As illustrated in Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier, the new South-South economic relations present real opportunities-as well as challenges-to African countries. They also highlight the need for complementary reforms by China and India to support more vigorous African...

As the world marketplace becomes ever more globalized, much is at stake for the prosperity of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Central Asia as the region's transition process continues through its second decade. Understanding the underlying dynamics shaping the contours and most...

This analyzes, based on more than seventy company case studies across 13 Russian regions during the spring, summer, and fall of 2000, and the summer of 2001, examines four key issues that Russian firms face in carrying out business transactions in Russia's regional markets: 1) the state of...

This report studies impediments to investment and private sector development in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro. It aims to yield fundamentally new insights for improving the region's...

Governments in advanced economies have historically helped spur commercial innovation, particularly as a result of spillovers from defense related research and development. In many emerging markets, however, government lacks the resources or capabilities to do so. In Africa, as in other emerging...

Over the last decade African advances in technology, especially in the home-grown mobile banking sector, have shown how innovation can contribute to economic development across the continent. By understanding how the application of changes in technologies take hold globally—from initial...

Foreign direct investment brings host countries capital, productive facilities, and technology transfers as well as employment, new job skills, and management expertise. It is important to the Russian Federation, where incentives for competition are limited and incentives to becoming efficient...

Many industrial firms in Russia have undergone changes in ownership, but relatively few have been competitively restructured. Using survey and other data, the author suggests that much of Russian industry is immune from robust competition because of heavy vertical integration, geographic...