The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Anke Höffler for research assistance in section 2 and Chris Adam, Janine Aron, Kees Burger, Bill Kinsey, Remco Oostendorp, Ritva Reinikka, Francis Teal, Steve Younger and three referees for comments. Abstract: Africa has had slow growth and a massive exodus of capital. In many respects it has been the most capital-hostile region. We review and interpret the aggregate-level and microeconomic literatures to identify the key explanations for this performance. There is a reasonable correspondence of the two sets of evidence, pointing to four factors as being important. These are a lack of openness to international trade; a high-risk environment; a low level of social capital; and poor infrastructure. These problems are to a substantial extent attributable to government behaviour and the paper includes a review of the political economy literature which addresses that behaviour

This paper m a product of the Poverty and Human Resources Division, Policy Research Department -- is part of a larger effort in the department to monitor progress in reducing poverty in the world. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Andrea Ramirez, room N8-036, telephone 202-458-5734, fax 202-522-1153, Internet address mravallion@worldbank.org. December 1996. (36 pages) The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in prowess to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries bey represent

Finding structures in vast multidimensional data sets, be they measurement data, statistics, or textual documents, is difficult and time-consuming. Interesting, novel relations between the data items may be hidden in the data. The selforganizing map (SOM) algorithm of Kohonen can be used to aid the exploration: the structures in the data sets can be illustrated on special map displays. In this work, the methodology of using SOMs for exploratory data analysis or data mining is reviewed and developed further. The properties of the maps are compared with the properties of related methods intended for visualizing highdimensional multivariate data sets. In a set of case studies the SOM algorithm is applied to analyzing electroencephalograms, to illustrating structures of the standard of living in the world, and to organizing full-text document collections. Measures are proposed for evaluating the quality of different types of maps in representing a given data set, and for measuring the robu...

We are grateful to Yongsung Chang and three referees, particularly the final referee, for useful comments. Saasha Celestial-One provided excellent research assistance. Does Schooling Cause Growth? Barro (1991) and others find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries. A model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one's elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling. The model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the effect of schooling on growth by using evidence from the labor literature on Mincerian (1974) returns to education. The upshot is that the impact of schooling on growth explains less than one third of the empirical cross-country relationship. The model is extended to address the choice of schooling, showing that faster growth can induce more schooling by raising its effective return. Calibrating schooling choices suggests that this reverse channel can potentially explain one half or more of the observed relationship between schooling and

Debates on the appropriate role of the state and appropriate policies and institutions to further this role are typically carried out by relying upon anecdotal evidence in the absence of a quantifiable definition of "good government. " This paper attempts to fill this void by developing a gauge of the quality of government through the construction of an index of

this article a case study that demonstrated how the SOM can be used to visualize a large statistical data set. The set consisted of 39 indicators, which described different aspects of the welfare "states" of the countries of the world. Following exactly the same procedures the SOM could also be used as a decision-support system for analyzing and visualizing sets of statistical indicators in other similar applications. For instance, the method has already been used for the analysis of states of banks.

We present new estimates of the extent of the world’s progress against poverty. By the frugal $1 per day standard, we find that there were 390 million fewer people living in poverty in 2001 than 20 years earlier. Over the same period,400 million fewer people were poor in China; half of this decline was in the early 1980s. Aggregate gains to the poor elsewhere in the world have roughly balanced the losses. A marked bunching up of people between $1 and $2 per day has emerged over time. If the trends over 1981-2001 continue then the aggregate $1 per day poverty rate for 1990 will be almost halved by 2015, though East and South Asia will be the only regions to more than halve their 1990 poverty rates. Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as the region with the highest incidence of extreme poverty and the greatest depth of poverty. 1 We are grateful to numerous colleagues at the World Bank who helped us obtain the necessary data and answer our many questions and the Governmental Statistics Offices who collected the primary survey data. The able assistance of Prem Sangraula is gratefully acknowledged. Angus Deaton, Johan Mistiaen and Dominique van de Walle made useful comments on the first draft. These are the views of the authors and should not be attributed to the World Bank or any affiliated organization. Address for

This report contains the collective views of an international group of

Weak provision of core labor standards in developing countries has complex effects on competitiveness and trade. The problem cannot be treated effectively by imposing trade sanctions, but should instead be approached through programs aimed directly at poverty reduction, education reforms, and disclosure of information.

A formal model of green national accounting demonstrates that `genuine' saving, net saving less the value of resource depletion and environmental degradation, is a useful indicator of sustainability. Country-level and regional calculations of genuine savings are presented for the period 1970-1993. Sub-Saharan Africa stands out as the region where the greatest dissipation of wealth is occurring. Policy issues are explored. 1 Environment Department, The World Bank. The comments of Danny McCoy, David Pearce and three reviewers are gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed are those of the authors, who are responsible for any errors. 2 Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. 1