Simultaneity of borrowing, withdrawal of savings, and loan defaults due to the pronounced seasonality of ag-riculture often leads to investment failure of rural financial institutions. Lack of borrowing leads to lack of in-come- and consumption-smoothing, and in turn, causes inefficient resource...

This paper addresses whether microcredit participants in Bangladesh are trapped in poverty and debt, as many critics have argued in recent years. Analysis of data from a long panel survey over a 20-year period confirms this is not the case, although numerous participants have been with...

Preface -- About the authors -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Rural nonfarm growth and poverty reduction -- Institutional growth and MFI performance -- Dynamics of microfinance benefits -- Are borrowers overindebted? -- Role of microfinance in poverty transition -- Diversification of income...

In conflict-prone situations, access to markets is necessary to restore economic growth and generate the preconditions for peace and reconstruction. Hence, the rehabilitation of damaged transport infrastructure has emerged as an overarching investment priority among donors and governments. This...

This paper addresses an old and recurring theme in development economics: the slow adoption of new technologies by farmers in many developing countries. The paper explores a somewhat novel link to explain this puzzle-the link between market access and the incentives to adopt a new technology...

Transport infrastructure is deemed to be central to development and consumes a large fraction of the development assistance envelope. Yet there is debate about the economic impact of road projects. This paper proposes an approach to assess the differential development impacts of alternative road...

The term energy access has various connotations to energy development specialists. For this review, we define energy access as relating both to physical proximity to energy infrastructure and to the policies and frameworks supporting the transition to better, reliable, and more efficient use of...

Over the past 15 years, Ethiopia has focused on raising electrification rates, mainly by extending the national grid system to more villages and towns. The World Bank funded Electricity Access Rural Expansion Project (Phase 2) was implemented since 2007 to assist the Government of Ethiopia (GoE)...

Despite the development focus on transportation, methodologies for evaluating which road projects to fund are often dis-jointed and unreliable. This report hopes to improve upon the current approaches by establishing a new methodology for prioritization which can be applied to a diverse set of...