Private business investment has expanded remarkably in Colombia's recent economic recovery. Sustained expansion of this investment is considered crucial to continued economic growth and increases in production. Having analyzed demand, the cost of capital, and the availability and allocation of...

This paper presents basic background information on Bank lending in energy, as ready reference for answering queries from companies, governments, and other entities outside the Bank. The paper describes the Bank's role in energy lending - detailing in the annexes, the Bank's lending for gas,...

This paper explores competitiveness of Cote d'Ivoire's economy over a long period of 1960-2003 and its link with cocoa prices. The main conclusions are as follows. First, using four measures of real effective exchange rate (REER) for the 1960-2002 period, we track the evolution of REER and...

After Poland's remarkable stabilization and liberalization in 1990, the economy faced three related problems: high wage and pension claims, a rising number of pensioners and unemployed workers, and a budget crisis, especially in 1991 and 1992. The author studies the role that wage and pension...

Banking reform started much earlier in Hungary than in other socialist countries and Hungary now has by far the most advanced system among transitional socialist economies. The authors discuss recent trends in competition and efficiency in Hungarian banking. They assess the performance of...

Political economy explanations for fiscal profligacy are dominated by models of bargaining among organized interest groups over group-specific targeted benefits financed by generalized taxation. These models predict that governments consisting of a coalition of political parties spend more than...

A model of firm innovation illustrates the effects of the threat of imitation and product varieties on a representative firm ' s decision to invest in research and development to produce new product varieties. The model motivates two empirical questions: (1) Is research and developm ent...

Using a specially designed survey of Japanese firms planning investments in Asia, the authors emphasize the importance of privately held information in making foreign investment decisions. Information on operating conditions based on direct experience in a country is likely to be the most...

Countries in transition have considered membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) an important step toward integration in the international economic system. After several years of negotiations, five members of the former Soviet Union (FSU) - Armenia, the three Baltic countries, and the...

The effect of economic crises on child health is a topic of great policy importance. The authors use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to analyze the impact of the profound 1988-92 economic crisis in Peru on infant mortality and anthropometrics. They show that there was an...