This book provides an unparalleled insider's look at the factors leading up to the 1997-98 crisis in South Korea and how the crisis unfolded over the next two years. Written by former finance minister Kyu-Sung Lee, this book traces the evolving situation across the key sectors and the series of...

Rapid economic growth in South Asia, urbanization, and a rising middle class have created considerable pent-up demand for housing and housing finance. More than 14 percent of low-income South Asians have no home. In response, South Asia's dynamic housing and housing finance markets have grown at...

Governments in developing countries have been increasingly involved in the support of commercial agricultural insurance programs in recent years. In their attempt to design and implement agricultural insurance, many governments in developing countries have sought technical assistance from the...

The services sector is key to economic growth, competitiveness, and poverty alleviation. Comprising more than two-thirds of the world economy, services are now commonly traded across borders, helped by technological progress and the increased mobility of persons. In recent years, a number of...

Despite substantial progress towards peace, economic growth, and better governance since 2003, Liberia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. The objective of this study is twofold. First it is to provide a basic diagnostic of both consumption-based poverty and human development...

This Workbook offers a step-by-step guide for city officials in proactively planning for natural disasters and climate change impacts. It is based on learning from three cities in Vietnam - Ha Noi, Can Tho, and Dong Hoi - that developed Local Resilience Action Plans (LRAPs) containing a set of...

Economic development is a process of continuous technological innovation and structural transformation. Development thinking is inherently tied to the quest for sustainable growth strategies. This book provides a neoclassical approach for studying the determinants of economic structure and its...

Any analysis of health financing issues has to begin with sound estimates of the level and flow of resources in a health system, including total levels of spending, the sources of health expenditures, the uses of funds in terms of services purchased, and in terms of who purchases them. The...

This study highlights the interaction between social protection (SP) programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challEnglishes caused by high informality for achieving universal social...

This volume focuses on the political economy surrounding the detailed decisions that governments make at each step of the value chain for natural resource management. From the perspective of public interest or good governance, many resource-dependent developing countries pursue apparently...