The actions proposed here focus on trade integration, substantially increasing exports of the poorest countries and helping them to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As the foundation for these ambitions, we emphasize the role of a secure, open global trading environment—strengthened...

The paper examines the recent privatization experience in Ukraine in the context of the streamlining of Fund structural conditionality. A particular focus is the shift from privatization-related conditionality based on quantitative targets to conditionality aimed at strengthening privatization...

After a long period of steep decline which followed the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's economy rebounded in 2000, and the recovery accelerated in 2001. The paper examines the timing and the nature of the recovery from a number of different perspectives such as the presence of idle but...

This paper analyzes the initial output decline in transition economies by estimating a cross-sectional model stressing two major factors: conflicts and the legacies of the Soviet period. We link the Soviet legacies in place at the outset of transition to the subsequent path for the development...

The proposed SDN discusses the specific macro-critical aspects of women’s participation in the labor market and the constraints that prevent women from developing their full economic potential. Building on earlier Fund analysis, work undertaken by other organizations and academic research, the...

Although urban China has experienced spectacular income growth over the last two decades, increases in inequality, reduction in social welfare provision, deregulation of grain prices, and increases in income uncertainty in the 1990s have increased urban poverty. Using a large repeated...