This study reviews the history and development of district heating and district cooling, together referred to as district energy in North America, Western Europe, Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, and the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Experience from other parts of the world where DH systems exist...

Isolation contributes to rural poverty. Without a minimum of reliable and efficient access to locations of basic social and economic activities, rural life stagnates and local development prospects remain limited. Providing and maintaining a minimum level of access, referred to in this paper as...

This report studies the Bulgarian labor market with a view to understand the interactions between the performance of the Bulgarian economy and the functioning of its labor market. The report assesses also the position of Bulgaria vis-a-vis compliance with the "acquis communautaire," and provides...

This report examines the reforms and policy changes necessary in the rural section of the ten countries that have started the accession process for eventual membership in the European Union (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia)....

In Europe, and Central Asia, the poor faces three problems: 1) the education system as a whole does not work well, and hence fails to meet adequately their needs; 2) the private cost of education has gone up, so that "education", as a commodity, competes with other consumption goods in shrinking...

The paper identifies the key elements of the regulatory environment for business in Bulgaria, to serve as a research guide, while recognizing that the rapid development of new legislative, and regulatory procedures, are greatly needed, largely to meet the European Union's (EU) legal, and...

The paper provides an overview of household welfare, labor markets, and social programs in Albania, outside of its capital, in 1996. At the time, Albania was in a cross roads, from a period of phenomenal growth, to a series of economic crisis, though still ranking as the poorest country in the...

This report compiles a rich set of previously unavailable data to define where the education sector in Albania has evolved, what key challenges remain, and the priority areas for action by the Albanian government. The report finds that four broad tasks must be tackled to improve education. The...

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...

This study argues that the 15 European Union (EU) countries and their 12 Mediterranean Partners should complement their Euro-Mediterranean free-trade area for industrial goods with a common transport space. This would require the removal of policy-induced frictions in the region's multi-modal...