Despite decades of war and instability, Iraq's abundant natural resources, strategic geographic location and cultural history endow it with tremendous potential for growth and diverse economic development. Driven by windfall oil revenues in recent years the Government of Iraq (GoI) has invested...

The January 25th revolution is an enormously important political event for Egypt, but attention to its economic consequences is also vital. The Egyptian revolution reflected a popular movement in favor of dramatic changes in the way citizens were governed and the way resources and opportunities...

Drawing on the new institutional economics, the authors examine the impact on businesses of Brazil's relatively complex, nontransparent legal and regulatory institutions and compare their costs with those of Chile's institutions, which are relatively simple. They examine four basic areas where...

Private sector assessments provide information and analysis essential to formulating strategies for alleviating constraints on private sector development. They are meant to contribute both to the Bank's policy dialogue with borrowing governments and to the formulation of country assistance...

Drawing on the new institutional economics, the author's study of Brazil's machine tool industry extends an earlier study of the garment industry in two ways. First, it broadens the original study to a second industry, which could either confirm or amend the original conclusions. Second, it...