"The authors test competing theories of capital structure choices using firm-level data on firm borrowings. The majority of firms in the dataset are privately owned, young, micro or small and medium enterprise (SME) firms concentrated in the service sector. In general, the financing pattern of...

"The rationale for public investment in rural roads is that households can better exploit agricultural and nonagricultural opportunities to use labor and capital more efficiently. But significant knowledge gaps remain as to how opportunities provided by roads actually filter back into household...

"Market-oriented reforms of infrastructure in developing countries tend to focus primarily on commercially viable services in urban areas. Nevertheless, an increasing number of countries are beginning to experiment with extending the market paradigm to infrastructure services in rural areas that...

The project, with an IDA credit of US$30 million, and a total of $60 million was implemented by the government between 1998 and 2004. It was jointly financed by KFW $7m; IFAD, $10; GoG $7.1m; District Assemblies $3.0m and beneficiaries $2.9m. Its main objective was to support the government's...

This report examines the current institutional and financial arrangements for infrastructure service provision in rural areas of Chile, focusing upon the water, sanitation, electricity, communications and transportation sectors, and proposes mechanisms for improvement. The analysis is based upon...

This report provides public policy makers with the information necessary to develop a rural infrastructure strategy, it was not intended to represent a strategy per se, merely to highlight the issues that need greater consideration in the definition of a strategy. It starts with an inventory of...

Vietnam made remarkable progress in poverty reduction in the 1990s. Poverty rates decreased from 58% to 37% between 1993 and 1998. The reduction in poverty rates among indigenous people (who constitute 13% of the population and mostly live in remote areas) has been less remarkable. During the...

The work described in this report is a first step to addressing the longer-term issues related to the competitiveness of South Sudan's farmers in a regional context. It focuses on the options for increasing the amount and value of agricultural production in the crop sector, the potential...

This report analyzes the distribution of income, constructs a poverty profile, and looks at the extent to which the poor have access to basic services in Papua New Guinea. The analysis is based on data collected during a national household survey in 1996, and, data on a range of socioeconomic...

"This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...