World Bank: 627 books

Analyzing the experience of Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Lessons from NAFTA aims to provide guidance to Latin American and Caribbean countries considering free trade agreements with the United States. The authors conclude that the treaty raised external trade and foreign...

Privatization is under attack. Beginning in the 1980s, thousands of failing state-owned enterprises worldwide have been turned over to the private sector. But public opinion has turned against privatization. A large political backlash has been brewing for some time, infused by accusations of corruption,...

Bolivia's informal sector is the largest in Latin America, by many definitions and measures. Bolivia's high informality rate has been blamed on many factors including the burden of regulation, the weakness of public institutions, and the lack of perceived benefits to being formal. The high level of informality...

The report is part of the Bilateral Remittance Corridor Analysis (BRCA) initiative. The report US-Honduras Remittance Corridor: Acting on Opportunity to Increase Financial Inclusion and Foster Development of a Transnational Economy provides an overview of remittances and migration between the Honduras...

The literature on growth and poverty is voluminous and still evolving. This title distills the most important lessons from developing countries' experience with growth and poverty. It provides a broad understanding of the impact of economic policies on growth and poverty reduction in developing...

Globalization and its relation to poverty reduction and development is not well understood. The book identifies the ways in which globalization can overcome poverty or make it worse. The book defines the big historical trends, identifies main global flows - trade, finance, aid, migration, and ideas -...

The East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region has an international emigrant population of more than 21 million people who remitted US$112 billion to their home countries in 2013. The region also hosts more than 7 million migrant workers, mostly from other Asian countries. These migrant workers account for...

Given the lack of adequate universal social welfare for those unable to find jobs in the salaried formal sector, the livelihoods and well-being of most poor people depends heavily on their asset base. This includes their ability to access and accumulate assets, obtain decent returns from these assets,...

This book looks at both the potential and limits of policies to promote entrepreneurship as an important vehicle for social mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean. Who are the region’s entrepreneurs? They tend to be middle-aged males with secondary and, often, tertiary education who represent only...

This volume studies the role of natural resources in development and economic diversification. It brings together a variety of analytical perspectives, ranging from econometric analyses of economic growth to historical studies of successful development experiences in countries with abundant natural resources.

This book, the first of its kind, presents a balanced collection of articles written by African and non-African authors ranging from field practitioners to academicians and from members of government organizations to those of nongovernmental and local organizations.Africa's Future, Africa's...

No matter if I fall, I get up again. If I fall five thousand times, I will stand up some other five times." William, a 37 years old from El Gorrion, Columbia, recounts his life story.Most books on growth and poverty reduction are dominated by the perspectives of policy makers and academic experts. Moving...

Sri Lanka has long been regarded as a model of a successful welfare state in a low-income setting, yet it has not succeeded in creating a suffi cient number of "good jobs" for the increasing number of young people. Hence, young Sri Lankans perceive their country as an unjust and unequal society, in which...

• Why is productivity higher in cities? • Does urbanization cause growth or does growth cause urbanization? • Do countries achieve rapid growth or high incomes without urbanization? • How can policy makers reap the benefits of urbanization without paying too high a cost? • Does supporting urbanization...