Increasingly, the consequences of globalization call for the involvement, not only of national governments, but of the international development community as a whole. Such involvement needs to occur within a comprehensive framework that encompasses stakeholders from government, non-governmental...

Increasing foreign participation and high concentration levels characterize the recent evolution of banking sectors' market structures in developing countries. The authors analyze the impact of these factors on Latin American bank spreads during the late 1990s. Their results suggest that foreign...

These are the proceedings from a World Bank workshop on global public policies, and programs, assembled from transcripts, and accompanying papers. The combination of market failure, and limited institutional capacity to influence economic, and social change across national borders, underlies...

The institutions of bankruptcy have been at the center of the great economic events of the last decade, ranging from the Asian economic crisis, to the transition from socialism to capitalism. Our understanding of the economic, and legal structure of these institutions, as well as of their impact...

This article analyzes the relationship between export competitiveness and investment in machinery, allowing for imperfect substitution between domestically produced and imported machinery. A trans log export price function is estimated for developed, export oriented developing, and import...

In this volume, world-renowned contributors, including Martin Ravallion, Michael Kremer and Robert Townsend, deal with the institutional characteristics of poverty resulting from the time pattern of aid, the nature of financial systems and the political economy of budgetary decisions. Going...

This paper examines the potential role of civil society action in increasing state accountability for development in Sub-Saharan Africa. It further develops the analytical framework of the World Development Report 2004 on accountability relationships, to emphasize the underlying political...

Just as equality of opportunity becomes an increasingly prominent concept in normative economics, the authors argue that it is also a relevant concept for positive models of the links between distribution and aggregate efficiency. Persuasive microeconomic evidence suggests that inequalities in...

With the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean has been one of the regions of the world with the greatest inequality. This report explores why the region suffers from such persistent inequality, identifies how it hampers development, and suggests ways to achieve...