This Technical Paper is a study of the working of urban credit cooperatives in China. It begins by putting the German, French, US and Japanese experiences into perspective, before constructing a macroeconomic analysis of the operation, institutional context and the role of urban credit...

The developing countries of the Southern Mediterranean (SOM) have missed the extraordinary surge of private international investment in recent years. Although the SOM region was an important destination for foreign direct investments, its share of world FDI has declined. In 1994, private capital...

The reform of public pension systems has become a key policy issue in many countries. Because conventional approaches to reform largely unfunded retirement income schemes prove politically and economically difficult, attention has focused on the option of a partial shift towards funded...