In response to prolonged recession, in April 2010 the Croatian Government adopted an Economic Recovery Program to safeguard macroeconomic stability and support faster recovery of the private sector. A central element of the program is revision of labor regulations to create a more dynamic labor...

This report summarizes a program of research coordinated by the World Bank and carried out from October 2002 to May 2004. The objectives of the program have been to: 1) Highlight the major dynamics in the evolution of important sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) in selected...

Injections are one of the most common health care procedures, with some 16 billion injections administered world-wide each year. Most injections (90 to 95 percent) are given for therapeutic purposes, and only 5 to 10 percent are given for immunization. Injections are often unnecessary and are...

"This paper investigates how enforcement of labor regulation affects the firm's use of informal employment and its impact on firm performance. Using firm level data on informal employment and firm performance, and administrative data on enforcement of regulation at the city level, the authors...

"Pierre and Scarpetta present evidence on how employers perceive labor regulations and react when these are perceived to constrain the operation of their firm. They draw from harmonized surveys of (up to) 17,000 firms around the world and compare employers' responses with actual labor...

This paper analyzes the potential economic impact of changes to the labor laws proposed in 2006. The economic logic behind these reforms is reviewed, and the conditions under which the reforms could be expected to have the maximum impact on employment are isolated. Next, the experiences of...