This paper (RE-295) evaluates the Bank's program with Ecuador from 1990 to 2002. Throughout the 1990-2002 period, Ecuador continued facing these same development challenges as in the previous one: (i) how to move the economy away from its dependency on primary production, (ii) how to improve...

The period reviewed by the current Country Program Evaluation (RE-328) covers from 2001 to 2006. It spans the Bank's latest programming cycle, which includes the end of the Carlos Flores administration, as well as the Ricardo Maduro administration. The current review's approach is to take the...

The following paper (RE-297) is a review of the Bank's experience in Bolivia from 1990 to 2002. It is produced at a time when the country is faced with a critical fiscal scenario, and in the aftermath of substantial social tensions that have led to the resignation of former President Gonzalo...

The 2000-2008 Country Program Evaluation (CPE) for Trinidad and Tobago (RE-353) was conducted by the Office of Evaluation and Oversight to inform the Board's discussion with IDB Management regarding future strategy for each country. It involved three weeks of missions to both Trinidad and...

This Country Program Evaluation (RE-262) covers the period 1990-2000. During the decade, Peru was the focal point for development assistance from both multilateral and bilateral institutions. This paper includes a description of the country context and development challenges, a diagnosis and...

Macroeconomic strategies and policies have differed significantly among Asian countries over the last fifty years, and yet some common issues recur despite their immense diversity in inherited historical initial conditions, differences in political systems, geo-political situations, location and...

Policy frames in Brazil have long run up against conflicting visions and understandings about the causes and consequences of group-based inequality. This paper argues that a class-based lens has dominated the social protection framework. In recent years, political leaders have framed social...

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the impact of inequality on economic growth. Both theoretical and empirical approaches have produced ambiguous results on sign and size of this relationship. Although there is a considerable part of the literature that considers inequality...

A recently much debated issue is why observed investment and growth rates inpoor countries are lower than traditional theory predicts. Empirical evidencesuggests that social and political instability is a major reason for thedivergence between poor and rich countries. However, there is still the...

After many years of relatively slow growth, Tanzania's national accounts data report accelerated aggregate growth since around 2000. Our analysis shows that there has been somewhat slower growth in private consumption and in sectors such as agriculture in which most of the poor work and live....