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World Bank Technical Paper No. 361. Education has emerged as an essential component of the transition to a market economy in Central and Eastern Europe. Although the countries of the region inherited broadly accessible education systems, the legacies of central planning have constrained the systems from fully adjusting to market economies. This study examines empirical trends in access to and financing of education in nine Central and East European countries by drawing on the findings of a World Bank project that examined the social risks facing people and the policy responses taken by governments since 1989. Chapters address access and participation, the labor market, financing, and staff in the education sector.
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Recognizing that technological progress is a necessary ingredient of development, the World Bank has invested substantial resources in agricultural research and extension. This review is divided into two parts to examine Bank-supported projects that were operational in the 1980s and early 1990s. The first part focuses on agricultural extension, highlighting the extension subsector and an overview of Bank lending, the impact of extension investments, and regional performance. The second part looks at agricultural research. Chapters address investment issues, Bank lending, and portfolio performance and present conclusions and recommendations.
This paper traces the evolution of World Bank support to agricultural services, particularly agricultural extension and research in Sub-Saharan Africa. It describes the Bank's experience with the implementation of national programs in agricultural extension and research and how these are evolving to face the problems of the future. The paper concludes that participation of the beneficiaries in the design and implementation of programs is critical and will ensure the programs' convergence towards rural development.
Since 1985, national economies have become increasingly integrated into a global network. At the same time, both population and production in developing countries are becoming concentrated in urban regions. This, in turn, has generated demands for more local autonomy, shifting more decision making to sub-national levels. Globalization is expected to continue leading to greater openness and international mobility of capital and people. There are few reasons to believe that these trends will abateif anything, they are likely to intensify the focus on cities and sharpen competition among these for international and local resources. This volume underscores the transformative role of globalization and urbanization and shows the interplay between the two forces.
This paper contains two separate but intimately linked reports that deal with corporate social responsibility. The first explores the critical success factors supporting the integration of social concerns into the planning and implementation of privately financed projects in the mining, oil, and gas sectors. The second reviews corporate practices with respect to social and environmental assessment, and the integration between the two.
Since the advent of reform in 1992, the Russian authorities have made substantial strides toward creating a market economy through privatization. Recently, Russian authorities have established an institutional framework for a 'case-by-case' approach that ensures transparency and competition through the use of independent financial and other advisers. This paper contains the principal presentations made at a World Bank workshop on the lessons of international experience in case-by-case privatization.
Local capital market development responds to the need to reduce the risk of financial crises that result from an excessive reliance on external borrowing -- for example, to avoid foreign exchange risk, reduce contagion, and decrease short-term external borrowing. In fact, as financial crises dwarf the role of financial intermediation, the problems of asymmetric information become even more severe, leading to greater public mistrust of financial institutions. The contributors in Focus on Capital tackle various aspects of developing Latin American capital markets. Macroeconomic and structural policies, accounting practices and standards, bond market development, market infrastructure, derivati...