"Through its diverse trade preference schemes, the European Union provides different groups of developing countries with different degrees of market access. This paper is the first to demonstrate empirically that such staggered market access induces sizable trade diversion to the detriment of...

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...

Investment commitments to infrastructure projects with private participation (Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) projects) reaching closure in developing countries grew by 22 percent in the third quarter of 2009, and by 10 percent in the first three quarters of the year, compared with...

"The paper analyzes governments' tradeoff between fiscal benefits and consumer surplus in privatization reforms of noncompetitive industries in developing countries. Under privatization, the control rights are transferred to private interests so that public subsidies decline. This benefit for...

"Studies comparing household surveys with on-site interceptor surveys have typically accounted for over-sampling avid users in the on-site interceptor surveys (that is, endogenous stratification). However, these studies have typically not accounted for the possibility that the household sample...

"Financial sector development fosters economic growth and reduces poverty by widening and broadening access to finance and allocating society's savings more efficiently. The author first discusses three pillars on which sound and efficient financial systems are built: macroeconomic stability and...