• Biotechnology offers the potential for more environmentally-friendly agriculture but the conditions for developing countries to take advantage of that potential should be created. • Policy intervention is needed to ensure that biotechnology responds to the priorities set for agriculture....

. Deeply rooted social institutions – societal norms, codes of conduct, laws and tradition – cause gender discrimination. . Religion per se does not systematically define such discrimination. All dominant religions show flexibility in interpreting the role of women in society. . The...

This paper analyses the effect of fiscal decentralisation on health outcomes in China using a panel data set with nationwide county-level data. We find that counties in more fiscally decentralised provinces have lower infant mortality rates than counties where the provincial government remains...

This study examines the potential impact of changes in the public/private sector balance for biotechnology development and diffusion in developing country agriculture. It focuses on biotechnology related to two important developing country crops: rice and cocoa. The study highlights the...

A growing number of international initiatives are being undertaken to stimulate the development of agricultural biotechnology applications in developing countries. These initiatives, which include a wide range of biotechnology research, information and advisory activities, are supported by...

Efforts to establish, test and analyse hypotheses regarding cross-country variations in women’s economic status are hampered by the lack of a readily accessible and easily used information resource on the various dimensions of gender inequality. Addressing this gap, this paper introduces the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/19/28/36223936.xls"...</a>

The signature of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), which entered into force on 1st January, 1995, marked a turning point in efforts to strengthen and extend intellectual property protection. Under the terms of the Agreement, many developing...

In recent years, the role of institutions for development has received considerable attention from development researchers, policy makers and practitioners. This paper reviews the evidence on the impact of institutions on growth and other development outcomes. Most of the reviewed studies find a...

Poor people lack access to health care with a negative impact on their dignity, human capital formation and their risk-management options. Recently an emerging movement of community-based health insurance schemes has attracted the attention of policy makers and researchers as it seems that these...

This paper provides a fresh look at informal employment, a phenomenon of renewed interest to policy makers and researchers alike. It finds that informal employment is likely to stay, is sometimes a voluntary choice, can offer better working conditions than formal employment and is very...