Spatial disparity in incomes and
productivity is apparent across and within countries. Most
studies of the determinants of such differences focus on
cross-country comparisons or location choice among firms.
Less studied are the large differences in agricultural
productivity within countries related to concentrations of
rural poverty. For policy, understanding the determinants of
this geography of agricultural productivity is important,

It has often been assumed that payments
for watershed services (PWS) would go mostly to poor land
users, thus contributing to poverty reduction, but there has
been little empirical verification to date. This paper uses
data from highland Guatemala to assess the potential for PWS
to reduce poverty by examining whether the recipients of
payments for environmental services are likely to be poor.
The watersheds in which PWS would be feasible due to the

The World Bank's revised forest
policy came into being in 2002 and covers all types of
forests. It has the following key objectives: (i) harnessing
the potential of forests to reduce poverty in a sustainable
manner; (ii) integrating forests effectively into
sustainable development; and (iii) protecting vital local
and global environmental services and values. The policy
enables the bank to fully engage in forestry throughout the

There is compelling evidence of the
importance of gender equality for poverty reduction and
sustainable growth. So it should come as no surprise that
most development actors-international agencies, bilateral
donors, and most developing countries, have an official
policy for promoting gender equality. Millennium Development
Goal 3 (MDG3) on gender equality and women's
empowerment is shared global commitment. With only seven

This paper explores the role of export
costs in the process of poverty reduction in rural Africa.
The authors claim that the marketing costs that emerge when
the commercialization of export crops requires
intermediaries can lead to lower participation into export
cropping and, thus, to higher poverty. They test the model
using data from the Uganda National Household Survey. The
findings show that: i) farmers living in villages with fewer

Delivering on the Promise of Pro-Poor
Growth contributes to the debate on how to accelerate
poverty reduction by providing insights from eight countries
that have been relatively successful in delivering pro-poor
growth: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia,
Tunisia, Uganda, and Vietnam. It integrates growth analytics
with the microanalysis of household data to determine how
country policies and conditions interact to reduce poverty

In view of its increasing importance,
and the dearth of information on return migration and its
impacts on source households, this study uses data from the
2005 Albania Living Standards Measurement Study survey and
assesses the impact of past migration experience of Albanian
households on non-farm business ownership through
instrumental variables regression techniques. Moreover,
considering the differences in earning potentials and

Less restrictive product market policies
are crucial in promoting convergence to higher levels of GDP
per capita. This paper benchmarks product market policies in
Romania to those of OECD countries by estimating OECD
indicators of Product Market Regulation (PMR). The PMR
indicators allow a comprehensive mapping of policies
affecting competition in product markets. Comparison with
OECD countries reveals that Romania's product market

This Integrated Fiduciary Assessment is
the first of its kind for Sao Tome and Principe. It combines
the analysis and policy recommendations from a public
expenditure review (PER), a country financial accountability
assessment (CFAA), and a country procurement assessment
review (CPAR). The goal of the report is to identify the
major challenges facing the country in the prepetroleum era
(the next three to five years) in public finance management

Through an analysis of selected topics,
this study aims to offer inputs for a successful recovery
strategy for the city and the metropolitan region of Sao
Paulo (MSRP) in Brazil. The study first presents an analysis
of the underlying factors of the economic transition in the
MRSP, highlighting the factors behind the recent performance
of the MRSP in terms of job creation and growth. Then, four
inputs that would lead to a 'recovery strategy'

Tanzania's Pilot Rural Investment
Climate Assessment (RICA) measures the economic environment
of non-farm entrepreneurs. The pilot assessment has three
key objectives: it aims to better understand the rural
non-farm economy in Tanzania, shed light on rural enterprise
dynamics and business constraints, and reflect on areas
where government policies are readily directed to help
promote rural non-farm enterprise activity. The RICA is

It is the purpose of this Investment
Climate Assessment (ICA) to look at what hinders the move of
the Palestinians to new markets and what can be done to
encourage it. The ICA reveals that shrinking market access
and the lack of free movement are the main constraints to
growth for Palestinian enterprises. Relative to other
countries in the region, the Palestinian investment climate
is good: petty corruption is low, the bureaucracy is