This study uses a newly compiled database of women's property rights and legal capacity covering 100 countries over 50 years to test for the impact of legal reforms on employment, health, and education outcomes for women and girls. The database demonstrates gender gaps in the ability to access and own property, sign legal documents in one's own name, and have equality or non-discrimination as a guiding principle of the country's constitution. In the initial period, 75 countries had gender gaps in at least one of these areas and often multiple ones.

This report speaks to the holistic nature of the development process, a process that should not only encourage all stakeholders to participate in the process but also directly engage them. This volume posits that such participation must be guided by the law and accord with the broader notion of justice for development as a concept to be meaningfully appreciated today.

Pakistan's rebound from the global
financial crisis has been slow and fragile, and unless the
economy changes course swiftly, it could face its second
balance of payments crisis in five years. Its recovery from
the 2008-09 global financial crisis has been the weakest in
South Asia, with a double dip pattern. This report
identifies conditions for a sustainable job-enhancing growth
agenda for Pakistan. Policy must target both goals as they

Household enterprises -- usually
one-person-operated tiny informal enterprises -- are a
rapidly growing source of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa,
especially in lower-income countries. Household enterprises
tend to operate with limited interest or support from
governments. This is the case in Mozambique, where neither
the poverty reduction strategy nor small and medium
enterprise development policies include household

Land in Afghanistan is an extremely complicated issue, proving a main source of conflict. Weak governing institutions and a lack of political will to tackle the issue seriously, however, have made it practically impossible to resolve disputes over land and property in an effective and fair manner.

Despite extremely difficult security conditions, which deteriorated markedly after 2006, the World Bank Group has commendably established and sustained a large program of support to the country. While World Bank Group strategy has been highly relevant to Afghanistan's situation, beginning in 2006 the strategies can have gone further in adapting ongoing programs to evolving opportunities and needs and in programming activities sufficient to achieve the objectives of the pillars in those strategies.

This paper uses a three-round
4,000-household panel from Andhra Pradesh together with
administrative data to explore short and medium-term poverty
and welfare effects of the National Rural Employment
Guarantee Scheme. Triple difference estimates suggest that
participants significantly increase consumption (protein and
energy intake) in the short run and accumulate more
nonfinancial assets in the medium term. Direct benefits

This Country Economic Memorandum (CEM)
looks at the broad reform program, including institutional,
governance, and economic restructuring reforms Romania is
pursuing, which are anchored in its process for accession to
the European Union (EU). The challenge is to expand
integration with the EU more broadly throughout the economy,
by relying on market driven mechanisms in a predictable
rules-based policy environment, with the state sharply

This Financial Sector Assessment (FSA)
is based on the work of the joint International Monetary
Fund (IMF)- World Bank missions that visited Kenya from July
15 to July 24,2003, and from September 30 to October 15,
2003, in the context of the Financial Sector Assessment
Program (FSAP). The principal objective of the missions was
to assist the Kenyan authorities in assessing the
development needs and opportunities for the financial sector

This Country Economic Memorandum reviews
the significant changes Mozambique underwent in the last
five years, specifying that to continue its rapid growth,
and reduce its high levels of poverty, the country will need
to adopt a new set of reforms. Such reforms, focused on
increasing the profitability of agriculture, and promoting
labor-intensive manufacturing activities, hold the best hope
to move poverty into prosperity. Three factors - increased

The Kyrgyz Republic suffered severe
shocks during the early years of independence, loosing its
traditional markets in the Former Soviet Union republics, as
well as substantial transfers and subsidies from the Soviet
Union, that included a falling GDP during the first five
years of transition. These circumstances prompted the Kyrgyz
Republic to adopt a wide range of reforms to accelerate the
transition to a market economy, emphasizing price and trade

This qualitative assessment of poverty
in Albania seeks to deepen the understanding of poverty in
the country, first, by involving poor Albanians in a process
of exploring the causes, nature, extent of poverty, and how
it affects their livelihoods. Second, it is intended to
support the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(PRSP). Third, it supports preparation of the Country
Assistance Strategy (CAS), and the Living Standards