Aging may be one of the most far-reaching processes defining the economic, fiscal, and social changes societies are likely to experience over the next 40 years. The demographic consequences of aging will have a dramatic impact on labor markets, economic growth, social structures--and government...

The paper provides a first systematic, comprehensive benchmarking of South Africa's infrastructure performance in four major sectors - electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology, and transportation - against the relevant group of comparator countries using a new...

The authors use a panel-data set for the period 1980-2002 to estimate demand for electricity and telecommunications services and project investment needs in South Africa through 2010 for two growth scenarios. Projections of average annual investment needs in electricity and telecommunications...

The paper provides a first, systematic benchmarking of infrastructure performance in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries (South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland) in four major sectors-electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology,...

The empirical analysis of Bulgaria's income distribution and income tax burden indicates that the country has low income inequality although this is changing rapidly. The income tax is progressive and contributes significantly to reducing income inequality, and the urban sector pays...

Dollarisation is becoming a viable option for a number of countries, but the potential loss of seigniorage is a major obstacle. The paper reviews existing seigniorage sharing arrangements and discusses issues in the design of the new ones

Integration of knowledge with lending is an enduring theme in World Bank strategies at the corporate and country levels. The Bank lending instruments could be more relevant and produce better results if they incorporate key analytical, country-level knowledge. The goal of this learning product...

This note presents the results of an empirical analysis of firm-level productivity growth in Russia's manufacturing sector during the period 2003-08 using a rich Amadeus database as well as the recent EBRD/World Bank Business Enterprise and Performance surveys (BEEPs). The results show that...

This paper provides an analysis of the export potential and export diversification of Montenegro using the export-product space approach pioneered by Hausmann, Hwang, and Rodrik (2007), Hausmann and Klinger (2006), and Hidalgo, et. al. (2007). Based on this analysis as well as a review of...