Interest in the trade and environment debate has intensified as a result of international trade agreements and because many proposed solutions to the climate change problem have potential implications for the global trading system. Clearly more empirical work is needed to inform the debate,...

In this paper we attempt to answer three questions. Using conventional indicators as a guide what are Bangladesh's prospects in sharply accelerating growth? What lessons can be derived from the experience of East Asian countries especially with repect to nonfarm development? Can these lessons be...

Chapter 1 of this paper argues that punlic sector resources in developing countries are insufficient to finance demand for investment in increasingly integrated infrastructure services. Chapter 2 discusses the role of reforms in public enterprises providing infrastructure services. Chapter 3...

This volume contains thirteen papers prepared for the World Bank Conference on Innovations in Health Care Financing, held in Washington, D.C., on March 10-11, 1997. Together these papers provide conceptual and practical policy prescriptions for financing health care systems in developing countries.

Oil and energy markets have experienced dramatic changes over the past two decades-steep price increases in the 1970s and 1980s followed by a decrease in 1986 and large declines in demand in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But despite considerable uncertainty about future...

This collection of papers on different aspects and examples of participatory development represents some of the many outputs from a recent Bankwide learning process on participatory development. The concept of participation is defined as "a process through which stakeholders influence and share...

Many developing countries sharing water resources of international river basins are facing serious problems in meeting their rapidly growing demandes for domestic, irrigation, industrial, power, and other uses due to riparian conflicts. This report decribes the Bank's successful interventions in...

Hydropower and irrigation projects involving reservoirs can displace thousands of people from their traditional lands and deprive them of their livelihoods. If poorly planned, they can also lead to environmental degradation. Solutions to these problems must be found--solutions that are...

This report consists of a collection of essays on extreme poverty. The first part of the report deals with what it means to live in extreme poverty, how to reach the very poor, through programs, and interventions, and how to make private, and public institutions more responsive to their...