Foreign direct investment (FDI) has played a major role in China's push toward a market-oriented economy. Recent inflows account for 40 percent of combined flows of FDI to all developing countries, making China the biggest developing country FDI recipient. This record is impressive, but certain...

A decade ago in Mozambique, a stakeholder workshop where the need to improve access to industrial and commercial land as a means to encourage investment was a topic of discussion, a government official came up to. In order to create new jobs, generate more income, and modernize the economy, many...

The World Bank Group (WBG) has adopted a new strategy which sets two ambitious goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. To operationalize the twin goals, the WBG is developing a more evidence-based and selective country engagement model, the Country Partnership Framework...

This report studies impediments to investment and private sector development in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro. It aims to yield fundamentally new insights for improving the region's...

This analyzes, based on more than seventy company case studies across 13 Russian regions during the spring, summer, and fall of 2000, and the summer of 2001, examines four key issues that Russian firms face in carrying out business transactions in Russia's regional markets: 1) the state of...

As the world marketplace becomes ever more globalized, much is at stake for the prosperity of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Central Asia as the region's transition process continues through its second decade. Understanding the underlying dynamics shaping the contours and most...

As a result of the distortions that have beset natural gas markets in the wake of partial wellhead deregulation under the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 (NGPA)-the most visible problem being the existence of increased prices amid a glut of deliverable supplies-concern has mounted about whether...

Throughout most of the last three decades, interstate natural gas pipeline companies-operating mainly as private carriers, buying gas supplies in the field and reselling them downstream'-have competed primarily on the basis of nonprice terms. Under the regime of wellhead regulation stemming from...

Many oil industry spokesmen who pleaded for a free market in the era of regulation are now urging the opposite: federal protection from low-cost imported oil. It is ironic that some economists should find merit in these arguments, particularly now that the very idea of free trade is facing the...