The report assesses the performance of financial markets in rural areas of Romania, based on three - rural household, rural enterprise, and financial intermediary - surveys, carried out in 1998, and other official data covering 1997. The study finds that rural financial markets perform rather...

Private participation in infrastructure has taken two distinct forms in the developing world. The first model, applied primarily in Latin America, focuses on privatization of existing infrastructure assets. The second, applied largely in East Asia, focuses on retaining existing assets in the...

Heating is a critical issue for the livelihoods of Eastern Europe and Central Asia's people. The region's gold climate, the legacy of central planning, and the drop in household incomes over the past 10 years, influence profoundly the design of heating strategies for the urban poor. This paper...

A universal concern in infrastructure reforms is the effect such reforms have on labor. State-owned infrastructure firms often employ more people than required for efficiency, and often under favorable terms and conditions of service, leading to lower labor productivity and higher labor costs...

This study looks at lessons to be drawn from the ten-year experience of the transition countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the period 1991 to 2000. The World's Bank "world Development Report 1996: From Plan to Market" focused on the transition process during the first half...