Nepal has a well-established process for preparing periodic development plans, having prepared nine such plans earlier. Typically, the preparation of the new plan starts with the mid-term review of the ongoing plan, which serves as a base for the Approach Paper for the new plan. The Approach...

The report focuses on the social sectors, agriculture, and governance. However, the report fails to highlight the importance of tackling decisively certain structural reforms that are critical to achieving the poverty reduction objectives of sustaining growth and reducing poverty. The...

To stimulate private sector credit expansions in Pakistan, the monetary policy has been accommodative while financial sector reforms have brought about a lowering of intermediation costs and bank spreads. Consequently, the weighted average lending rates have declined from 14.6 percent in June...

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) on Burkina Faso focus on recapitulation of major long-term development. To improve the identification and targeting of the major public actions that contribute to combating poverty, the government has decided to prepare a Priority Action Program...

This paper addresses the potential effects on human capital accumulation and economic growth of the alternative compositions of public expenditures in the context of a computable dynamic general equilibrium model of overlapping generations and heterogeneous agents in which altruistic parents...

This study confirms a strong and robust relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. Employing a panel of 46 countries covering the period 1972-97, the analysis finds that a 10 percent increase in per capita GDP leads to a 1 percent increase in life...

There is an imperative need to change the education pattern to achieve universal primary education in India. Even after 60 years of Independence, India faces obstacles in providing Education For All. This study was conducted in a primary school of Errabelly village of Karimnager district of...

This paper finds large effects on the earnings of participants from a randomized intervention that gave psychosocial stimulation to stunted Jamaican toddlers living in poverty. The intervention consisted of one-hour weekly visits from community Jamaican health workers over a 2-year period that...

Improving education outcomes by disseminating information to parents and thereby encouraging them to become more actively engaged in school oversight is attractive, since it can be done relatively cheaply. This study evaluates the impact of alternative approaches to disseminating information...

Following an evaluation of the first Poverty Reduction Strategy Framework (PRSF) of Mali, the government adopted the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Framework (GPRSF) document, which aims at reducing poverty and achieving the MDGs. The Accelerated Growth Strategy, which maintains...