Investment has grown rapidly in China in recent years, reaching more than 40 percent of GDP. Despite good progress on bank and enterprise reforms, weaknesses remain that could contribute to inefficient investment decisions. Manufacturing, infrastructure, and real estate have been the drivers of...

The book clarifies many policy, and technical issues that confront resettlement policymakers, and practitioners. It provides guidance on resettlement design, implementation, and monitoring, and, it discusses resettlement issues particular to development projects in different sectors, such as...

This handbook intends to document the essential steps for best practice in the design, and implementation of resettlement action plans. Given that involuntary resettlement entails both the physical displacement of peoples, and the disruption of their livelihoods, social development specialists...

Housing in China has proved problematic for many years. Since economic reform started in the 1980s, urbanization has been a token of modernization, and consequently housing provision in urban areas has been a major social and economic issue. The major housing problem in China is the scarcity of...

The authors analyze the example of a landlord, a moneylender, and a tenant (the landlord having access to finance on the same terms as the money lender). It is natural to assume that the landlord has first claim on the tenant's output (as a rule, if they live in the same village, he may have...

This paper documents developments in mortgage credit and the housing sector in Latin America over the past decade, and compares them with those of other emerging economies. In particular, it examines the real estate and mortgage markets to assess whether (i) growth in mortgage credit is...

Bhutan has evolved from a closed economy to a trading nation that exhibits a high degree of dependence on trade. Exports have grown rapidly but overall the country’s trade deficit continues to widen owing to an even faster growth in the value of imports. The manufacturing and industry...

The authors analyze the effects of building height restrictions, providing a concrete welfare cost estimate for the city of Bangalore, India. Relying on several theoretical results, their analysis shows that the welfare cost imposed on its residents by Bangalore's building height restriction...

This paper quantifies the misallocation of manufacturing output and factors of production between establishments across Indian districts during 1989-2010. It first distills a number of stylized facts about misallocation in India, and demonstrates the validity of misallocation metrics by...

Apartment houses in Japan now face many serious problems. Japanese society is aging, resulting in 1 or 2 elderly people now living in houses built for larger households consisting of 3 or more people. This has distorted the structure of the population residing in apartments, so they do not...