Natural Resources, Neither Curse nor Destiny

1

• Natural Resources, Neither Curse nor Destiny
• Natural Resources Neither Course nor Destiny
  brings together a variety of analytical
  perspectives, ranging from econometric analyses
  of economic growth to historical studies of
  successful development experiences in countries
  with abundant natural resources. The evidence
  suggests that natural resources are neither a
  curse nor destiny. Natural resources can actually
  spur economic development when combined with the
  accumulation of knowledge for economic
  innovation. Furthermore, natural resource
  abundance need not be the only determinant of the
  structure of trade in developing countries. In
  fact, the accumulation of knowledge,
  infrastructure, and the quality of governance all
  seem to determine not only what countries produce
  and export, but also how firms and workers
  produce any good.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
2

• Pakistan Higher Education Policy Note
• The Policy Note is an assessment of the
  Medium-Term Development Framework (MTDF), along
  with an estimate of the projected budgetary
  impact of the Framework, and an elaboration of
  some specific critical aspects. The MTDF is the
  Pakistani version of a higher education strategy.
  It is assessed for soundness, consistency, and
  realism of the objectives and associated
  programs. The Note tests the MTDF through the
  simulation of budgetary impact, and proposes
  alternative scenarios for funding the development
  of universities and the higher education
  subsector from both public and private sources.
  The Note complements the MTDF in the following
  areas quality, relevance, and accreditation
  public and private partnerships governance and
  management costs and financing of the MTDF and
  communication.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
3

• Infrastructure in Latin America and the
  Caribbean, Recent Developments and Key Challenges
• Many Latin American and Caribbean countries have
  spent too little on transport systems, water,
  sanitation, and electricity, which has hampered
  growth, competitiveness, and poverty reduction.
  Governments, overestimating the promise of
  private sector participation, tried to off-load
  too much responsibility for infrastructure
  financing and management, especially in the
  1990s. The result has been dashed hopes,
  insufficient improvement in public services, and
  a widespread backlash against privatization.
  Nonetheless, progress has been made and important
  lessons learned.
• Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean
  explores the extraordinary transformations that
  have shaped infrastructure in the region over the
  past 15 years. It delves into the need for
  appropriate and responsible investment in
  infrastructure examines the crucial role that
  governments must play in infrastructure
  financing, oversight, and provision and
  encourages efforts to appropriately engage the
  private sector. In addition, it emphasizes the
  need for infrastructure policy to be sensitive to
  the social and political context. The
  recommendations made will be of special interest
  to policy makers, academics, and infrastructure
  professionals and investors.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
4

• Developing Annuities Market, The Experience of
  Chile
• Developing Annuities Markets The Experience of
  Chile is part of a multicountry World Bank
  project analyzing the market for retirement
  products. Among countries that have reformed
  their pension systems since the early 1990s, the
  Chilean case has emerged as the most relevant for
  drawing policy lessons on the role of the private
  sector in the provision of retirement income for
  two reasons the depth, sophistication, and
  efficiency of the country's retirement products
  market, and the fact that this market was
  successfully developed from scratch by a
  middle-income country. The book examines in
  detail Chile's efforts to build a sound
  regulatory framework for the payout phase,
  concluding that a market for annuities and other
  retirement instruments can be built from a low
  base, while also identifying the reform agenda
  that policy makers need to implement to maximize
  benefits for their retiring populations. "This
  book provides a rigorous analysis, supported by a
  careful data examination, of the annuity market
  in Chile. It should be a must-read for policy
  makers involved in pension reforms." Solange
  Bernstein, Director, Superintendency of Pension
  Funds, Chile "This volume offers a fascinating
  in-depth study of the Chilean annuity
  marketplace, a topic of direct interest to
  developing and developed nations as they prepare
  to design and regulate financial markets for the
  decumulation phase of life." Olivia S. Mitchell,
  Executive Director, Pension Research Council, The
  Wharton School

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
5

• Pensions Panorama
• The accurate presentation of a country's pension
  system and the comparison of pension systems
  across countries are crucial parts of policy
  analysis and reform. This is equally valid for
  high-income countries of the Organisation for
  Economic Co-operation and Development as it is
  for low- and middle-income countries. Pensions
  Panorama provides a compendium of facts and
  analysis that should inform policy making and
  public debate about retirement-income systems
  around the world. Reforming pensions is a central
  policy issue for all countries it is challenging
  and controversial because it involves long-term
  planning by governments that face numerous
  short-term pressures. In Pensions Panorama,
  Edward Whitehouse combines painstaking, rigorous
  analysis with a clear, easy-to-understand
  presentation of empirical results. While the
  author does not advocate any particular kind of
  pension system or type of pension reform, the
  analysis presented can inform debates on
  retirement-income systems. A core concern is
  social sustainability, which involves the future
  adequacy of pension benefits, the impact of
  pension reforms on income distribution among
  older peoples, and the means to combat old-age
  poverty. Pensions Panorama is a useful resource
  for policy makers, government oficials, and
  others involved in pension reform.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
6

• The State of State Reform in Latin America
• Latin America suffered a profound state crisis
  in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave
  of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known
  as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide
  variety of institutional or 'second generation'
  reforms. The State of State Reform in Latin
  America reviews and assesses the outcomes of
  these less studied institutional reforms.
• This book examines four major areas of
  institutional reform a) political institutions
  and the state organization b) fiscal
  institutions, such as budget, tax and
  decentralization institutions c) public
  institutions in charge of sectoral economic
  policies (financial, industrial, and
  infrastructure) and d) social sector
  institutions (pensions, social protection, and
  education). In each of these areas, the authors
  summarize the reform objectives, describe and
  measure their scope, assess the main outcomes,
  and identify the obstacles for implementation,
  especially those of an institutional nature.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
7

• At Loggerheads? Agricultural Expansion, Poverty
  Reduction, and Environment in the Tropical
  Forests
• Despite the vast number of books and reports on
  tropical deforestation, there's confusion about
  the causes of forest loss and forest poverty, and
  the effectiveness of policy responses. At
  Loggerheads seeks to describe ways to reconciles
  pressures for agricultural expansion in the
  tropics with the urgent needs for both forest
  conservation and poverty alleviation. It
  diagnoses the causes and impacts of forest loss
  and the reasons for the association of forests
  and poverty. It looks at how policies - modulated
  by local conditions - act simultaneously on
  deforestation and poverty, creating tradeoffs or
  complementarities, depending on the situation.
  The report brings to the surface problems that
  impede adoption of favourable policies,
  describing institutional and technological
  innovations that might help overcome these
  impediments.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
8

• Aid That Works Successful Development in Fragile
  States
• Research in recent years on aid effectiveness
  shows that significant obstacles in fragile
  states - insecurity, poor governance and weak
  implementation capacity - usually prevent aid
  from achieving the desired results in these
  environments. This study investigates the
  attributes and effectiveness of donor-supported
  programmes and projects that worked well under
  difficult conditions in fragile states. Presented
  in this study are nine development initiatives in
  six less developed countries - Afghanistan,
  Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste
  and Uganda. The cases show that development
  initiatives, which engage local communities and
  local level governments, are often able to have
  significant impact. However, for more substantial
  improvements to take places, localized gains need
  to be scaled up either horizontally (other
  localities) or vertically (to higher levels).
  Given the advantages of working at the local
  level and the difficulty of working through
  mainstream bureaucratic agencies at higher levels
  in these countries, donors often prefer to create
  'parallel-agencies' to reach out to larger
  numbers of beneficiaries. However, this may in
  the long run weaken the legitimacy of mainstream
  government institutions, and donor agencies may
  therefore choose to work as closely as possible
  with government officials from the beginning to
  build trust and demonstrating that new
  initiatives are non-threatening and help prepare
  the eventual mainstreaming of 'parallel
  agencies'.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
9

• Emerging Capital Markets and Globalization The
  Latin American Experience
• Back in the early 1990s, economists and policy
  makers had high expectations about the prospects
  for domestic capital market development in
  emerging economies, particularly in Latin
  America. Unfortunately, they are now faced with
  disheartening results. Stock and bond markets
  remain illiquid and segmented. Debt is
  concentrated at the short end of the maturity
  spectrum and denominated in foreign currency,
  exposing countries to maturity and currency risk.
  Capital markets in Latin America look
  particularly underdeveloped when considering the
  many efforts undertaken to improve the
  macroeconomic environment and to reform the
  institutions believed to foster capital market
  development. The disappointing performance has
  made conventional policy recommendations
  questionable, at best. Emerging Capital Markets
  and Globalization analyzes where we stand and
  where we are heading on capital market
  development. First, it takes stock of the state
  and evolution of Latin American capital markets
  and related reforms over time and relative to
  other countries. Second, it analyzes the factors
  related to the development of capital markets,
  with particular interest on measuring the impact
  of reforms. And third, in light of this analysis,
  it discusses the prospects for capital market
  development in Latin America and emerging
  economies and the implications for the reform
  agenda.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
10

• Global Gains through Community-Based Approaches
• The paper begins by discussing the underlying
  rationale for the structure of projects in the
  World Bank-GEF Africa Region portfolio. It next
  outlines key design principles of the projects.
  Finally, it tells the stories of specific
  projects in the portfolio to illustrate the
  principles and messages that are critical to
  fulfilling the GEF mandate, describes the lessons
  that are being learned, and examines the avenues
  for future project development suggested by these
  lessons.

Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
11
Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
12
Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm
13
Now available at the World Bank Public
Information Center/Poverty Reduction Strategy
Resource CenterHeritage Plaza I, 1st floor,
Kamaladi, KathmanduFor more informationE-mail
rshrestha1_at_worldbank.orgCall 4238545,
4249731Monday Friday, 900 am 500 pm