The idea of social capital has enjoyed a remarkable rise to prominence in both the theoretical and applied social science literature over the last decade. While lively debate has accompanied that journey, thereby helping to advance our thinking and clarifying areas of agreement and disagreement, much still remains to be done. One approach that could help bring further advances for both scholars and practitioners is providing a set of empirical tools for measuring social capital. The purpose of this paper is to introduce such a tool with a focus on applications in developing countries. The...

Improvement in the management of public finances in developing countries has been an increasingly important focus of World Bank and IMF assistance to member countries. A key element of such assistance is the development of effective treasury systems, which form the backbone for recording and processing all financial transactions related to government budgets. The establishment of an effective, integrated treasury system helps manage public monies with greater financial control, improved monitoring, better planning, better fiscal reporting, and better data for budget formulation, while also...

'Contribution of Information and Communication Technologies to Growth' is part of the World Bank Working Paper series. These papers are published to communicate the results of the Bank's ongoing research and to stimulate public discussion. The worldwide development of information and communication technology (ICT) has accelerated dramatically over the past decade. Technological advances and increased competition have led to falling prices for ICT goods and services, which has provided a strong incentive to replace other forms of capital and labor with information technology equipment....

'Innovation Systems' is part of the World Bank Working Paper series. These papers are published to communicate the results of the Bank's ongoing research and to stimulate public discussion. The World Bank has gained significant experience and has an important role to play in supporting innovation systems projects. This paper reviews the innovation systems support projects financed by the Bank during 1990-2003, together with a few successful earlier examples, covering some 51 projects involving over US$4.2 billion in Bank support. The Bank's role typically has been to facilitate and augment...

Land reform can be divided broadly into land tenure reform (the establishment of secure and formalized property rights in land) and land redistribution (the transfer of land from large to small farmers). This paper therefore is in two parts. The first part focuses on property rights, giving a short narrative of some of the key land tenure and land policy issues. Though these issues remain politically sensitive, a solid consensus is emerging on how to deal with them--but only once the confusion is cleared up surrounding private common property and formal and informal rights. The second part...

In the past fifteen years, most countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have shifted from predominantly collective to more individualized agriculture. These years also have witnessed the largest fall in agricultural production, yields, and rural employment on record, while the deterioration and dissolution of collective and state farms have been accompanied by a significant drop in rural public services. 'Land Reform and Farm Restructuring in Transition Countries' provides a structured and comparative review of important aspects of land reform and...

Large regional disparities in labor market indicators exist in Central Europe and the Baltic region. Such disparities appear to be persistent over time indicating, in part, a lack of flexibility in the prevailing adjustment mechanisms. Internal labor mobility is often seen as an important instrument to reduce adjustment costs when other mechanisms fail. Drawing from a variety of data sources and utilizing a common empirical framework and estimation strategy, this study identifies patterns and statistical profiles of geographical mobility. It finds internal migration to be generalily low and...

This study outlines the difficulties poor communities face in accessing peri-urban land in South Africa that could have implications and lessons for similar communities in other countries facing spatial segregation issues. 'In Search of Land and Housing in the New South Africa' focused on one community, composed largely of laid-off farm workers that wanted to buy their own farm in a peri-urban area west of Johannesburg. Their dream was to establish a mixed-use settlement. They wanted to call the village Ethambalethu--'Our Hope.' About 250 families started their own association and savings...

Achieving Better Service Delivery Through Decentralization in Ethiopia examines the role decentralization has played in the improvement of human development indicators in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has made major strides in improving its human development indicators in the past 15 years, achieving significant increases in the coverage of basic education and health services in a short period of time. Improvements took place during a period of massive decentralization of fiscal resources, to the regions in 1994 and to woredas in 2002-03. The devolution of power and resources from the federal and...

This paper explores an area of tertiary education that is currently understudied--the extent and nature of differentiation and articulation in African tertiary education systems. The overall finding of the study is that a binary system is dominant, characterized by universities and polytechnics as distinct types of institutions. Differentiation is clearly evident in Africa, though mostly horizontal as opposed to vertical. Articulation, on the other hand, seems to be in its infancy, as some universities, in their admission requirements, do not recognize polytechnic qualifications, and mobility...