In the context of Romania’s push toward
sustainable and inclusive development, the government has
asked the World Bank to support the harmonization of public
investments financed by the European Union and the state
budget. The current report describes the national program
for local development (PNDL’s) framework and project cycle
and provides an overview of the program’s project portfolio
in 2014. It also draws a number of preliminary observations

The urban population in Ethiopia is
increasing rapidly. If managed proactively, urban population
growth presents a huge opportunity to shift the structure
and location of economic activity from rural agriculture to
the larger and more diversified urban industrial and service
sectors. If not managed proactively, rapid urban population
growth may pose a demographic challenge as cities struggle
to provide jobs, infrastructure and services, and housing.

The World Bank Group’s investment
climate project conducted a survey of foreign investors in
the Kyrgyz Republic - both those currently operating and
those that have terminated their operations for various
reasons. The purpose of the survey was to assess selected
aspects of the investment policy and legal environment in
place in the Kyrgyz Republic, so as to determine whether the
current regulations are investment-conducive or otherwise.

For more than a decade, Africa has enjoyed a mineral boom. is the growth mostly happening in isolated places, sectors and periods? The approach adopted in this study is two-pronged. First, through case studies, including the results of fieldwork, mining’s impacts are examined in a country-specific context for each of three countries, Ghana, Mali, and Tanzania; and second, a statistical analysis is used to test whether the indicators of welfare improve with proximity to a mine.

The major role tropical forests play in
biodiversity and climate change has led the world to search
for effective ways to slow down deforestation. Community
forest management (CFM) is an example of the broader concept
of community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). As
part of the decentralization policy in many countries,
mainly in Africa and Asia, CFM was expected to promote: (i)
a more effective stewardship of the resources by involving

Motivated by the emphasis on secure property rights as a determinant of economic development in recent literature, we use village- and household-level information from about 800 villages throughout China to explore whether legal reform increased protection of land rights against unauthorized reallocation or expropriation with below-average compensation by the state.

The 2014-2015 Romania Regional
Development 2 Program is the continuation of the World
Bank’s technical assistance to the Ministry of Regional
Development and Public Administration (MRDPA). Building on
the previous engagement, the current work addresses a
fundamental question: given Romania’s persistent development
challenges, how can the country do more with less when it
comes to the public infrastructure it needs? The key is to

New qualitative fieldwork in eight
countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) indicates that
the dramatic declines in poverty in much of the region over
the last decade do not appear to be registering very
favorably with men and women on the ground. This paper
provides a gender analysis of findings from equal numbers of
sex-specific focus groups with employed and jobless
individuals. The methodology featured a standardized package

This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD)
covers eight small Pacific island countries (PIC8):
Kiribati, Marshall Islands, the Federated States of
Micronesia, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. The
objective of the SCD is to identify the most critical
constraints and opportunities facing the PIC8 to meet the
global goals of ending absolute poverty and boosting shared
prosperity in a sustainable manner. The report is intended

The paper analyzes the design of
simplified small business tax regimes in Eastern Europe and
Central Asia and the impact of such regimes on small
business tax compliance. Although many approaches for tax
simplification exist, a general trend in the region is to
offer small businesses the option to be taxed based on their
turnover instead of net income. The study finds that many of
the regimes in place are overly simplistic and neither take

Since the industrial revolution, the
economic development of Western Europe and North America was
characterized by continuous urbanization accompanied by a
gradual phasing-in of urban land property rights over time.
Today, however, the evidence in many fast urbanizing
low-income countries points towards a different trend of
“urbanization without formalization”, with potentially
adverse effects on long-term economic growth. This paper

At the core of the very rapid growth in the number of urban dwellers living in illegal settlements is the gap between the cost or availability of legal land sites on which housing can be built and what most individuals or households can afford to pay for accommodation. For most cities, the problems are further exacerbated by the high spatial concentration of economic activities (and thus employment opportunities). This paper looks at the many ways in which governments can increase the supply and lower the cost of land for housing.