This report is part of a strategy to
promotes trade competitiveness within the East Asia and
Pacific Region. It presents an overview of the logistics
issues facing East Asia countries and proposes a development
agenda for them. Based on the recognition that the
countries have basic differences in their level of
development, extent of openness, and composition of trade,
it begins by discussing the benefits of improved logistics.

This study provides a review of the food
and agricultural sector in Ukraine. It assesses the current
status of the food and agricultural sector with special
reference to the agricultural policy regime and the form and
level of government support to the sector. The paper reviews
the sector's readiness to compete on open global
markets for food and agricultural products. Given the
importance and sensitivity of the food and agriculture

This report provides recommendations on
how to better manage ongoing changes in livestock
development. First, it presents an overview of the main
trends that can be expected to drive the sector over the
next decades. Second it discusses the negative or positive
social, environmental, and health repercussions of those
trends, and the institutional, policy, and technical
requirements needed to manage them. It concludes with a

According to Myint's "vent-for-surplus"
theory, development of the economies of Indonesia, the
Philippines, and Thailand from the nineteenth century on
depended on the natural advantage of large tracts of unused
"empty land" with low population density and abundant natural
resources of the type typically found in Southeast Asia and
Africa at the outset of Western colonization. When these
economies were integrated into international trade, hitherto

This paper uses a duration analysis
based on adoption data spanning more than 25 years from six
communities in the Central Highlands of Guatemala. The
analysis explores how household characteristics and external
trends play into both the adoption and diffusion processes
of non-traditional exports among smallholders. Adoption was
initially widespread and rapid, which led nontraditional
exports to be hailed as a pro-poor success, reaching all but

Accelerating rural economic growth and
reducing rural poverty requires a comprehensive strategy
built on sound analysis covering all major aspects o f the
rural economy including agricultural output markets, input
markets (seeds, fertilizer, extension), factor markets
(land, water, labor and credit), the rural non- farm
economy, and targeted interventions. This report focuses on
one aspect o f this complex puzzle - rural factor markets.

In 1993 the Board of the World Bank
endorsed a Water Resources Management Policy Paper (WRMPP).
In that paper, and in this Strategy, water resources
management comprises the institutional framework (legal,
regulatory and organizational roles), management instruments
(regulatory and financial), and the development, maintenance
and operation of infrastructure (including water storage
structures and conveyance, wastewater treatment, and

The objective of this study is to analyse the impact of various types of
government spending on growth and poverty reduction, using provincial level data over
the last decade. Government spending reduces poverty through many channels such as
agricultural growth and improved nonfarm employment. We will try to capture all these
different effects in the analysis if the data allow. This paper opens with a review of
Vietnam’s economic reforms and growth over the past decade. We then sketch Vietnam’s

Recent trends in Albania suggest that it
has the potential for a modern and competitive agricultural
sector, provided there is sufficient private investment and
the right policy environment. This chapter looks at the role
of agriculture in the economy and the current status of the
sector, and outlines the implications of modernization and
transformation of agriculture for rural areas. It also
identifies trends and sources of growth for agriculture, and

This report is the first step in a
process toward using environmental damage cost assessments
for priority setting and as an instrument for integrating
environmental issues into economic and social development.
The report provides estimates of damage cost for several
areas of the environment: air, water, land and forests, and
waste disposal. The estimates should be considered as orders
of magnitude and a range is provided to indicate the level

A major section of over 720 million
rural poor in India continue to depend on biomass sources
for meeting their energy requirements. Most of these poor
people continue to burn biomass in energy-inefficient
devices, locally called Chulhas. This study report is based
on an evaluation of the National Program for Improved
Chulhas (NPIC) conducted as part of a larger Bank study
entitled India : household energy, indoor air pollution and

This article intends to summarize
findings from a study carried out by the author between the
winter of 1995 and spring of 1996 among the Buems on the
Ghana side of the Ghana-Togo border. The objective in this
paper is to identify and discuss the main philosophical
contexts within which the indigenous Buem conflict
management system operates. The paper also assesses the
relevance of these principles to the management of modern