Alleviating poverty through direct assistance and economic growth is an important objective of the World Bank. For this strategy to succeed, all potential impediments to the competitiveness of export industries must be tackled and reduced. Informational trade performance and efficiency are...

Since approximately 1990, most countries in Latin America have embarked on a unilateral process of trade liberalization for agricultural and non-agricultural products, effectively putting an end to four decades of import-substitution policies. Most countries adopted tariffication, with bound...

Many developing countries enforce seed regulations and other policies that obstruct private companies from operating and delivering new technology. This volume presents recommendations and selected papers from an international workshop organized by the World Bank in 1995 to review seed policies...

This study investigates the economic impacts of accession to the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) by the new member countries of Cambodia, the Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The trade policies of these countries are examined, and a series of quantitative analyses were undertaken to evaluate the...

The study explores important trends in consumption patterns in European Union(EU) markets and assesses the degree to which these patterns offer opportunities for African exporters.

OECD trade barriers did not play a significant role in Sub-Saharan Africa's declining position in world trade over the last three decades. The detrimental effects of the African countries' own policies, such as those that influence international transport costs, were considerably more important....

This report is one of four analytical pieces on Ukraine's innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem developed by the World Bank's Ukraine Technical Assistance on Innovation, supported by the Swedish Ukraine Financial and Enterprise Sector Recovery and Growth Trust Fund. The review presents an...

The transition to a more innovation-based growth model is even more urgent in the current uncertain global context[1]. While the GDP growth rate has proven resilient in recent years, declining oil and gas output, coupled with economic shocks, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, havedented...

Despite sustained economic growth over the past two decades, Sub-Saharan Africa faces massive challenges and significant gaps in many development outcomes. Although poverty has been declining, a recent report estimates that over two-fifths of the African population was poor in 2012. Nearly...