The authors assess whether the placement of bank branches in Bangladesh responds to unexploited potential for nonfarm rural development. They compare the branch location choicesof a large new private nonprofit bank, the famous Grameen Bank, with those of more traditional government banks. They...

This paper explores the extent to which discrimination against foreign applicants in the trademark registration process can be used as a"behind-the-border"barrier to imports. Prima-facie evidence shows that in some developing countries the ratio of trademark registration to applications is much...

China's gross domestic product per capita was only US$300 to $370 in 1980-91 in an estimate based on the World Bank Atlas approach used in the World Development Report. These estimates fail to capture the fact that in the 10 years since embarking on a program of economic reform aimed at rapid...

The author estimates the effects on growth of commodity price shocks, and uncertainty within an established empirical growth model. Ex-post shocks, and ex-ante uncertainty have been treated in the empirical literature as if they were synonymous. But they are distinct concepts, and it is both...

The point of parallel imports of pharmaceuticals is arbitrage between countries with different prices. For several years, an important issue in the European Union (EU) has been the evident conflict between differing price regulations in the member states, on the one hand, and the consequences of...

Latin America missed opportunities for rapid resource-based growth that similarly endowed countries-Australia, Canada, Scandinavia-were able to take advantage of. Fundamental to this poor performance was deficient technological adoption driven by two factors. First, deficient...

The authors develop comparative indices of environmental policy and performance for 31 countries using a quantified analysis of reports prepared for the United Nations Conference on Environmental and Development. In cross-country regressions, they find a very strong, continuous association...

In research on how population growth affects economic performance, some researchers stress that population growth reduces the natural resources and capital (physical and human) per worker while other researchers stress how greater population size and density affect productivity. Despite these...

The recent growth of food grain (primarily rice) production in Bangladesh has outpaced population growth largely due to the spread of green revolution technology. The transition from a"basket case"in the early 1970s to the virtual elimination of rice imports in the early 1990s is particularly...

A complement to recent in-depth quantitative analyses of rural poverty in Ecuador, this is a report on the results of the Rural Qualitative Assessment in living conditions in rural communities in all three Ecuador's diverse regions. Using a variety of qualitative techniques, the research aimed...