World Bank: 627 books

Health ministries around the world face a new challenge: to assess the risks and respond to the opportunities of the increasing openness in health services under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). International Trade in Health Services and the GATS...

As the world marketplace becomes ever more globalized, much is at stake for the prosperity of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Central Asia as the region's transition process continues through its second decade. Understanding the underlying dynamics shaping the contours and most salient impacts...

The 2008-09 financial crisis which originated in the United States and rapidly spread to the rest of world resulting in the most severe and intense Great Recession since World War II has posed new challenges for international policy coordination and the management of national economies. Questions are...

Comprehensive empirical studies of the disarray in world agricultural markets appeared approximately 20 years ago. Since then, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has provided estimates each year of market distortions in high-income countries, but there have been no comparable...

Reshaping Economic Geography in East Asia, a companion volume to the World Development Report 2009, brings together noted scholars to address the spatial distribution of economic growth in Asia. It reveals how the new economic geography is reshaping development objectives: from initiatives to foster...

Investment in secondary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa has been neglected since the World Conference on Education for All at Jomtien. The World Education Forum in Dakar began to recognize the growing importance of post-primary schooling for development. Only 25 percent of school-age children attend...

This book makes a compelling case for reintegrating structural issues into agricultural and rural development policies, which have for the last 30 years over-focused on short-term issues. It shows how the liberalization of agriculture in many late developing countries has not in fact led to the development...

This book is about the threats to education quality in the developing world that cannot be explained by lack of resources. It reviews the observed phenomenon of service delivery failures in public education: cases where programs and policies increase the inputs to education but do not produce effective...

This book's prime audience is government policy-makers. It provides a policy framework for governments to increase micro small and medium enterprises' access to financial services?one which is based on empirical evidence from around the world. Financial sector policies in many developing countries...

Beijing and Shanghai comprise the axes of China's two leading urban regions. Their economic fortunes will affect the overall growth of China. The economic composition of the two megacities differs significantly and the future sources of competitive advantage also lie in different areas although there...

This is a critical period for the WTO and for realizing the potential of trade as a driver of growth and poverty reduction. It is time for good intentions to be translated into solid multilateral agreements that promote development, and it is high time that the rich countries tore down their barriers....

Some see trade in services as irrelevant to the development agenda for least developed countries (LDCs). Others see few benefits from past market openings by LDCs. This book debunks both views. It finds that serious imperfections in Zambia's reform of services trade deprived the country of significant...

Sustainable infrastructure development is vital for Africa's prosperity. And now is the time to begin the transformation. This volume is the culmination of an unprecedented effort to document, analyze, and interpret the full extent of the challenge in developing Sub-Saharan Africa's infrastructure...

This book designed for policymakers academics and researchers and SEZ program practitioners provides the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of SEZ programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is the result of detailed surveys and case studies conducted during 2009 in ten developing countries including...