Lao PDR is at a point on its development trajectory where strategic attention to administrative performance is crucial. An efficient and high-performing civil service, with the compensation and human resource management systems to attract and motivate qualified personnel, will be essential to...

This report examines the pay-setting arrangements for senior civil servants in three settings: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Singapore. It concludes that: a robust analytic approach for pay setting seems to be sufficient to maintain some general sense of legitimacy in the process, but...

"While there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence on the economic effects of adverse health shocks, there is relatively little hard empirical evidence. The author builds on recent empirical work to explore in the context of postreform Vietnam two related issues: (1) how far household income and...

The study offers an analytic approach to fundamental questions concerning the effect of the aging population on the Chilean health system, and, to the prospects for, and the extent of financing health care for the elderly, as presumably catastrophic costs are linked to this effect. However, the...

"Do public sector workers earn a wage premium in Djibouti and are the returns to education different across the sectors? The authors estimate private and public sector wage earnings using 1996 household survey data, while controlling for selectivity using Heckman's two stage approach. They find...

Amid uncertain growth prospects and shrinking fiscal space, the government's initial decision to significantly increase public sector employees' salaries is raising significant challenges. While the cost of living increase aims to offset the erosion of real wages over time, the change in the...

This report sets out the principal aspects of civil service reform that were discussed at a workshop for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund staff on September 2, 2001. The objective of the workshop was to strengthen collaboration between the Bank and the Fund in order to achieve...