This paper explores how the private sector can positively contribute to peace-building and conflict prevention, and how that positive private sector role can be supported and enhanced. The starting premise recognizes that the private sector exists in all conflict situations and has the potential to both exacerbate and ameliorate conflict, the outcome of which can be greatly affected by appropriate support from external partners.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been described by one senior African diplomat at the United Nations as a 'state in the making; it is not yet a state.' Further, this 'state in the making' also is a state that, with few exceptions, has been in decline since the early 1970s. The colonial era, from 1885 until 1958, was a period of nearly uninterrupted state construction; the hegemony of the Belgian colonial apparatus steadily deepened.

Women, business and the law focuses on this critical piece of the puzzle, objectively highlighting differentiations on the basis of gender in 141 economies around the world, covering six areas: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit and going to court. Women, business and the law describes regional trends and shows how economies are changing across these six areas, tracking governments' actions to expand economic opportunities for women.

The objectives of the study are to: a) increase understanding of the effects and effectiveness of the implementation of the local government reform launched in 2006; and b) assess the impact of a World Bank-supported intervention that aimed to enhance effectiveness of the reforms by increasing local capacity and local participation. In line with these objectives, the study assessed the perceived effects and effectiveness of the implementation of the local government reform in selected provinces.

There is broad recognition, across the political spectrum and in both 'northern' and 'southern' countries, that justice reform, and more generally the promotion of the 'rule of law', are central to development policy, particularly in conflict-affected, fragile and violent contexts. More recently an increased focus on global security and the interaction between security and development as put a renewed emphasis on such efforts.

Governance quality plays a key role in private sector development: competent bureaucrats not only create good policies and regulations, but also effectively implement them to shape the business environment. This paper exploit Vietnam’s decentralization of administrative tasks since the early 2000s to test this hypothesis. The paper examines how changes in the provincial administration of national business regulations affect firms through two channels: within-firm productivity levels and resource allocation across firms.

After decades of war, with a dilapidated infrastructure and millions of people dead, wounded or displaced, Vietnam could have been considered a hopeless case in economic development. Yet, it is now about to enter the ranks of middle-income countries. The obvious question is: How did this happen? This paper goes one step further, asking not which policies were adopted, but rather why they were adopted. This question is all the more intriguing because the process did not involve one group of individuals displacing another within the structure of power.

Brazil grew 2.4 percent per year on average in the last 25 years-somewhat less than Latin America, a good deal less than the world, far less than the emerging countries of Asia in the same period, and indeed far less than Brazil itself in previous decades. If anything stands out favorably in recent Brazilian experience, it is not growth but stabilization and the successful opening of the economy. The purpose of this paper is more modest.

The paper focuses its analysis on the last three decades of the twentieth century. The basic assumption is that Egypt's economic performance during this period was less than satisfactory compared with the most successful examples in the far East and elsewhere. The paper also assumes that Egypt's initial conditions at midcentury compared favorably with the winners in the development race at the end of the century. Egypt has achieved positive progress, no doubt, yet compared with the higher performers in Asia, and given its favorable good initial conditions, the record seems quite mediocre.

Contents of the report are: introduction; by Penelope J. Brook, and Sabine Hertveldt; how to reform in 3 months. Azerbaijan registers businesses faster by setting-up a one-stop shop; by Svetlana Bagaudinova, Dahlia Khalifa, and Givi Petriashvili; one-stop shopping in Portugal; by Camille Ramos; competitiveness from innovation, not inheritance; by Karim Ouled Belayachi, and Jamal Ibrahim Haidar; harnessing the internet to streamline procedures; by K.

This paper tracks the process through which FIAS, the investment climate advisory service of the World Bank Group advised the government of Latvia from 1998 to 2004 on ways to improve the business environment, achieve higher rates of economic growth, and thereby alleviate poverty. This case study shows that it is reasonable to describe how assistance by FIAS led to an improved business environment.

In its report to the September 22, 2008 meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), the World Bank noted that the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel, and the international donor community made some progress on the three parallel conditions for Palestinian economic revival, albeit to different degrees. The report notes the dramatic impact of Israel s recent three-week offensive in Gaza and analyzes the variety of recovery and reconstruction schemes being explored by the donor community.