In an economy facing fiscal constraints, public spending in the social sectors needs to be linked to outcomes to ensure efficient and equitable delivery of services.

Economic growth is the most important determinant of poverty reduction. But countries with similar rates of growth can experience different poverty reduction rates.

The publication explores the role of the private sector in economic development and the challenges involved in the design of public policies which promote an appropriate balance between competition and regulation. Chapters discuss the following topics: the private sector and poverty reduction, the investment climate, public intervention to promote supply response, private participation and markets for basic services, pro-poor policy design, sustainability and reform aspects.

Since the inception of the HIPC Initiative, the story of the design and implementation of poverty alleviation strategies has largely been told through the filters of development partners and the Bretton Woods Institutions. Poverty Reduction Strategies in Action examines the efforts in Ghana to reduce poverty and initiate changes that it believes are essential to ensure a prosperous future for its citizens in the 21st century. It chronicles the achievements, pitfalls, and looming challenges of a government, its people, and its external partners in fashioning out and implementing anti-poverty and pro-growth policies. This edited volume, by a group of independent researchers, examines Ghana's experience: what was done, how it was done, what was left undone, the lessons learned, and fills the void in the development literature.

Labor costs in Francophone Africa are considered high by the standards of low-income countries, at least in the formal sector. Workers appear to have some bargaining power and, in Côte d'Ivoire, can force renegotiation of labor contracts in response to new investments.

This publication is a compilation of reports on research projects initiated, under way, or completed in fiscal year 2001 (July 1, 2000 through June 30, 2001). The abstracts cover 150 research projects from the World Bank and grouped under 11 major headings including poverty and social development, health and population, education, labor and employment, environment, infrastructure and urban development, and agriculture and rural development. The abstracts detail the questions addressed, the analytical methods used, the findings to date and their policy implications. Each abstract identifies the expected completion date of each project, the research team, and reports or publications produced.

Interventions in sugar markets come about for many reasons. Often the consequences of these policies persist even when the circumstances that motivated them change. Or the underlying problems that motivated past interventions remain even when it's clear that current approaches have failed. Reform of sugar markets needs to go beyond eliminating failed policies, and find lasting solutions.

Simple numerical measures of the minimum wage may offer deceptive indicators of its impact. Alternative measures, such as kernel density or cumulative distribution plots, are more reliable, and highlight influences higher in the wage distribution or on the informal sector. Panel employment data from Colombia, where minimum wages seem high and binding, show that the minimum wage can have important impacts on wages and unemployment across the wage distribution.

Knowledge, lacking weight and other physical attributes and being intangible, is a hidden factor of production, making economies grow "weightless." But knowledge is also imbedded in technology. If, becaue of low productivity, poor countries keep buying low-technology machines, will they remain stuck in a low-technology, low-growth trap?