This study examines the impact of India's Public Distribution System (PDS) on poor households in terms of income gains, reductions in the incidence and severity of poverty, as well as nutritional improvements. The study suggests that the welfare gains of PDS in terms of income transfer were very...

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a large and highly complex worldwide statistical program conducted under the charter of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC). The ICP is designed to provide globally comparable economic aggregates in national accounts that can be used by...

This country program evaluation (CPE) evaluates World Bank Group (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), or the Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) operations in Brazil from FY2004 through FY2011. It seeks to...

The World Bank seeks to assess the effectiveness of the privatization program which was initiated in Zambia in 1992 with significant assistance from the World Bank and other donor agencies. A review of representative sample of companies was undertaken in order to assess the effect of...

It is widely recognized in Chinese policy-making circles that the World Bank made a significant contribution to the country s enterprise reform in the 1980s. A major contribution consisted of bringing eminent international scholars and policy-makers to China, and in sending leading Chinese...

Twelve years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, domestic and international analysts of the transition economies by and large agree that the transition from central planning to a market economy has been exceedingly difficult. There has also been a major debate about the extent to which the...

Cross-border banking has been a critical part of Africa's financial history since colonial times. While the period after independence saw a wave of nationalization across the continent, with many of the colonial banks exiting, this trend was reversed in the 1980s with the arrival of financial...