Serbia needs to transition to a greener growth model for internal and external reasons. Internally, Serbia's economy is still characterized by low energy and resource productivity, with significant impacts on health and the environment. As a candidate country for EU membership, Serbia also needs...

The overall context for the study is partly provided by the three pillars of the World Bank's new forest strategy (Sustaining Forests: A Development Strategy, 2002), which focuses on how the Bank can most effectively contribute to harnessing the potential of forests to reduce poverty, to...

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...

This report lays out a strategy for Ukraine to make the transition to a market economy in the social sectors, taking into account the widespread system of benefits and the high spending on education and health inherited from the former Soviet Union. A central part of this strategy is the need to...

The Mongolian cashmere industry has experienced a series of booms and busts over the last decade. Unsatisfactory public sector policies contributed to this result. External factors such as the unfavorable economic environment of the early 1990s, the East Asia crisis, and weather conditions have...

Despite positive economic growth in recent years, basic labor market outcomes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remained stagnant and have only improved slightly in the past 10 years. A number of recent and ongoing analyses have stressed the pressing need for many economies in the...

This report identifies recent developments in the labor market in Bosnia and Herzegovina and by focusing on industrial relations, aims to provide new policy insights. The report shows that there have also been some improvements in labor market outcomes over the last few years. Nonetheless,...

"Major changes have occurred in the structure of former centrally planned economies, including a sharp rise in the share of services in GDP, employment, and international transactions. However, large differences exist across transition economies with respect to services intensity and services...

"Loayza and Soto present policy and outcome-based ways of measuring the progress of market-oriented reforms in both traditional areas of first-generation reform and the areas of institutional reform that have been emphasized lately. These policy areas are the domestic financial system,...

In January 1999, Poland launched a new pension system that was the result of 5-6 years of broad outreach campaigns and complex negotiations within the government and between the government and key stakeholder groups. A number of compromises were made to broaden support for the reform; these...