This issue of Global Employment Trends for Youth provides an update on youth labour markets around the world, focusing both on the continuing labour market crisis and on structural issues in youth labour markets. The report provides an overview of youth labour markets at the global and regional...

Is the high degree of gender inequality in developing countries in education, personal autonomy, and more explained by underdevelopment itself? Or do the societies that are poor today hold certain cultural views that lead to gender inequality? This article discusses several mechanisms through...

A comprehensive inventory of bilateral FTAs on a global scale, with sections on Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. It highlights the key points of each agreement, and details planned future developments. Background paper prepared for the...

India’s foreign policy has had an anomalous quality since the time Jawaharlal Nehru resolutely attempted to steer clear of Cold War alliances. This continues to be so given India’s unique situation of establishing “strategic relations†with both Israel and Iran, as part...

Government corruption is more prevalent in poor countries than in rich countries. This paper uses cross-industry heterogeneity in growth rates within Vietnam to test empirically whether growth leads to lower corruption. The analysis uses survey data collected from over 13,000 Vietnamese firms...

Deforestation in developing and middle income countries is an urgent global problem, affecting climate change, soil erosion, major river basins, and livelihoods of poor households living near the forests. Public discussions of the problem are frequently dominated by widely held beliefs...

There is perhaps only one broad certainty in the contemporary debate on climate change: not only does climate change affect different nations and communities differently, but the responses of individual stakeholders and institutions are also quite different, primarily because of their different...

Even though the economic and social benefits of thriving entrepreneurship and innovation are evident, it is critical to recognize that these benefits will only accrue if the key gaps in the ecosystem are addressed. Five key areas that an entrepreneur would need to address on a priority basis are...

A longitudinal household survey from World Bank Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) was used for the study. A relatively small (but representative) sample of households residing in the mountainous regions of Nepal (i.e., excluding the low-lying Terai regions) were surveyed in three...

This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which...