In the present Doctoral Thesis, we offer an analysis of the Local Agenda 21 and of the achievements reached in the attainment of a Sustainable Development through these programs. With this aim, firstly, we have established the institutional and conceptual framework of the Sustainable...

The debate around the effects of globalization is both widening and deepening. While some nations, like India and China – countries that have consciously built a manufacturing sector for five decades – come across as winners, a large number of smaller Third World nations seem to lose out...

This study assesses the CDM potential in Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger and Togo. Morocco has been used as an example, as it is quite advanced in developing an impressive CDM project portfolio. The study focuses not only on the absolute greenhouse gas abatement potential of these countries, but also...

This project aims to assist SMEs in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine by providing support to stakeholders in their efforts to develop analytical and policy advocacy capabilities and by opening new channels of communication between SMEs and NGOs in the Visegrad Four countries (Czech Republic,...

While women's labor force participation tends to increase with economic development, the relationship is not straightforward or consistent at the country level. There is considerably more variation across developing countries in labor force participation by women than by men. This variation is...

In the context of a collective household choice model, we show that the effects of improved credit access on search intensity by the unemployed are heterogeneous across households and dependent on the within-household bargaining power of the unemployed. We find empirical support for the...

Using changes in the possession of household assets over the past 20 years, several recent papers have argued that economic performance in Arica was substantially better than suggested by national income data and income poverty statistics, who suffer from well-known weaknesses. We scrutinize...

Over the last couple of decades, it has become a commonplace to claim that institutions matter" for economic development. Yet, institutions are not exogenous but the result of hu-man action. It is argued here that the values and norms held by substantial parts of society’s members are an...

This paper develops a framework for performing ex ante evaluations of the micro (at the firm level) and macro impacts of formalization policies. I estimate the model and use it analyze the two main policy approaches towards informality: increasing the costs of informality (the stick), and...

In this paper we quantify inequality of opportunity in labor market outcomes in Europe and Central Asia using the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) methodology. Using data from the 2006 Life in Transition Survey we also compare HOI-based measures of inequality with expenditure-based measures and...