Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate substantially exceeded China's population growth, which averaged 1.4 percent annually between 1978 and 2009, and real GDP per capita accordingly grew at 8.6 percent annually during this period. China's urban population resides primarily in city districts...

This report is based on a study of the costs of retail payments in Kosovo, using a methodology (A Practical Guide for Measuring Retail Payment Costs) developed by the World Bank's Payment System Development Group (PSDG), part of the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice. The...

"This paper examines the ways in which lower-income households obtain basic financial services in urban communities in Mexico and the United States. And it discusses the efforts that private sector and government organizations are making to lower the cost or improve the quality of those...

"Wu focuses on how urban policies and the clustering of creative industries has influenced urban outcomes. The set of creative industries include those with output protectable under some form of intellectual property law. More specifically, this subsector encompasses software, multimedia, video...

This note shows the results of the "Clean Air Initiative in Sub-Saharan African Cities," a study to evaluate air pollution launched and coordinated by the World Bank. The following items are addressed: (i) estimation of the present global level of air pollution in Cotonou; (ii) determination of...

Urban sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Brazilian cities are growing. At the national level, the dominance of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in Brazil masks the fact that emissions from other sectors, like Energy, Transport and Waste, are growing quite rapidly in cities....