Farming households that differ in their
ability, or willingness to take on risks are likely to make
different decisions when allocating resources, and effort
among income-producing activities, with consequences for
productivity. The authors measure voluntary, and involuntary
departures from efficiency for rice-producing households in
Bicol, Philippines. They take advantage of a panel of
household observations from 1978, 1983, and 1994. The

Despite fiscal and administrative
reforms pursued by the Government of Madagascar since the
mid 1980s, to prod economic and financial liberalization,
contributing to steady GDP growth rates, manufacturing
production however, still represents a relatively small
share of value added. And, the development of
import-substituting (IS) firms has been considerably slower,
showing stagnating signs as these firms are unprepared for

The report highlights how much recent
achievements, in terms of growth, and poverty reduction, owe
to the progress the country has made on a broad front of
policy issues, such as openness to trade, investment, and
competition, as well as education, and financial regulation.
Nonetheless, progress has been uneven in several fronts,
such as the need to intensify trade liberalization, and
domestic competition; to strengthen governance across

Cereal production accounts for about
seventy percent of all agricultural land in Morocco. Cereal
producer prices, influenced by the government, are higher
than world prices. Production is divided into six broad
agro-climatic zones. About half of cereal production is
concentrated in the favorable, and intermediate zones; the
rest occurs mostly in less favorable (arid and semi-arid)
zones, with average annual rainfall below 450 millimeters.

The overall finding of this report is
that much agricultural policy is made at the regional level,
and here the explicit price, and trade policy distortions
are significantly worse than at the federal level. The
result is patchwork of inconsistent policies, that has
fragmented the Russian national market. The most serious
policy issues at the federal level, are in the legal
framework, the continued state domination of some markets,

The process by which different
ecological conditions and historical trajectories interacted
to create different social and cultural systems resulted in
major differences in economic development performance within
Southeast Asia. In the late 19th century, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and Thailand commonly experienced
vent-for-surplus development through exploitation of unused
lands. Nevertheless, different agrarian structures were

Food production is not keeping pace with
Africa's rapidly growing needs. Aid programs in the
1970s and 1980s were considered a temporary solution to the
most appalling famines, but Africa's food shortage
appears to be worsening. This paper discusses the reasons
for this situation and ways to address it. African
policymakers should consider intensifying and diversifying
local production and establishing systems for marketing and

The report assesses the main factors
which constrain the sustainable development of the Gezira
Scheme (GS), to develop medium, to long term plans,
including short-term actions, to address those constrains.
The GS, is described as a large and complex enterprise,
because although it is one the world's largest
irrigation systems, it has become one of the least
efficient, irrespective of the fact that it uses thirty five

With the recent resurgence of interest
in equity, inequality, and growth, the possibility of a
negative relationship between inequality and economic
growth, has received renewed interest in the literature.
Faced with the prospect that high levels of inequality may
persist, and give rise to poverty traps, policymakers are
paying more attention to the distributional implications of
macroeconomic policies. Because high levels of inequality

The report reviews the Bank's
development assistance to Lesotho, a poor country, of
predominantly rural populations, landlocked and completely
surrounded by, and economically dependent on, South Africa.
Not surprisingly, a major development challenge for the
country is that half the population lives below the poverty
line, and income inequality is among the highest in the
world. Other challenges are low quality of education, and

About 50 countries have prepared interim
and full Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). In this
context, this paper examines Millennium Development Goal
(MDG)7: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability, its targets
and indicators, and responds to three questions: To what
extent do PRSPs define and adopt targets and indicators that
align with those of MDG7? To what extent do the available
data allow tracking of progress with respect to MDG7? When

The Government of Tanzania has, in
recent years, focused on revitalizing its mining sector in
order to attract foreign investment, with the goal of
raising its contribution to Tanzania's Gross Domestic
Product. With the support from the World Bank through the
Mineral Sector Development Project (MSDP), the legal and
fiscal regimes were revised and an environmental framework
was put in place. As the growth of the small scale mining