The remarkable performance of the Irish economy in recent years has attracted much attention. Within a 10-year period the economy went from an 18 percent unemployment rate to nearly full employment, while the ratio of debt to GDP fell from 120 percent to less than 50 percent. Inevitably, this...

The explosion of informal entrepreneurial activity during Mongolia's transition to a market economy represents one of the most visible signs of change in this expansive but sparsely populated Asian country. To deepen our understanding of Mongolia's informal sector during the transition, the...

In March 2001, the Government of Vietnam produced an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP), and announced its intention to develop a Comprehensive Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (CPRGS) by the end of April 2002. In the I-PRSP, the Government outlined its commitment to involve a...

The authors empirically estimate the impact of social capital on household welfare in Bolivia--where they found 67 different types of local associations. They focus on household memberships in local associations as being especially relevant to daily decisions that affect household welfare and...

The author examines the role of different data collection methods--including the types of data they produce--in the analysis of social phenomena in developing countries. He points out that one confusing factor in the"quantitative-qualitative"debate is that a distinction is not clearly made...

The public sector's performance in the Caribbean varies, in reducing poverty and in creating an enabling environment for growth. Barbados and the Bahamas have been the high performers, Guyana and the Dominican Republic have been sluggish, and the other Caribbean countries fall in between. In the...

To perform well, public officials must be confident enough about the future, to be able to see a relationship between their efforts, and an eventual outcome. Their expectations are shaped by their institutional environment. If the rules are not credible, or are unlikely to be enforced, of if...

In Northeast Brazil, despite sustained efforts to reduce rural poverty and more than $3.2 billion in spending, the rural poor are little better off than they were two decades ago. Brazil's difficult macroeconomic environment has tended to restrict the amount of funds available for rural...

This paper analyzes the enormous obstacles that the Democratic Republic of the Congo faces in forming a stable, development-oriented state. No government could design, implement, and finance a development program for the country without coordinated analytical and financial support from the...

The authors present evidence that in Burkina Faso, certain high-performing local institutions contribute to equitable economic development. They link reduced levels of poverty, and inequality to a high degree of internal village organization. The structure of these high-performing local...