Vietnam's high economic growth in the 1990s led to sharp reductions in poverty, yet over the same time period inequality increased. This increased inequality may be less worrisome if Vietnamese households experience a high degree of income mobility over time. This is because high mobility...

The main challenge of the transition has been to redefine how the state interacts with firms, but little attention has been paid to the flip side of the relationship : how firms influence the state - especially how they exert influence on, and collude with public officials to extract advantages....

Using panel data from 50 countries and 35 urban areas (covering a wide range of country incomes), the authors summarize trends in motorization and the provision of roads, and they examine the ratio of motor vehicles to roads in a production function framework at both national andurban levels....

The study addresses governance challenges in public service delivery in China. It builds on the citizen scorecard survey conducted in five Chinese cities in 2006 to gauge citizens’ experience with public services, and demonstrates the usefulness of citizens’ feedback for policy development...

A legacy of the command economy in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is a social protection system that emphasizes institutional care for vulnerable individuals. It has been well established that in many cases institutionalization can be more expensive per client served and...

This paper addresses the conditions under which donor and non-state actor service provision is likely to undermine or strengthen citizens'legitimating beliefs. On the one hand, citizens may be less likely to support their government with quasi-voluntary compliance when they credit non-state...

Governance is central to development outcomes in infrastructure, not least because corruption (a symptom of failed governance) can have significantly negative impact on returns to infrastructure investment. This conclusion holds whether infrastructure is in private or public hands. This paper...

Construction governance failures can lead to the construction of the wrong infrastructure, poor quality construction, and excessively high prices for work. There is some evidence from both other sectors and the construction sector itself that improved transparency, especially when combined with...

This paper seeks to shed some light on the extent to which infrastructure sub-sectors - energy, telecommunications, water supply, sanitation, and transport - contributed to growth in East Asia during 1985-2004. It also attempts to provide additional insights on whether the relationship between...

Policy recommendations for infrastructure provision usually build on a well-established understanding of best practice for sector governance. Too rarely are they adapted to the country-specific political environment even if this is an area where policy choices are likely to be subject to private...