Many developing and industrial countries have sought to open their electricity industries to competition. In both contexts, policymakers and investors have to deal with the consequences of earlier, more partial sector liberalization measures. Foremost among these is the existence of long-term...

The transition from planned to market economy has witnessed one of the biggest and fastest increases in inequality ever recorded. Onaverage, inequality in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union increased from a Gini coefficient of 25-28 (below the OECD [Organization of Economic Cooperation...

The government of Hungary has contained the main fiscal risks of the transition to a market economy. It has paid off and resolved most problems in the banking and enterprise sectors. Since 1995 it has implemented fiscal adjustment with the objective of long-term fiscal stability rather than an...

Development of the western region is vital to the balanced growth of China. The author studies the impacts of infrastructure investment that may most efficiently alleviate the burden of geographical remoteness of the West. Having constructed the ?adjusted distance? to approximate the transport...

The authors propose a financial model to address the design of efficient risk financing strategies against natural disasters at the country level. It is simple enough to shed analytical light on some of the key issues but flexible and realistic enough to provide some quantitative guidance on the...

Despite a significant growth in the total number of trained health workers, the Africa region is still poorly staffed. It was the only World Health Organization region that showed a decline in the doctor-to-population ratio from 1980-1986. Emigration of trained health workers, particularly...

The authors develop a microeconometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, they also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for conditional distributions of education, fertility,...

Despite petroleum's prominence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), agriculture remains important to most to the region's economies. And more robust and more dynamic agricultural growth could significantly boost sustainable economic growth and rural development in those countries. An...

This study of Form Three (ninth grade) students in Nigeria indicates that single sex schools improve girls'achievement in mathematics and engender less stereotypic ideas about mathematics. But Nigerian males experience lower achievement and hold a more stereotypic view of mathematics under...

The authors show how two-sector models can be used to derive policy lessons about adjustment in developing economies. In the past two decades, changes in the external environment and in economic policies have been the key factors in the performance of developing economies. By and large the...