In the past decade, Latin America and
the Caribbean has achieved impressive social and economic
successes. For the first time in history, more people are in
the middle class than in poverty. Inequality, although still
high, declined markedly. Growth, jobs and effective social
programs have transformed the lives of millions. In a
striking departure from the crisis-prone Latin America of
the past, the region has shown it is better prepared to

Natural resources offer opportunities,
but also bring challenges. They have generally been linked
to a series of negative outcomes like economic decline,
corruption, and conflict. Oil and minerals reserves, in
particular, are often very spatially concentrated, and their
discovery becomes a potential source of conflict between the
governments, the people of the producing areas, and those of
the rest of the country. But can this increased risk of

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic,
fiscal, and governance impact of gold mining in Mali. The
analysis finds that, at the national level, mining plays an
important role by contributing to export earnings and
overall government fiscal revenue. In 2013, the mining
sector represented 7 percent of gross domestic product,
contributed 1.5 percent to growth in total gross domestic
product, and accounted for 65 percent of total export

Prior to the political and security
crisis of 2012, Mali, a large landlocked country in West
Africa already ranked among the poorest countries in the
world. In early 2012, the vast northern regions fell under
the control of extremist forces, while a coup d’état in
Bamako threw the country into political instability and
turmoil. A strong international military response in early
2013 prevented further destabilization, though part of the

This note is a summary of a report that
considers urban areas as the complement to rural areas that
will allow the Plurinational State of Bolivia to achieve the
goals set forth in its Patriotic Agenda for the Bicentennial
2025. The report uses data available at the national level
from censuses and household surveys from the National
Statistics Institute (INE) and the Social and Economic
Policy Analysis Unit of the Ministry of Development Planning

The Country Opinion Survey in Bolivia
assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better
understanding of how stakeholders in Bolivia perceive the
WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from
national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral
agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil
society in Bolivia on 1) their views regarding the general
environment in Bolivia; 2) their overall attitudes toward

This report highlights recent economic
updates in Bangladesh as of April 2015. Economic growth in
Bangladesh was gaining momentum in the first half of FY15.
Capacity utilization improved and investments were showing
some signs of recovery. This growth was also job-friendly.
The 12-monthly-moving average inflation decelerated from 7.6
percent in February 2014 to 6.8 percent in February 2015.
The resilience of the Bangladesh economy continues to be

Georgia has an impressive growth record
but social vulnerabilities persist. It remains a challenge
to tackle social vulnerabilities within a sustained
macroeconomic framework. This programmatic public
expenditure review (PER) assesses the alignment of selected
fiscal programs with the government’s social objectives.
Building on the analysis and recommendations of the 2014
PER, this PER analyzes the impact of recent reforms

Africa is rapidly urbanizing and will
lead the world’s urban growth in the coming decades.
Currently, Africa is the least‐urbanized continent,
accommodating 11.3 percent of the world’s urban population,
and the Sub‐Saharan region is the continent’s
least‐urbanized area. However, the region’s cities are
expanding rapidly, by 2050; Africa’s urban population is
projected to reach 1.2 billion, with an urbanization rate of

The inability to unlock natural resource
wealth for the benefit of developing countries’ local
populations, a phenomenon popularly known as the ‘resource
curse’ or the ‘paradox of plenty’, has spawned extensive
debate among researchers and policy makers in recent years.
There is now a well-established body of literature exploring
the links between natural resources and conflict, with some
sources estimating that over the past 60 years, 40 percent

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
sets out the World Bank Group (WBG) program for Albania for
the period FY15-19, aimed at supporting Albanias aspiration
to achieve equitable growth and integration into the
European Union. Albania emerged from the collapse of
isolationist communism in the early 1990s as one of the
poorest countries in Europe. The country then experienced
rapid growth of nearly 6 percent per annum, rising into the

The use of the phrase, ‘political
economy’ originates in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and is
also found in the writings of David Ricardo and Karl Marx.
What is presently understood as ‘economics’ was, at that
time, termed ‘political economy’. This was understood to
mean ‘conditions of production organization in
nation-states’ (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, Beuran,
Raballand and Kapoor, 2011). Venerable scholars such as