Do local improvements in infrastructure provision improve city competitiveness? What public finance mechanisms stimulate local infrastructure supply? And how do local efforts compare with national decisions of placing inter-regional trunk infrastructure?
Global food prices continue to rise. The World Bank's food price index increased by 15% between October 2010 and January 2011 and is only 3% below its 2008 peak. The last six months have seen sharp increases in the global prices of wheat, maize, sugar and edible oils, with a relatively smaller increase in rice prices.
A new book on Climate Impacts on Energy Systems, Key Issues for Energy Sector Adaptation was launched by ESMAP and the World Bank’s Global Expert Team on Climate Adaptation in Washington DC on February 28, 2011.
In this comprehensive review of India's social welfare & anti-poverty initiatives, the World Bank says that the spending to eradicate poverty had not reached their full potential & recommends replacing PDS with a system of direct cash transfer.
This report's objective is to develop the evidence base for policy making in relation to poverty reduction. It produces a diagnosis of the broad nature of the poverty problem and its trends in India, focusing on both consumption poverty and human development outcomes.
Scaling-up adoption of renewable energy technology—such as solar home systems (SHS)—to expand electricity access in developing countries can accelerate the transition to low-carbon economic development. Using a national household survey, this study quantifies the carbon and distributional benefits of SHS programs in Bangladesh. Three key findings are generated from
This book released recently by the Wotld Bank contends that most countries are relatively highly dependent on natural capital initially, and the ones that progress most successfully are those that manage their assets for the long term and reinvest in human and social capital as well as in building strong institutions and systems of governance.
This report presents the findings and recommendations of the evaluation of the World Bank's Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Pilot Program. It shows that SEA can contribute to improving development policy and sector reform by calling attention to environmental and social priorities, strengthening constituencies, enhancing policy capacities, and improving social accountability.
This paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size. Poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities. This basic pattern is generally robust to choice of poverty line.
The aim of this paper is to provide a strategic overview of a decade of experience in supporting public administrations in their efforts to confront excessive groundwater resource exploitation for agricultural irrigation.
