This paper summarizes the results of the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment (SBA), a 3-year, multi-disciplinary effort undertaken by a World Bank team in cooperation with several leading regional research institutions in South Asia. It begins to fill a crucial knowledge gap, providing an initial...

Despite the growing need for private sector participation (PSP) in the water sector, private sector investments in the water sector have experienced a downturn in recent years, especially concession projects, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of all PSP projects in urban water utilities from...

While providing affordable warmth to the urban poor is among the main challenges facing many developing countries, so far there has been no empirical work on the demand for space heating for the urban poor in developing countries. One explanation for this gap in the literature is that the urban...

It is often argued that the true benefits of water resource development in international river basins are undermined by a lack of consideration of interdependence in water resource planning. Yet it has not been adequately recognized in the water resources planning literature that overestimation...

The poor in most parts of the world may have electricity (especially in urban areas), but they rarely have water, sewer, and telephone services. When they gain access to local services, however, many do decide to connect.Komives, Whittington, and Wu use the World Bank's Living Standards...

This paper presents a case study of willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimation using random valuation models. A contingent valuation survey was conducted in Yerevan, Armenia to estimate people's WTP for the protection of Lake Sevan. Three elicitation formats-open-ended, closed-ended, and the stochastic...

Despite rapid economic growth and assiduous efforts in anti-corruption campaigns, many Asian economies continue to be plagued with rampant corruption problems; and in a number of countries, the progress towards corruption reduction has stagnated over the last decade as measured by corruption...

While the weak corporate governance has been identified as among the leading contributing factors that led to the Asian financial crisis, the progress in restructuring corporate governance has been rather modest in Southeast Asia following the crisis. Some common features of corporate governance...

While the empirical literature on the causes of corruption has focused primarily on the demand side of corruption, that is, the corrupt officials who receive bribe payments, the role of the private sector as the supply side of corruption has not been examined thoroughly in this literature. In...