complement to rural areas that
will allow the Plurinational State of Bolivia to achieve the
goals set forth in its Patriotic Agenda for the Bicentennial
2025. The report uses data available at the national level
from censuses and household surveys from the National
Statistics Institute (INE) and the Social and Economic
Policy Analysis Unit of the Ministry of Development Planning