The purpose of this book is to provide a coherent overview of the insolvency systems found around the world. Its intended audience includes academics, judges, lawyers, and policymakers. Its focus is on businesses rather than natural persons. The authors hope to give the reader a sense of some of...

More than 200 million people in the developing world were out of work this year. Over 1 billion are hungry, while millions more are confronting the threat that climate change poses. The United Nations estimates that 884 million people don't have safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion...

A decade has passed since the privatization debates concerning Russia and the other transition economies. This note reviews literature on two issues: the overall institutional change strategy, and the alternatives to and arguments against voucher privatization. The alternative is a strategy of...

This book on micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) finance is intended primarily for government policy makers. It presents a policy framework whereby governments can support increased access by MSME to financial services based on empirical evidence and practices. MSME complain that lack of...

The publication of this fifth edition coincides with the convergence in accounting standards that has been a feature of the international landscape since the global financial crisis of 1998. The events of that year prompted several international organizations, including the World Bank and the...

In this report several records stand out from fiscal year 2007: Nearly half (48 percent) of projects supported by MIGA were in IDA-eligible countries, bringing MIGA's outstanding exposure in IDA countries to 41 percent. In addition, 38 percent of the projects supported during the year were in...

The Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative has identified the cycle of debt rescheduling and restructurings of many of the poorest countries as a serious development problem. It has mobilized the lender community to restructure loans with the aim of generating debt sustainability: the...

Heavily indebted low-income countries benefited from significant debt relief over the past decade. Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), assistance of about $117 billion in nominal terms had been committed to 35 HIPC as of...

This study assesses levels and trends in corruption and the administrative burden from government regulation of private firms. It is largely based on the fourth round of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)-World Bank Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys...

The little data book on financial inclusion 2012 is a pocket edition of the global financial inclusion database published in 2012. The book also includes summary pages by region and by income group aggregates. Covering 148 economies, the indicators of financial inclusion measure the use of...