As firms jockey to position themselves in emerging markets, firms need to evaluate the relative attractiveness of market expansion in different countries. Since the attractiveness of a market is a function of the eventual market potential and the speed at which the product diffuses through the market, a better understanding of the determinants of market potential and diffusion speed across different countries is of particular relevance to firms deliberating their market expansion strategies. Despite a recent spurt in research on multinational diffusion, there exist significant gaps in the literature. First, existing studies tend to limit their analysis to industrialized countries, thus reducing the ability to generalize the insights to many emerging markets. Second, these studies tend to focus on the coefficients of external and internal influence in the Bass diffusion model but do not analyze the determinants of market potential. Third, the choice of variables that affect the parameters of the Bass diffusion model has been rather limited. In this paper, we seek to address these gaps in the literature. To address the scope issue, we assembled a novel dataset that captures the diffusion of 6 products in 31 developed and developing countries from Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The set of countries in our dataset encompasses 60 % of the world population and includes

and the e-Commerce and Global Business Forum, the Guest Editors and three anonymous referees for comments on earlier drafts. David Leibsohn provided invaluable research assistance. Errors remain our responsibility. E-COMMERCE READINESS INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT AND INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS A systematic cross-country analysis of e-commerce activity reveals that although physical infrastructure explains much of the variation in basic Internet use, e-commerce activity also depends significantly on the "rule of law " and, secondarily, on availability of credible payment channels such as credit cards. These results suggest that an institutional environment that Despite its widely cited potential to transform global business, e-commerce is, as yet, predominantly a North American phenomenon. Estimates vary, but it is generally accepted that upwards of 75 % of online transactions are confined within U.S. borders (The Economist, 2000, p. 49). The slow development of e-commerce in other countries is puzzling, given the intuitive

There is an increasing need to develop indicators of vulnerability and of adaptive capacity both to determine the robustness of response strategies over time and to understand better the underlying processes. The climate change policy process has increasingly focussed on the potential for adaptation. National level indicators of vulnerability or adaptive capacity directed towards the allocation of resources to support financial mechanisms of the UNFCCC, for example, will only find acceptance if based on agreed criteria that are transparent and robust. In this project we find that it is possible to compare the vulnerability of people and places across time and space at different scales. It is less meaningful to aggregate vulnerability across scales since the processes that cause vulnerability are different at each scale. We have explored issues of aggregation and construction of indices, weighting of indicators, and the efficacy of these to explain observed vulnerability to weather-related natural disasters. We are now in a better position to identify robust and transparent indicator sets. We find that national level adaptive capacity is dependent on social infrastructure and the accountability of institutions more than on the level of economic activity.

Niger), this paper examines the consequences of macropolicy reform on real incomes of poor households in sub-Saharan Africa. The simulations suggest that, compared to alternative policy options, trade and exchange rate liberalization tends to benefit poor households in both rural and urban areas—as rents on foreign exchange are eliminated, demand for labor increases, and returns to tradable agriculture rise. The small magnitudes of the gains in average real incomes of poor household groups modeled suggest that macropolicy reform alone will not be sufficient in the short run to significantly reduce poverty in Africa. © 2000 Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Science Inc. 1.

This paper is one of several outputs of the research project on "The economic impact of fatal adult illness due to AIDS and other causes in Sub-Saharan Africa", sponsored by the World Bank, USAID, and DANIDA. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the positions of the World Bank or its members. We are grateful to Harold Alderman, Paurvi Bhatt,

This study examines the proposition that political business cycle theory is relevant to private foreign lenders to developing countries. We find that: credit rating agencies downgrade developing country ratings more often in election years, and do so by approximately one rating level; bond spreads are higher in the 60 days before an election compared to spreads in the 60 days after an election; and spreads trend significantly downward in the 60 days before an election, but then flatten out in the 60 days after an election. Agencies and bondholders apparently view elections negatively, thereby increasing the cost of capital to developing democracies.

How rapidly will child undernutrition respond to income growth? This study explores that question using household survey data from 12 countries. In addition, data on the undernutrition rates since the 1970s available from a cross-section of countries are employed in this investigation. Both forms of analysis yield similar results. Income increases at household and national levels imply similar rates of reduction in undernutrition. Using these estimates and better-than-historical income growth rates, we find that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the levels of child underweight by 2015 is unlikely to be met through income growth alone. What is needed is a balanced strategy of income growth and investment in more direct interventions to accelerate reductions in undernutrition. iv v CONTENTS Acknowledgments .........................................................................................................vii 1.

Abstract: There is controversy about whether geography matters mainly because of its contemporaneous impact on economic outcomes or because of its interaction with historical events. Looking at terrain ruggedness, we are able to estimate the importance of these two channels. Because rugged terrain hinders trade and most productive activities, it has a negative direct effect on income. However, in Africa rugged terrain afforded protection to those being raided during the slave trades. Since the slave trades retarded subsequent economic development, in Africa ruggedness also has had a historical indirect positive effect on income. Studying all countries worldwide, we find that both effects are significant statistically and that for Africa the indirect positive effect dominates the direct negative effect. Looking within Africa, we provide evidence that the indirect effect operates through the slave trades. We also show that the slave trades, by encouraging population concentrations in rugged areas, have also amplified the negative direct impact of

Selection is a fundamental task in interactive applications, typically performed by clicking or lassoing items of interest. However, users may require more nuanced forms of selection. Selecting regions or attributes may be more important than selecting individual items. Selections may be over dynamic items and selections might be more easily created by relaxing simpler selections (e.g., ―select all items like this one‖). Creating such selections requires that interfaces model the declarative structure of the selection, not just individually selected items. We present direct manipulation techniques that couple declarative selection queries with a query relaxation engine that enables users to interactively generalize their selections. We apply our selection techniques in both information visualization and graphics editing applications, enabling generalized selection over both static and dynamic interface objects. A controlled study finds that users create more accurate selection queries when using our generalization techniques.

This paper uses a panel data of 347 households in Egypt to measure changes in household consumption between 1997 and 1999 and to identify causes behind the changes. Per capita consumption decreased for the households during this time and, while not dramatic, it occurred at all points along the distribution. Over the two-year period, the number of households that fell into poverty was over twice as large as the number of households that climbed out of poverty. About two-thirds of overall poverty was chronic (average consumption over time was below the poverty line), and almost half of all poor were always poor. We use quantile regression methods to identify the factors that explain total, chronic, and transitory poverty. While our analysis ably documents the extent of transitory poverty, it does not explain well the determinants of this type of poverty. The predominantly chronic nature of poverty in the sample, and our ability to identify associated characteristics, strengthens the case for targeting antipoverty interventions such as food subsidies. iii CONTENTS Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v 1.