What determines girls' educational attainment? School quality (measured by the number of textbooks and teachers) changes in attitudes and better economic opportunities for educated women ; parents (especially mothers') years of schooling and occupations ; and the opportunity cost of sending a girl to school - especially in rural families, or when mothers must hold jobs outside the home.
LDC adjustment packages Riccardo Faini and Jaime de Melo Developing countries have been hit by a fall in their terms of trade, high real interest rates on their external debt, and a drought in commercial lending from abroad. Their subsequent adjustment packages, often supported by loans from the IMF and World Bank, focused on a sharp real exchange rate depreciation to restore external balance and a host of microeconomic reforms to secure a simultaneous supply-side improvement. This paper examines the success of these ‘adjustment with growth' packages in a large sample of developing countries. We find these packages have been much more successful in LDCs which export manufactures than they have in those concentrating on primary exports (primarily low-income African countries); the latter have not resumed sustainable growth, and most of their external adjustment has arisen from expenditure reduction, not an increase in supply. The longer-term prospects for manufacturing exporters are also brighter: there we detect signs of increased efficiency and a smaller decline in investment than in primary exporters. But we also find that a high external debt burden and an unstable macroeconomic environment impede investment in all LDCs. In the longer term, adjustment with growth packages will succeed only if they are accompanied by a more stable macroeconomic environment and appropriate debt relief
The quality - not the size - of the state is what counts. And a prerequisite for changing the role of the state is an improved political process. Without that, any new development strategy will fail.
Two approaches took the lead in the negotiations to dismantle the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA): (1) a phaseout within the framework of the MFA, proposed by developing countries, the EC, Japan, and the Nordic countries, and (2) a new transitional structure relying on global quotas with country allotments for current quota holders, suggested by the United States and Canada.
Automotive air pollution will intensify with increasing urbanization and the rapid pace of motorization in developing countries. Without effective measures to curb air pollution, some 300-400 million city dwellers in developing countries will become exposed to unhealthy and dangerous levels of air pollution by the end of the century. Administratively simple policies that encourage clean fuels and better traffic management are the most promising approach to controlling vehicle pollutant emissions in developing countries.
Forced consolidation of small Chinese farms into larger farms is unwarranted but China needs mechanisms to facilitate free market land transactions, better supplies of such inputs as fertilizer, and - when those are available - a reoriented rural credit system. Early extensions of farmers' about the government's commitment to the present system.
Tariff reform for trade liberalization must be seen as part of a broader program of tax reform. Custom duties on imports should be geared chiefly to protection. Reductions in such duties to promote an outward- oriented development strategy should be offset by increases in sales/value- added taxes applied equally to imports and domestic production. That would maintain public revenues and avoid exacerbating macroeconomic dificulties.
Flat- fee prepayment may be the only feasible cost recovery scheme for primary health care in rural villages of Guinea-Bissau. The level of satisfaction was high in this simple prepayment scheme of drugs and limited primary health care in 18 villages. In a larger health system or an urban area, it might be more difficult to administer such a scheme and to prevent abuse of the system.
Lease contracts provide a promising format for capturing the potential efficiency gains of private participation in the water supply sector. But to ensure that these gains accrue to society as a whole, lease contracts must be carefully designed and the responsible public authority must be capable of fulfilling the monitoring and regulatory role effectively.
