Mongolia was one of the East Asian economies hardest hit by the global downturn, as copper prices collapsed and external demand fell. This Economic Retrospective highlights the key economic, financial and policy developments in the country during the crisis and recovery over 2008 to 2010. In particular, it offers a closer look at the weaknesses in the economic structure and policy environment that lay at the heart of downturn, and which amplified the external shock due to the collapse in global commodity prices from mid-2008. The Retrospective offers valuable insights into how an...

This publication presents the outcomes of a survey conducted by the World Bank Payment System Development Group, at the request of the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic, as a follow up to the World Bank-led mission that visited the country in 2008 to assess the market for remittances. The survey aimed at analyzing the main characteristics of the market for remittances in the Czech Republic and should serve as a guide for both public authorities and private sector in identifying possible actions to improve the efficiency of the market. 880 migrants from eight different nationalities...

The importance of good land governance to strengthen women's land rights, facilitate land-related investment, transfer land to better uses, use it as collateral, and allow effective decentralization through collection of property taxes has long been recognized. The challenges posed by recent global developments, especially urbanization, increased and more volatile food prices, and climate change have raised the profile of land and the need for countries to have appropriate land policies. However, efforts to improve country-level land governance are often frustrated by technical complexities,...

Human rights indicators are central to the application of human rights standards in context and relate essentially to measuring human rights realization, both qualitatively and quantitatively, connecting human rights obligations with empirical data and evidence.

The Amazon basin is a key component of the global carbon cycle. Not only is the old-growth rainforests in the basin huge carbon storage with about 120 billion metric tons of carbon in their biomass, but they also process annually twice the rate of global anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions through respiration and photosynthesis. In addition, the basin is the largest global repository of biodiversity and produces about 20 percent of the world s flow of fresh water into the oceans. Despite the large CO2 efflux from recent deforestation, the Amazon rainforest is still considered to be a net...

In the context of recent changes in the global clothing sector, this study analyzes how the clothing sector can still provide a gateway to export diversification and industrial development for low-income countries (LICs) today.

Small scale producers in developing countries lack easy access to efficient logistics services. Using case studies in Brazil and India, intermediaries are found to enhance the ability of SMEs to either connect to or manage agricultural supply chains that are longer than would otherwise be the case.

Historically countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia have faced a number of obstacles in their transition to democracy and market-based economies. These obstacles include higher levels of corruption, and greater administrative and regulatory burdens as they pass laws and implement programs to combat corruption and promote private sector development. This report uses the results of the most recent Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) to examine trends in corruption and administrative burden of regulations on private sector firms in 29 Eastern European and Central...

While the energy sector is a primary target of efforts to arrest and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and lower the carbon footprint of development, it is also expected to be increasingly affected by unavoidable climate consequences from the damage already induced in the biosphere. Energy services and resources, as well as seasonal demand, will be increasingly affected by changing trends, increasing variability, greater extremes and large inter-annual variations in climate parameters in some regions. All evidence suggests that adaptation is not an optional add-on but an...

La mayoria de los observadores consideran que Fe y Alegria es una organizacion exitosa, pero pocas evaluaciones de caracter riguroso se han realizado hasta el momento. Las contribuciones a este volumen estan dedicadas a la evaluacion del desempeno y de algunos aspectos de la gestion y las practicas pedagogicas de la federacion Fe y Alegria, un movimiento impulsado por la Compania de Jesus que presta servicios a aproximadamente un millon de personas en 20 paises, en su mayoria en America Latina. La evidencia cuantitativa disponible sugiere que las escuelas de la federacion frecuentemente...