The most striking fact about the economic geography of the world is the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, including the coexistence of economic development and underdevelopment. High-income regions are almost entirely concentrated in a few temperate zones, half of the world's GDP...

The authors review about 80 studies on electricity and gas, water and sanitation, and rail and ports (with a footnote on telecommunications) in developing countries. The main policy lesson is that there is a difference in the relevance of ownership for efficiency between utilities and transport...

The relationships among competition in the financial sector, access of firms to external financing, and associated economic growth are ambiguous in theory. Moreover, measuring competition in the financial sector can be complex. In this paper the authors first estimate for 16 countries a measure...

This paper describes a general equilibrium based social policy model for Cote d'Ivoire whose aim is both to facilitate analysis of a wide range of social policy options, any of which could conceivablybe pursued in Cote d'Ivoire over the next five or ten years, and to provide a basis for further...

It seems natural to attribute to wage rigidity (stemming from highly distortionary labor policies) the over-valuation of the CFA (Communaute Financiere Africaine) franc after the negative external shocks of the 1980s. Using a variety of data sources, the author assesses the actual rigidity of...

Given the dual role played by the Government as resource owner and tax collector in many sub - Saharan economies, it is important to separate"resource factor payments"from taxes through the use of different instruments. The instruments to be considered are: (1) a factor payment system that...

Transport infrastructure plays a central role in rural development, yet little is known about the size - or, especially, the distribution - of benefits from road investments. Among other benefits, rural roads provide cheaper access to both markets for agricultural output and for modern inputs....

Dracunculiasis (or Guinea worm disease) was endemic in several African countries as well as in India, Pakistan, and Yemen. The past decade, however, has seen a remarkable decline in the incidence of dracunculiasis as a result of the Global Dracunculiasis Eradication Campaign. The authors compare...

The authors focus on policies facilitating firm adjustment to globalization. They briefly review the effects of trade and investment liberalization on firms, focusing on within-industry effects. They postulate that governments'role in supporting the process is to (1) ensure that firms...

This paper explores empirically the role of risk and return in the observed evolution of net foreign asset positions of industrial and developing economies. The paper adopts a dynamic approach in which investors'portfolios adjust gradually to their long-run equilibrium, defined by a standard...