Government guarantees can help persuade private investors to finance valuable new infrastructure. But because their costs are hard to estimate and usually do not show up in the government's accounts, governments can be tempted to grant too many guarantees. Drawing on a diverse range of disciplines, including finance, history, economics, and psychology, 'Government Guarantees' aims to help governments give guarantees only when they are justified. It reviews the history of government guarantees and identifies the cognitive and political obstacles to good decisions about guarantees. It then...

'Environmental Priorities and Poverty Reduction: A Country Environmental Analysis for Colombia' proposes cost-effective policy and technical interventions aimed at abating the cost of environmental degradation and supporting more equitable and sustainable economic growth. Environmental degradation is associated with increased morbidity and mortality and decreased productivity. Urban and indoor air pollution; inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene; natural disasters (mainly floods and landslides); and land degradation are the environmental problems associated with the highest social...

Most aspects of South Africa's investment climate the location-specific factors that shape opportunities and incentives for firms to invest productively, create jobs, and grow are favorable. The majority of large, registered firms believe that the legal system is able to protect their property rights. Infrastructure is reliable. Tax rates are relatively low. The burden of regulation is comparable to other middle-income countrries. Few firms pay bribes. And most firms have adequate access to credit. In many dimensions, South Africa has a good investment climate. Consistent with this, large...

Over the past 20 years Nepal's financial sector has become deeper and the number and type of financial intermediaries have grown rapidly. Recent reforms have also made the banking sector more stable. Still, access to financial services remains limited for many people in Nepal, and has even been declining in recent years. 'Access to Financial Services in Nepal' examines the country's supply of and demand for financial services and the constraints to increasing access to them. It offers recommendations on how to make the financial sector work for all of Nepal's people, and especially for...

There is one asset that poor people have in abundance: labor. Thus, what distinguishes the poor from the non-poor in low income countries is, simply, their ability to sell labor at a good price. It should be of little surprise, then, that enhancing the poor's access to employment is increasingly recognized as key to development. But while the creation of 'good' jobs for the poor has become a policy priority for many developing countries, the mechanisms by which employment stimulates growth and reduces poverty have, until now, not been well understood. This book aims to help fill that gap....

'Structured Finance in Latin America' explores how structured finance mechanisms can channel pension savings to support projects in underserved sectors, deepen capital markets, and contribute to investment and economic growth. Private pension funds have been accumulating assets rapidly in the wake of pension system reforms in many Latin American countries. Strict investment regulations to protect workers' savings have limited their investment in highly creditworthy domestic securities, yet pension fund demand for new securities has outstripped issuance of eligible traditional corporate debt...

Historically, ensuring access to primary education has been seen as a predominantly public responsibility. However, governments are increasingly sharing this responsibility through a variety of subsidiary arrangements. Some governments are contracting services out to the private sector, to non-governmental organizations, and even to other public agencies. Some societies are transferring responsibility for financing, providing, and regulating primary education to lower levels of government, and in some cases, to communities. In education policy, public-private partnerships play an important...

Industrial clusters in Silicon Valley, Hsinchu Park, and northern Italy, and in the vicinity of Cambridge, U.K., have captured the imagination of policymakers, researchers, city planners and business people. Where clusters take root, they can generate valuable spillovers, promote innovation, and create the critical industrial mass for sustained growth. For cities such as Kitakyushu, Japan, that are faced with the erosion of their traditional industrial base and are threatened by economic decline, creating a cluster that would reverse the downward trends is enormously attractive. Growing...

While Tanzania has been at the forefront of creating a positive legal framework and political context for gender equality, certain legal, regulatory, and administrative barriers still hinder women's full participation in private sector development. This report analyzes these barriers and makes recommendations for needed change, to ensure women's full contribution to private sector development and economic growth in Tanzania. Building on intensive stakeholder consultations and the findings of numerous studies, notably the MKURABITA diagnostic and the 2003/4 Investment Climate Assessments for...

Governments in Africa and their stakeholders have been disappointed with the number of wage and salary jobs that have been created over the last decade or more. Even in countries that experienced both strong economic growth and rapid poverty reduction during this period, job creation has lagged behind expectations. Faced with a rapidly growing labor force, Africa has to find new ways to create better paying jobs. 'Working Out of Poverty' reviews the literature and presents original research by the authors analyzing job creation in Sub-Saharan Africa in light of economic performance over the...