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The Cost and Performance of Paid Agricultural Extension Services
Experience in Nicaragua with paid extension services-also known as private, commercial, or cofinanced extension services-shows that even poor farmers are willing to pay for a service that improves their economic efficiency and ability to earn a living. Budgets for extension services have been reduced in many countries. One response to these reductions in public services in some countries has been to privatize extension services-with extension services provided, for a fee, by either public agencies or private companies. Under the new approach, producers become clients instead of beneficiaries. Dinar and Keynan examine ways to measure the cost of providing paid-extension services and its perfo...
The Private Sector in Development
The publication explores the role of the private sector in economic development and the challenges involved in the design of public policies which promote an appropriate balance between competition and regulation. Chapters discuss the following topics: the private sector and poverty reduction, the investment climate, public intervention to promote supply response, private participation and markets for basic services, pro-poor policy design, sustainability and reform aspects.
What Explains the Success Or Failure of Structural Adjustment Programs?
June 1998 A few political economy variables can successfully predict the outcome of an adjustment loan 75 percent of the time. To select promising candidates for adjustment, the World Bank must do a better job of understanding which environments are promising for reform and which are not. Being more selective may mean smaller volumes of lending. In the 1980s development assistance shifted largely from financing investments (such as roads and dams) to promoting policy reform. This change came because of a growing awareness that developing countries were held back more by poor policies than by a lack of finance for investment. After nearly 20 years' experience with policy-based or conditional ...
The Puzzle of Latin American Economic Development
Provides the basic economic tools for students to understand the problems in the countries of Latin America. This third edition analyzes challenges to the neoliberal model of development and highlights macroeconomic changes in the region. It explores the contradictions of growth, and focuses on factors of competitiveness.
Second Thoughts on Second Moments
June 1998 The evidence is broadly supportive of an asset view of speculative attacks and the importance of the variance of monetary aggregates in predicting currency crises, but it cast some doubt on existing theories. The literature on speculative attacks has been given new impetus by the collapse of the European currency arrangements beginning in 1992, by the Mexican peso crisis and after-effects in 1994, and most recently by speculative attacks across Asia. One strand of this literature stresses the importance of imbalances in stocks of monetary and financial aggregates rather than traditional flow factors, arguing that massive, volatile capital flows have become a dominant feature of the...
Evaluating a Targeted Social Program when Placement is Decentralized
July 1998 A social program that relies partly on geographic decentralization for placement provides indicators helpful for identifying the program's impact on welfare. An assessment of the welfare gains from a targeted social program can be seriously biased unless it takes proper account of the endogeneity of program participation. Bias comes from two sources of placement endogeneity: the purposive targeting of the geographic areas to receive the program, and the targeting of individual recipients within selected areas. Decentralization of program placement decisions is common, because of the administrative cost of centralized placement decisions and the fact that local groups and government...
Enterprise Isolation Programs in Transition Economies
I provide the first comprehensive analysis of isolation programs for financially distressed firms in transition economies. The study is based on empirical evidence from the Romanian program. The results indicate that the isolation program did not deliver any tangible improvements in operational performance, nor did it enhance the process of privatization or liquidation of large loss-making enterprises. I also show that firms included in the program faced softer budget constraints than their comparators outside the program. These findings question the feasibility of creating special programs for enterprise restructuring and privatization under government auspices.
Agricultural Extension
Recommends the adoption of multiple strategies for agricultural extension and a flexible attitude by governments in addressing the issue. Agriculture contributes significantly to the growth of many developing countries. Its development is closely linked to several key interrelated factors such as infrastructure, research, extension, farm inputs, rural credit, price policies, and marketing. This paper examines agricultural extension within this context, drawing on a variety of ongoing cases throughout the world. The author stresses the need for governments to define a specific strategy for extension and to re-examine the role of the public sector.
Crisis Management in Argentina During the 1994-95 Mexican Crisis
The Mexican crisis of 1994-95 had strong spillover effects on Argentina. The Argentine government successfully announced a series of policies to mitigate the contagion effects. This paper studies how capital markets reacted to each policy announcement and news. Capital markets welcomed announcements that demonstrated a firm commitment to the currency board. The agreement with the IMF, the dollarization of reserve deposits in the central bank, and changes in reserve requirements had a strong positive impact on market returns. After a period of higher volatility, the appointment of a new finance minister significantly decreased the variance of stock and bond returns, while lower reserve requirements increased the volatility of interest rates.
