"Systematic information on household financial asset holdings in developing countries is very sparse. The author reviews some available data and current policy debates. Although financial asset holdings by households are highly concentrated, deeper financial systems are correlated with improved...

How can the world grow more food, increase incomes, reduce poverty, and protect the environment with growing numbers of mouths to feed and increasingly constrained resources? A big part of the answer lies in better management of agricultural water. Agricultural water management (AWM) encompasses...

"This paper is the introduction and summary chapter of the 43 chapter volume entitled Handbook of Trade Policy and WTO Accession for Development in Russia and the CIS. The key policy conclusions of each of the chapters are highlighted in this paper. The Handbook will be published only in Russian...

"Taking price changes from the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model of world trade, the authors use a small open economy computable general equilibrium comparative static model of the Russian economy to assess the impact of global free trade and a successful completion of the Doha Agenda...

"Can self-assessed health be relied on to identify the true socioeconomic gradients in health status? The self-assessed health of Russian adults in 2002 shows remarkably little gradient with respect to economic welfare. The authors document this finding and assess its robustness to the...

"The authors use data from a large nationally representative survey in Russia to analyze the distributional and welfare implications of draft avoidance as a common response to Russia's highly unpopular conscription system. They develop a simple theoretical model that describes household...

"In World Trade Organization (WTO) accession negotiations, telecommunications is always a sector that receives close scrutiny by the WTO Working Party, and the extent of market access and nondiscriminatory treatment of multinational telecommunications companies in Russia has been a significant...

"In light of the recent argument that rapid economic growth in Russia over the next decade might result in emissions higher than the Kyoto target, thereby putting much-needed growth at risk, Lecocq and Shalizi revisit the discussion on the costs and benefits of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol...