Regional and Sectoral Studies
8 items available
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This series provides an outlet for work that is relatively focused in its subject matter or geographic coverage and that contributes to the intellectual foundations of development operations and policy formulation. This series has been discontinued.
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Publication
Economic Growth, Poverty, and Household Welfare in Vietnam
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004)Viet Nam is an economic success story - it transformed itself from a country in the 1980s as one of the poorest in the world, to a country in the 1990s with one of the world's highest growth rates. With the adoption of a new market-oriented policies, Viet Nam averaged an economic growth rate of 8 percent per year from 1990 to 2000, a growth rate accompanied by a large reduction in poverty, stemming from significant increases in school enrollment, and a rapid decrease in child malnutrition. The book uses an unusually rich set of macroeconomic, and household survey data, to examine several topics: the causes of the economic turnaround, and prospects for future growth; the impact of economic growth on household welfare, as measured by consumption expenditures, health, education, and other socioeconomic indicators; and, the nature of poverty in Viet Nam, and the effectiveness of government policies, intended to reduce same. Although the country's past achievements are impressive, future progress is by no means ensured. -
Publication
Income Support for the Unemployed : Issues and Options
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004)With the aim to provide guidelines for countries wishing to introduce or improve income support systems for the unemployed, the book summarizes the evidence about the performance of five such systems: unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance, unemployment insurance savings accounts, severance pay, and public works. These systems are evaluated by two sets of criteria: (1) performance criteria, evaluating how well these systems work - how they protect incomes and what other, particularly efficiency related, effects they may have; and (2) design and implementation criteria, evaluating how these systems fit the country - how suitable are these programs given country-specific conditions, chief among them being labor market and other institutions, the capacity needed for administering income support programs, the size of the informal sector, and prevalence of private transfers. This report also offers summary evaluations of alternative systems by describing the strengths and weaknesses of each system and pointing out the country specific circumstances that are particularly conducive to performance.