You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
With the adoption of new market-oriented policies, Vietnam has transformed itself from one of the world's poorest countries during the 1980s, into an economy with one of the highest growth rates during the 1990s. Using macroeconomic and household survey data, this publication examines a range of issues including: the causes of Vietnam's economic growth and future prospects; the impact on household welfare and poverty levels, school enrolment, child health and other socioeconomic outcomes; and the nature of poverty in Vietnam and the effectiveness of government policies for poverty reduction, drawing lessons for Vietnam and for other low-income developing countries.
New research suggests that cross-country differences in legal origin help explain differences in financial development. This paper empirically assesses two theories of why legal origin influences financial development. First, the political' channel stresses that (i) legal traditions differ in the priority they give to the rights of individual investors vis- ...-vis the state and (ii) this has repercussions for the development of property rights and financial markets. Second, the adaptability' channel holds that (i) legal traditions differ in their ability to adjust to changing commercial circumstances and (ii) legal systems that adapt quickly to minimize the gap between the contracting needs of the economy and the legal system's capabilities will foster financial development more effectively than would more rigid legal traditions. We use historical comparisons and cross-country regressions to assess the validity of these two channels. We find that legal origin matters for financial development because legal traditions differ in their ability to adapt efficiently to evolving economic conditions.
This paper discusses the progress that Vietnam has made toward meeting a core set of development goals that the government recently adopted as part of its Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS). These goals are strongly related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but are adapted and expanded to reflect Vietnam's national challenges and the government's ambitious development plans. For each Vietnam Development Goal, the authors describe recent trends in relation to the trajectories implied by the MDGs, outline the intermediate targets identified by the government, and discuss the challenges involved in meeting these. Relative to other countries of similar per capi...
Directory of foreign diplomatic officers in Washington.
Countries emerging from civil war attract both aid and policy advice. This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform in the post-conflict growth process. It is based on a comprehensive data set of large civil wars and covers 27 countries that were in their first decade of post-conflict economic recovery during the 1990s. The authors first investigate whether the absorptive capacity for aid is systematically different in post-conflict countries. They find that during the first three post-conflict years, absorptive capacity is no greater than normal, but that in the rest of the first decade it is approximately double its normal level. So ideally, aid shoul...
In a context of increased primary school enrollment rates, secondary education is appearing as the next big challenge for Latin American and East Asian countries. This report seeks to undertake a detailed diagnostic of secondary education in these two regions, understand some of the main constraints to the expansion and improvement of secondary education, and suggest policy options to address these constraints, with focus on policies that improve the mobilization and use of resources.
In Tours of Vietnam, Scott Laderman demonstrates how tourist literature has shaped Americans’ understanding of Vietnam and projections of United States power since the mid-twentieth century. Laderman analyzes portrayals of Vietnam’s land, history, culture, economy, and people in travel narratives, U.S. military guides, and tourist guidebooks, pamphlets, and brochures. Whether implying that Vietnamese women were in need of saving by “manly” American military power or celebrating the neoliberal reforms Vietnam implemented in the 1980s, ostensibly neutral guides have repeatedly represented events, particularly those related to the Vietnam War, in ways that favor the global ambitions of ...
Countries that have experienced banking crises have adopted one of two distinct approaches toward the resolution of nonperforming assets--a centralized or a decentralized solution. A centralized approach entails setting up a government agency--an asset management company--with the full responsibility for acquiring, restructuring, and selling of the assets. A decentralized approach relies on banks and other creditors to manage and resolve nonperforming assets. Dado and Klingebiel study banking crises where governments adopted a decentralized, creditor-led workout strategy following systemic crises. They use a case study approach and analyze seven banking crises in which governments mainly rel...
Economic growth is the most important determinant of poverty reduction. But countries with similar rates of growth can experience different poverty reduction rates.