This document reports on the findings from the first Consultative Citizens' Report Card exercise undertaken in the City of Accra, Ghana. The work began in late 2009 and continues in 2010 with the dissemination of the findings to, and consultations with, City residents. The Citizens' Report Card...

Afghanistan is striving to emerge from a prolonged period of military occupation, wars and the Taliban rule. The country's security situation remains critical, especially outside of Kabul, yet the economy is stable and continues to grow. In the reconstruction process the country is receiving...

The World Bank-assisted Nigeria Primary Education Project aims at assisting the Government of Nigeria to improve the quality of the subsector through the supply of instructional materials, upgrading of infrastructural facilities, enhancing teachers' competence, facilitating school management,...

The study reviews Indonesia's recovery so far, which in spite of only modest growth, is taking hold, and its base has expanded beyond consumption. With inflation under control, real wages are rising again, and poverty declined from a peak of over twenty three percent. The rapid export growth,...

Development involves change, but many development initiatives produce unimpressive results. The authors ask why and consider how to close the gap between the intended change and what we actually see in the evidence. This paper presents the findings of a study, initiated by the multi-donor Global...

"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...

"The authors study the effect of reorganization costs on the efficiency of bankruptcy laws. They develop a simple model that predicts that in a regime with high costs, the law fails to achieve the efficient outcome of liquidating unviable businesses and reorganizing viable ones. The authors test...

"Since the early 1980s, China has begun gradually integrating with the global system. In doing so the country has moved toward its own unique brand of market socialism, which recognizes private ownership, and is adopting market institutions and pursuing industrial change within the framework of...