This paper lays out the big issues that affect regional cooperation and development in the wider Central Asia region, and analyzes in greater detail areas where there appear to be good prospects for progress in the short run. The paper develops a framework for approaching regional cooperation in...

This paper explores ways to unlock the potential for regional development and economic cooperation in the wider Central Asia region. It argues that understanding critical clusters of interrelated issues, and explicitly taking into account geopolitical and political economy considerations, are...

Next to the decollectivization of agriculture, the most striking economic transformation in China since 1978 has been the rapid growth of rural nonstate industry. Firms in this sector (referred to as TVPs) are owned by a hierarchy of local government units below the county level: towns,...

Afghanistan will experience a major security and development transition over the next three years. At the Kabul and Lisbon Conferences in 2010, the North Atlantic treaty organization and the Afghan government agreed that full responsibility for security would be handed over to the Afghan...

Security is increasingly viewed as a key condition for economic growth and development. The authors argue that the work and impact of all development partners would be enhanced if the multiple linkages between public finance, security, and development were explicitly taken into account. At the...

Europe's growth will have to be golden in yet another sense. Economic prosperity has brought to Europeans the gift of longer lives, and the continent's population has aged a lot over the last five decades. Over the next five, it will age even more by 2060; almost a third of Europeans will be older...