Despite widespread agreement among economists that labor-intensive manufacturing has contributed mightily to rapid development in China and other fast-growing economies, most developing countries have had little success in raising the share of manufacturing in production, employment, or exports. Tales from the Development Frontier recounts efforts to establish light manufacturing clusters in several Asian and African countries, looking in particular at China.

This assessment of Moldova current state
of compliance with the Basel core principles for effective
banking supervision (BCPs) was undertaken as part of a joint
International Monetary Fund (IMF) - World Bank mission in
connection with a broader financial sector assessment
program exercise. This version of the assessment has a
greater focus on risk management policies and practices
implemented by supervised institutions and their assessment

This report by the Independent
Evaluation Group (IEG) summarizes the experiences of and
draws lessons from the country program evaluations of four
natural resource-rich countries: the Plurinational State of
Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Zambia. It concludes that
although the challenges identified in these countries are
not unique, they manifest themselves with particular
intensity in three closely interrelated areas that need to

Income differences arise from many
sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort
differences, might be associated with faster economic
growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for
investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. This
study uses two new metadata sets, consisting of 118
household surveys and 134 Demographic and Health Surveys, to
revisit the question of whether inequality is associated

Ecosystem accounting is a coherent and integrated approach to the assessment of

It is clear that climate change involves changes in temperature and precipitation and, therefore, directly affects land productivity. However, this is not the only channel for climatic change to affect agro-systems. Biodiversity is also subject to climatic change. The present paper illustrates a unique attempt to economically assess the potential effects of climate change induced impacts of biodiversity on the agricultural sector in terms of changes in land productivity, changes in agricultural output and, ultimately, changes in national GDPs.

India’s sustained and rapid economic
growth offers an opportunity to lift millions out of
poverty. But this may come at a steep cost to the nation’s
environment and natural resources. This insightful book
analyzes India’s growth from an economic perspective and
assesses whether India can grow in a “green” and sustainable
manner. Three key issues are addressed. The first is the

The post-2015 development agenda is being shaped as we speak. The role of identity and identification
and its importance to development outcomes places it within the new Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG) agenda—specifically as one of the proposed SDG targets (#16.9), but also as a key enabler
of the efficacy of many other SDG targets. Although there is no one model for providing legal
identity, this SDG would urge states to ensure that all have free or low-cost access to widely accepted,

What is the utility from obtaining more
precise values of natural resource objects (rainforests),
through surveys or other similar information gathering? In
the value of information problems studied here, a principal
who wishes to preserve a resource sets a price to offer to a
seller without knowing precisely the protection value or
opportunity value, to the seller. The value of information
related to more precise information about the protection

The World Bank (WB) supports the global
reporting initiative (GRI) and is one of the GRI chapter
groups of founding members. The topics deemed relevant for
disclosure were identified by assessing annual corporate
priorities outlined by the institutions’ Boards and
President, considering stakeholder input, as well as
ascertaining sustainability impacts of carrying out the
mission and vision. To determine if a GRI aspect is material

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

The World Bank Group, DFAT-Australia,
and Carnival Australia have partnered to conduct this study
of the economic impact of cruise ship tourism in Vanuatu.
Data gathering and analysis for this study was carried out
by Net Balance Management Group. Over the past 10 years,
Vanuatu’s cruise arrivals have grown by 15 percent per year.
Cruising to Vanuatu has been buoyed by an advantageous
location within a few days’ sail of Australia, a varied