Key economic variables in Cote
d'Ivoire vary widely from their long-run trends, moving
in multi-year cyclical patterns. Cocoa prices move with
cycles in growth rates, capital stock, real exchange rates,
terms of trade, cocoa production, and coffee production and
output. These patterns have become more pronounced since the
1970s as volatility increased. This paper characterize these
cycles, estimates the cocoa price-quantity relationship, and

This report reviews Community Driven
Development (CDD) projects in Lao People's Democratic
Republic (PDR) to determine their effectiveness in
channeling resources to communities for poverty reduction.
The study examines three CDD projects in depth: the Poverty
Reduction Fund, the Village Investment for the Poor (both
supported by the World Bank), and the Government-financed
Village Development Fund. Through close analysis of these

Natural and extensively used ecosystems regulate regional climate and water cycles, store carbon, and provide a range of other goods and services to human societies. Disruption of their functioning may have severe impacts on regional agriculture. Under the combined pressures of human land use and changing climate, ecosystem functioning is threatened if the rate of change exceeds natural adaptation potential. Ecosystem conserving management could concentrate on regions with a high risk of catastrophic change, if they were known.

How the production of crops and livestock products has evolved in the different regions over the past 45 years is studied. The paper focuses on how the increased supply of and demand for agricultural commodities have affected terms of agricultural trade and the sources of agricultural growth. While significant progress has been made in raising food consumption per capita (in developing countries consumption increased from an average of 2100 kcal/person/day in 1970 to almost 2700 kcal/person/day, there are still more than 850 million undernourished people worldwide.

Using data obtained from Living Standards Measurement Surveys of rural households, the socioeconomic trends in rural households is defined for a limited set of countries in the 90's and 2000's. These trends are studied in light of seven categories of rural economies: self-employed agriculture, employer agriculture (land owners), employee agriculture, self-employed not agriculture; employer not agriculture, employee not agriculture, not in the labor force. Relative differences in income, consumption and poverty are documented.

Large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income. This article examines the impact of rural-to-urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of Hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey. Since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income, we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income, poverty, and inequality would have been in the absence of migration.

An essential part of the Pakistan
Infrastructure Implementation Capacity Assessment (PIICA)
was an assessment of available resources and the demand
generated for these resources by the proposed infrastructure
projects. A demand-supply gap analysis for Human Resources
(HR), major construction materials and equipment keeping in
view the Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) for up to
2010 has been reviewed to better understand the constraints

We conduct an empirical analysis of the geographic, economic, and social factors that contributed to the spread of civil war in Nepal over the period 1996-2006. This within-country analysis complements existing cross-country studies on the same subject. Using a detailed dataset to track civil war casualties across space and over time, several patterns are documented.

This paper examines the links between the assets and the economic activities of rural households in developing countries to provide insight into how the promotion of certain key assets-particularly education, land, and infrastructure-influences the economic choices of these households. Nationally representative data from 15 countries which form part of the rural income-generating activities (RIGA) database are used in the analysis.

The North West Frontier Province (NWFP)
is the third largest province of Pakistan. The province is
landlocked and the land routes to the north are few and
difficult, passing through hilly terrain. The province
itself is largely mountainous, with only 30 percent
cultivated land. Nearly 50 percent of the population lives
in the mountainous and arid areas. The province shares a
long border with eastern and southern Afghanistan and most

The globalization of corporate finance also points to other challenges. As emerging-market corporations have expanded their international operations, they have increased their exposure to interest rate and currency risks. Concerns are growing that several countries in emerging Europe and Central Asia are experiencing a credit boom engendered by cross-border borrowing by banks of untested financial health and stamina. Some of these banks have increased their foreign exchange exposure to worrisome levels, a concern that warrants special attention from national policymakers.

The objective of the urban transport
strategy note (UTSN) is to provide an assessment of the
urban transport system in Greater Cairo (GC), identify what
now appear to be the most pressing urban transport problems,
and framework for urgent policy actions and investment
priorities that would be the basis of a formal transport
strategy to be adopted and implemented by the authorities of
the metropolitan area of Cairo. This note is essentially