Over the past decade, material efficiency and resource productivity have surfaced on the global policy agenda. The rise of the circular economy (CE) agenda reflects the objective of moving away from the current systems of production and consumption based on the 'take-make-use-waste’ linear...

This book reviews the experience with one specific though widely introduced approach to funding general education, namely per capita financing (PCF), in six countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region in an effort to learn which outcomes were achieved and how. Per capita financing is a...

By mid-1994, nearly a third (5.7 million) of the entire population of Mozambique had been uprooted, either internally displaced or living as refugees in neighboring countries. Rails, roads, and bridges throughout the country were in disrepair. It was estimated that about half of the nation's...

Veterans and their dependents constituted a particularly vulnerable group due to their lack of civic awareness, low skill level and few resources, a culture of dependency, and their potential threat to security. The Uganda Veterans Assistance Program (UVAB) assistance consisted of three...

This note is part of a series that considers the linkages between of Community Driven Development (CDD) and urban operations. The objective of this note is to identify the role of CDD in the housing sector in transition economies, to highlight the varied CDD approaches that have been used thus...

The financial crises of the late 1990s in East Asia and Eastern Europe, as well as the recent corporate governance scandals in Europe and America, have highlighted the need for strong corporate governance in ensuring a sound and stable financial sector. The governance practices of banks are...

The last decade in Belarus was marked by an average economic growth rate of close to 8 percent annually and an impressive eight-fold reduction in poverty. Economic growth was initially driven by external factors, but after 2005 expansionary domestic demand became the prevalent contributor to...

Even though Mauritania's real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recorded an average growth rate of 4 percent between 2005 and 2009, the country's economic growth remains unstable and vulnerable to external shocks. At the same time, the distribution of profits through benefit sharing continues to be...

The study assesses Bulgaria's progress in its transition to a market economy, and in its preparation for accession to the European Union (EU), through an analysis of economic developments during the 1990s, with special emphasis on the 1997-1999 period. It identifies the major challenges the...

The study addresses the most significant disparities in women's and men's access to economic opportunities and discusses the roots of inequalities in their socioeconomic and political contexts. In light of recent changes to the Polish Labor Code that were introduced to promote equal rights for...