Theft of public assets from developing
countries is an immense problem with a staggering
development impact. These thefts diverts valuable public
resources from addressing the abject poverty and fragile
infrastructure often present in such countries. Although the

Executive Directors continued to play an
important role as the World Bank faced many challenges in a
global post crisis economy. The Board considered a number of
key documents in preparation for the committee on
development effectiveness meetings. These included the World

Preparation of the $1.45 billion Nam
Theun 2 (NT2) project in the Lao People's Democratic
Republic (Lao PDR) represented an important milestone for
the government, the developers, international partners, and
other stakeholders. The story of its preparation and

This overview summarizes the key
findings of the eight chapters and one policy note. It is
organized as follows. The first section provides a
background of Guangdong, while the second describes the
current situation of inequality in the province. Next is a

The World Bank's Communication for
Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP) has spent
several years exploring the linkages between the media and
governance reform. The first stage of this process produced
public sentinel: news media and governance reform, an edited

The relatively slow pace of
Nigeria's development has often been attributed to the
phenomenon of the resource curse whereby the nature of the
state as a "rentier" dilutes accountability for
development and political actors are able to manipulate

In the past decade, the Palestinian
Authority (PA) has worked to strengthen economic governance
and combat corruption, both essential to sustained economic
growth and improved delivery of public services. This report
finds the PA has made significant progress in its public

The theme of the 2011 Philippines
development report is 'generating inclusive growth,
uplifting the poor and vulnerable'. This theme is
follows from the priorities set in President Aquino's
Social Contract and the emerging 2011-2016 Philippines
Development Plan (PDP). The PDP details the vision of

Although charcoal is the single most
important energy source for millions of urban dwellers in
Tanzania, being used by all tiers of society from laborers
to politicians, it seems to be politically neglected and
even unwanted, given that it is not considered as a possible

In recent years, the number of studies
looking at the effect of politics on economic outcomes has
flourished. For developing economies, these studies are
useful to better understand why long overdue reforms are not
implemented. The studies analyze the overall context within

Although many studies have explored the
impacts of political quotas for females, often with
ambiguous results, the underlying mechanisms and long-term
effects have received little attention. This paper uses
nation-wide data from India spanning a 15-year period to

The institutional landscape of local
dispute resolution in Bangladesh is rich: it includes the
traditional process of shalish, longstanding and impressive
civil society efforts to improve on shalish, and a somewhat
less-explored provision for gram adalat or village courts.