This 2010 report, Valuation of
Environmental Services in Sri Lanka : A Case Study of Soil
and Watershed Benefits in the Southern Province, uses
valuation tools to evaluate environmental services to allow
policymakers to efficiently address sustainable economic
development and environment protection within the country s
economic policy. The Government of Sri Lanka has committed
to a 10-year development framework of increased growth and

The objective of this Agriculture Public
Expenditure Review (AgPER) is to provide an assessment of
the present situation and to offer recommendations to
improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public spending
in agriculture in Mozambique. The report provides a
sectorwide picture of the magnitude and structure of public
spending for agriculture in Mozambique over the past six
years, and an overall assessment of the budget process in

This paper investigates the impact of
rising wheat prices -- during the 2007/08 global food crisis
-- on food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting the temporal
stratification of a unique nationally-representative
household survey, the analysis finds evidence of large
declines in real per capita food consumption and in food
security (per capita calorie intake and household dietary
diversity) corresponding to the price shocks. The data

In this report, in addition to aggregate
results, six brief case studies are used to highlight the
impact of Bank supported mining sector reform on various
indicators at different links of the value chain. These
include: the impacts on investment; production and
employment in Argentina; institutional capacity building in
Papua New Guinea; production and fiscal revenues in
Tanzania; community and regional development in Madagascar;

Ownership and control over assets such
as land and housing provide direct and indirect benefits to
individuals and households, including a secure place to
live, the means of a livelihood, protection during
emergencies, and collateral for credit that can be used for
investment or consumption. Unfortunately, few studies -
either at the micro or macro levels- examine the gender
dimensions of asset ownership. This paper sets out a

This report argues that in the future
Moldova will need to develop a second engine of growth from
exports of goods and services. We argue that Moldova needs
to resurrect agro-based exports, to raise their value by
exporting to higher value markets, and develop service
exports in order to provide job opportunities for
underemployed tertiary graduates. To be successful in doing
so, the government will need to implement deep fiscal and

The objective of the Functional Review
of the Environment, Water and Forestry sector (FR-EWF) is to
help the Government of Romania (GoR) develop an action plan
for implementation over the short- and medium-term to
strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector
administration, and provide input to the Government National
Reform Program (NRP 2011- 2013) and beyond, especially in
relation to those functions that support Romania's

Cambodia's growth over 1998-2008
has been remarkable (almost 10 percent per annum for a
decade). This paper applies a "growth diagnostic"
approach to understand how this happened and how it can be
sustained. Past growth has been driven by the coincidence of
a set of historical and geographic factors (including
opportunistic policy responses), together with the use of
natural assets (although in a non sustainable way) and the

This research report examines the
technical efficiency and impact of the Zambia Fertilizer
Support Program (FSP). The FSP was launched by the
Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) in 2002 as a
temporary measure to provide subsidized hybrid maize seed
and fertilizer packages to smallholder farmers and to
promote the participation of private traders in supply. When
the FSP was announced, the Government indicated that farmers

Policy makers and development
practitioners who are responsible for developing investment
strategies to promote economic growth find many challenges
in the changing face of agriculture in the twenty-first
century. In addition to its productive role of providing
food, clothing, fuel, and housing for a growing world
population, agriculture assumes other roles, the importance
of which has more recently been recognized. In addition to

This paper estimates the impact of a
change in procurement strategy of a private buyer in the
central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Beginning in October
2000, internet kiosks and warehouses were established that
provide wholesale price information and an alternative
marketing channel to soy farmers in the state. Using a new
market-level dataset, the estimates suggest a significant
increase in soy price after the introduction of kiosks,

Although Bulgaria now implements the
European Union's (EU's) "common"
agricultural policy (CAP), national policymakers still
maintain responsibility to tailor CAP implementation to meet
the specific development needs of the country. The National
Rural Development Program (NRDP) very appropriately lays out
the challenges that Bulgarian agriculture and rural
development face, but the early implementation of a