"Indonesia's "big bang" decentralization in 2001 shifted much of the responsibility for local economic development from central government to district and city governments, which today number more than 450. But the performance of these districts has varied widely. This paper attempts to...

"There have been important developments in the decentralization of the government structure in Turkey since the early 1980s. This paper examines economic development and growth in Turkish provinces. Although there is a rich literature on the economic effects of government decentralization from...

"This paper studies the spatial dimension of growth in Mexico over the past three decades. The literature on regional economic growth shows a decrease in regional dispersion from 1970 to 1985, and a sharp increase afterward coinciding with the trade liberalization of the Mexican economy. Using...

"The author tests how the local economic structure-measured by a region's sector specialization, competition, and diversity-affects the technological growth of manufacturing sectors. Most of the empirical literature on this topic assumes that in the long run more productive regions will attract...

This report shows that after a decade of moderate growth but little or no long term change in rural poverty in Pakistan, agricultural output, rural incomes, rural poverty and social welfare indicators all showed marked improvements between 2001-02 and 2004-05. However, longer term trends suggest...

Brazil was the fastest growing country in the world between 1930 and 1995, with an average annual growth rate of 6.1 percent. By 2000, Brazil's per-capita income stood at R$6,500. While RN's per capita income is slightly above half the national average, it increased from 43 percent of the...

This regional study encompasses three Central American countries: Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras. The focus of this report is Nicaragua. The objective of the study is to understand how broad-based economic growth can be stimulated, and sustained in rural Central America. The study identifies...

Several countries in Southern Africa have enormous potential to expand trade and mutually benefit from regional integration, and thus truly achieve 'growth without borders'. At the same time, several African countries are adopting growth pole strategies in order to deepen the economic linkages...

As Russia continues to make rapid general progress in building modem market institutions, the complex spatial dimension of transformation in the country will continue to present strong policy challenges for many years to come. In fact, these challenges are arguably becoming progressively...

"The author discusses regional development patterns in China and examines effective ways of using development aid to attain regional balanced growth through optimizing growth spillover effects. Based on provincial panel data from 1978-99 she constructs an indicator "neighborhood performance" to...