Given the relatively small segment of the population that faces genuine affordability problems in Latin America, there appears to be a promising case for using targeted subsidies to reconcile the cost recovery objective with social protection concerns. Social tariff schemes of various kinds are...

In the next 10 years or so, the infrastructure sector has the potential to generate significant employment. This paper estimates annual job creation of about 2.0 million in direct jobs and 2.5 million in direct, indirect and induced infrastructure-related jobs just by meeting the infrastructure...

Women's economic empowerment is not a new issue; nevertheless, it continues to challenge governments and development assistance agencies. One of the reasons for this hurdle may well be that gender advocates and growth devotees are speaking different languages when there is a huge space for them...

Climate change and climate policies will affect poverty reduction efforts through direct and immediate impacts on the poor and by affecting factors that condition poverty reduction, such as economic growth. This paper explores this relation between climate change and policies and poverty...

The paper addresses the issue of the feasible level of private finance in a contracting model of infrastructure finding and financing. It characterizes the structure of financial contracts, deriving the conditions under which both public and private finance coexist. A key feature is that access...

The paper provides the first consistently estimated data set on infrastructure investments in low- and middle-income countries. To do so, the authors identify three possible proxies for infrastructure investments: two are variants on gross fixed capital formation from national accounts system...

The authors evaluate the effectiveness of private and collective technical, marketing, and financial support systems for the Republic of Korea's small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs. Their report draws on a survey of 122 SMEs that make woven textiles (42 firms), auto parts...

Green industrial policies can be defined as industrial policies with an environmental goal -- or more precisely, as sector-targeted policies that affect the economic production structure with the aim of generating environmental benefits. This paper provides a framework to assess their...

Green growth is about making growth processes resource-efficient, cleaner and more resilient without necessarily slowing them. This paper aims at clarifying these concepts in an analytical framework and at proposing foundations for green growth. The green growth approach proposed here is based...

This paper documents access to services and ownership of infrastructure-related durables in the water, energy, telecom, and transport areas, based on harmonized household survey data covering 1.6 million households in 14 Latin American countries during 1992 to 2012. The paper provides a...