The international community is committed to helping partner countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015. Providing more effective aid and increasing its impact on development is one important contribution to this end. This report takes stock of progress made...

"This paper considers approaches towards improving the predictability of aid to low income countries, with a special focus on budget support. In order to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, the donor community is increasing aid flows while pushing for more coordination...

The Thailand Country Development Partnership for Social Protection (CDP-SP) is a collaborative program of policy development and technical assistance between the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection and the Bank and was launched in July 2001. CDP-SP operates in three key policy areas: labor...

"The authors analyze the extent to which the EU-15 and 16 transition economies used the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to commit to service sector policy reforms. They compare GATS commitments with the evolution of actual policy stances over time. While there is substantial...

"This paper looks at Bulgaria's industrial restructuring through the lenses of its evolving specialization in international division of labor and integration into international markets with a special emphasis on EU markets. Its major findings can be summarized as follows: (1) Developments in...

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...

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...

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 economic model toward economies centered on minimizing the use of virgin materials without adversely affecting...