Ln the large aties of the developing world, travel times are generaliy high and increasing, destinations accessible within limited time are decreasing. The average oneway commute in Rio de Janeiro is 90 minutes. In Bogota it is 60 minutes. The average vehicle speed in Manila is 7 miles per hour. The average car in Bangkok is stationary in trtilc for the equivalent of 44 &ys a year. This is happening because vehicle registrations are growing fast on the basis of increased populations, increased wealth, increased cornmeraal penetration, and probably an increasingly persuasive picture in the developing world of international lifestyle in which a car is an essential elemenL Accordingly, in much of the developing world the number of motor vehicles is increasing at more than 10 percent a year-the number of vehicles doubling in 7 years. The countries include China (1S percent), Chile, Mexico, Kor~ Thaiku@ Costa Rica, Syria Taiwan, and many more. What is the shape of increasing congestion and declining mobility? There are no widespread measures available for comparative purposes because decline in mobility is complicated. Congestion is always localized in time and space. A few things are nonetheless evident.

This Global Economic Prospects (GEP) is being released during a period of increased uncertainty following four years of record growth in developing countries, and a 15-year period of steady declines in poverty. Global growth slowed modestly in 2007, coming at 3.5 percent after 3.9 percent in 2006. Most of the slowdown was due to weaker growth in high-income countries. This GEP seeks to develop a better understanding of technology and its diffusion within the developing world. It adopts a broad definition of technology and technological progress, that encompasses the techniques (including the way the production process is organized) by which goods and services are produced, marketed, and made available to the public. This report takes a quantitative approach to understanding technology and technological progress. In chapter 2, it explores the level of, and recent trends in, technological achievement, as well as the process by which technology diffuses between and within countries. Chapter 3 concentrates on the process by which countries absorb foreign technology...

Over the past ten years, private-sector-led growth has revolutionized access to telecommunications. Every region of the developing world did benefit in terms of investment, and rollout. This revolution would have been impossible without government reform, and oversight. Advanced information and communication infrastructure (ICI) are increasingly important to doing business in a globalizing world. Governments, enterprises, civil society, workers, and poor populations in the developing countries need more affordable access. This report proposes strategies that governments can carry out to attract private investment, and ensure the continued evolution, and spread of information and communication infrastructure. These strategies encompass more than sector policy alone, for investment decisions are based on a wide range of factors including, for example, the roles played by financial sector development, and the broader investment environment. The strategies also include potential public sector investments that can catalyze ICI rollout in sub-sectors where the private sector is not prepared to intervene on its own.

The present study uses the GIDD, a CGE-microsimulation model for Global Income Distribution Dynamics, to understand the ex-ante dynamics of global income distribution. Three main robust results emerge. First, under a set of realistic assumptions, there will be a reduction in global income inequality by 2030. This potential reduction can be fully accounted for by the projected convergence in average incomes across countries, with poor and populous countries growing faster than the rest of the world. Second, this convergence process will be accompanied by a widening of income distribution in two-thirds of the developing countries; the main cause being increasing skill premia. Third, a trend that may counter-balance the potential anti-globalization sentiment is the emergence of a global middle class: a group of consumers who demand access to, and have the means to purchase, international goods and services. The results show that the share of these consumers in the global population is likely to more than double in the next 20 years. These ex-ante trends in global income distribution suggest that the mid-1990s could be seen as a turning point after which global inequality began showing a negative tendency.

The authors report new estimates of measures of absolute poverty for the developing world over 1981-2004. A clear trend decline in the percentage of people who are absolutely poor is evident, although with uneven progress across regions. They find more mixed success in reducing the total number of poor. Indeed, the developing world outside China has seen little or no sustained progress in reducing the number of poor, with rising poverty counts in some regions, notably Sub-Saharan Africa. There are encouraging signs of progress in reducing the incidence of poverty in all regions after 2000, although it is too early to say if this is a new trend.

The diffusion of cost-effective life saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of the developing world. Income gains may also play a direct, protective role in ensuring child survival, although the empirical findings to date on this issue have been mixed. This paper assembles data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in 59 countries to analyze the relationship between changes in per capita GDP and infant mortality. The authors show that there is a strong, negative association between changes in per capita GDP and infant mortality- in a first-differenced specification the implied elasticity of infant mortality with respect to per capita GDP is approximately -0.56. In addition to this central result, two findings are noteworthy. First, although there is some evidence of changes in the composition of women giving birth during economic upturns and downturns, the observed changes in infant mortality are not a result of mothers with protective characteristics timing fertility to correspond with the business cycle. Second...

The wave of infrastructure privatization sweeping the world over the past decade or so has given rise to a new category of professional - the specialist utility regulator. These regulators, charged with administering regulatory frameworks that seek to balance the interests of consumers and investors in technically complex and politically sensitive industries, can have a major impact on the performance of privatized firms, on the cost of investment capital (and thus on infrastructure tariffs), and on the sustainability of reforms. For this reason the development of professional, capable utility regulators should be a key part of reform efforts. While new regulators in any country can expect to face many difficulties, the challenges are particularly daunting for regulators in developing countries. This Note reviews those challenges and presents some of the main strategies for supporting new utility regulators in the developing world.

Relative deprivation, shame and social exclusion can matter to the welfare of people everywhere. The authors argue that such social effects on welfare call for a reconsideration of how we assess global poverty, but they do not support standard measures of relative poverty. The paper argues instead for using a weakly-relative measure as the upper-bound complement to the lower-bound provided by a standard absolute measure. New estimates of global poverty are presented, drawing on 850 household surveys spanning 125 countries over 1981-2008. The absolute line is $1.25 a day at 2005 prices, while the relative line rises with the mean, at a gradient of 1:2 above $1.25 a day. The authors show that these parameter choices are consistent with cross-country data on national poverty lines. The results indicate that the incidence of both absolute and weakly-relative poverty in the developing world has been falling since the 1990s, but more slowly for the relative measure. While the number of absolutely poor has fallen, the number of relatively poor has changed little since the 1990s...

The authors use newly collected data on trade and production in 178 countries to infer estimates of trade costs in agriculture and manufactured goods for the 1995-2010 period. The data show that trade costs are strongly declining in per capita income. Moreover, the rate of change of trade costs is largely unfavorable to the developing world: trade costs are falling noticeably faster in developed countries than in developing ones, which serves to increase the relative isolation of the latter. In particular, Sub-Saharan African countries and low-income countries remain subject to very high levels of trade costs. In terms of policy implications, the analysis finds that maritime transport connectivity and logistics performance are very important determinants of bilateral trade costs: in some specifications, their combined effect is comparable to that of geographical distance. Traditional and non-traditional trade policies more generally, including market entry barriers and regional integration agreements, play a significant role in shaping the trade costs landscape.

Societies and economies around the world are becoming more integrated. Integration is the result of reduced costs of transport, lower trade barriers, faster communication of ideas, rising capital flows, and intensifying pressures for mitigation. Integration--or "globalization"--has generated anxieties about rising ineuality, shifting power, and cultural uniformity. This report assesses its impact and examines these anxieties. Global integration is already a powerful force for poverty reduction, but it could be even more effective. Some, but not all of the anxieties are well-founded. Both global opportunities and global risks have outpaced global policy. The authors propose an agenda for action, both to enhance the potential of globalization to provide opportunities for poor people and to reduce and mitigate the risks it generates. This report presents three main findings that bear on current policy debates about globalization. First, poor countries with around 3 billion people have broken into the global market for manufactures and services; these "new globalizers" have experienced large-scale poverty reduction. The second finding concerns inclusion both across countries and within them; the authors highlight a range of measures that would help countries in danger of becoming marginalized become integrated with the world economy. A third issue concerns the anxiety that economic integration leads to cultural or institutional homogenization.

Inequalities in health have recently started to receive a good deal of attention in the developing world. But how large are they? An how large are the differences across countries? Recent data from a 42-country study, show large, but varying inequalities in health across countries. The author explores the reasons for these inter-country differences, and concludes that large inequalities in health, are not apparently associated with large inequalities in income, or with small shares of publicly financed health spending. But they are associated with higher per capita incomes. Evidence from trends in health inequalities - in both the developing, and the industrial world - supports the notion that health inequalities rise with rising per capita incomes. The association between health inequalities, and per capita incomes is probably due in part, to technological change going hand-in-hand with economic growth, coupled with a tendency for the better-off to assimilate new technology ahead of the poor. Since increased health inequalities...

This paper investigates the factors associated with foreign direct investment "surges" and "stops," defined as sharp increases and decreases, respectively, of gross foreign direct investment inflows to the developing world and differentiated based on whether these events are led by waves in greenfield investments or mergers and acquisitions. Greenfield-led surges and stops occur more frequently than mergers and acquisitions-led ones and different factors are associated with the onset of the two types of events. Global liquidity is the only factor significantly associated with a surge, regardless of its kind, while decline in global economic growth and a surge in the preceding year are the only predictors of a stop. Greenfield-led surges and stops are more likely in low-income and resource-rich countries than elsewhere. Global growth, financial openness, and domestic economic and financial instability enable mergers and acquisitions-led surges. These results differ from those in the literature on surges and stops and are particularly relevant in countries where foreign direct investments dominate capital flows.

The document contains the proceedings of the Energy Investment Forum conference, The Forum was held to discuss option and explore opportunities for improving access to investment capital and financing for energy efficiency in developing countries. The Forum was held New York City, New York, as a side event to the 14th meeting of the Commission of Sustainable Developments as one of its core themes. Over the two-day session, participants were able to preset and debate the state of the global energy efficiency market and to explore its relevance in the broader global energy debate. Topics addressed included : energy efficiency issues and opportunities; country experiences in promoting energy efficiency; market-based approaches for utility, building and industry sectors; financing energy efficiency; innovative financial structures; and mobilizing local capita markets. The key outcome of the Forum was a call for significant scale-up of energy efficiency investment in the developing world. Recognize that a kW (Kilowatt) save is cheaper...

Because of politics, some economic policy reforms are adopted and pursued in the developing world, and others are delayed, and resisted. Economic reform is inherently a political act: It changes the distribution of benefits in society, benefiting some social groups, and hurting others. Social groups may oppose reform because of doubts about its benefits, or because they know it will harm their economic interests. The author shows how three types of reform - currency devaluation, the privatization of state enterprises, and the elimination of consumer (food) subsidies - affect the utility of nine different social groups (including international financial institutions). When governments try to privatize state-owned enterprises, for example, more social groups with greater political weight are likely to be disadvantaged than helped. Urban workers, urban bureaucrats, urban students, and the urban poor, are likely to "lose out" and will strongly oppose privatization. But the ruling elite, and urban politicians are also likely to at least partly resist privatization...

The paper presents a major overhaul to the World Bank's past estimates of global poverty, incorporating new and better data. Extreme poverty-as judged by what "poverty" means in the world's poorest countries-is found to be more pervasive than we thought. Yet the data also provide robust evidence of continually declining poverty incidence and depth since the early 1980s. For 2005 we estimate that 1.4 billion people, or one quarter of the population of the developing world, lived below our international line of $1.25 a day in 2005 prices; 25 years earlier there were 1.9 billion poor, or one half of the population. Progress was uneven across regions. The poverty rate in East Asia fell from almost 80 percent to under 20 percent over this period. By contrast it stayed at around 50 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, though with signs of progress since the mid 1990s. Because of lags in survey data availability, these estimates do not yet reflect the sharp rise in food prices since 2005.

The authors present real per capita GDP growth forecasts for all developing countries for the period 2005-14. For 55 of these countries, representing major world regions and accounting for close to 80 percent of the developing world's GDP, they forecast the growth effects of the main forces underpinning growth, assuming that these evolve following past trends. The authors find that for the average developing country the largest growth dividend comes from continued improvement in public infrastructure, followed by the growth contributions of rising secondary school enrollment, trade openness, and financial deepening. The joint contribution of these four growth determinants to average, annual per capita GDP growth in the next decade is estimated to be 1 percentage point. Failure to keep improving public infrastructure alone could reduce this growth dividend by 50 percent. The forecasted growth contributions differ by country qualitatively and quantitatively.

This evaluation of the Bank's assistance on trade-related issues focuses on the period between fiscal years 1987 and 2004. The majority of developing countries have significantly improved their environment for trade and economic growth, following over two decades of assistance from the Bank in trade reform. Arguably, the developing world is more open today than at any time in recent memory. Developing countries have more than doubled their exports since the mid-1980s, helping many of them to grow steadily. Exports and imports have risen as a share of the gross domestic product (GDP) across a wide range of countries, fueled in part by China's remarkable trade performance, and the growth in services trade. Trade policies have also been significantly liberalized. Average import tariffs have fallen steadily over the period, although the fall in other forms of protection has been more gradual. Between fiscal years 1987 and 2004, about 8.1 percent of total Bank commitments went to 117 countries to help them better integrate into the global economy. This financing has been accompanied by a large volume of analysis in operational economic and sector work (ESW)...

The pace of change in the overall performance of the developing world has not altered markedly over the past 20 years. The number of people living in extreme poverty declined from 1.5 billion in 1980 (40 percent of population), to 1.2 billion in 1990 (28 percent of population), to 1.1 billion in 2001 (21 percent of population). Growth per capita has followed much the same profile. In the 1980s, only about two-thirds of developing countries showed positive per capita income growth, and this percentage remains unchanged. Life expectancy and literacy indicators show overall improvements, but some regions show worrisome trends. There has been slow and steady progress in overall development outcomes during the period, but the speed and scale of change remain static. These averages, of course, mask huge differences across regions, with very worrisome increases in poverty and continued low growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Bank has transformed itself significantly in the past 10 years, and should be ready for further adjustments to current climate of rapid change. Greater selectivity...

Developing countries are now recovering from the worst ravages of the financial crisis of 1997-98. However, the recovery is both uneven and fragile, and many countries continue to struggle in the aftermath. In addition to a review of international economic developments, this report considers three areas where the crisis has had a major impact on growth and welfare in the developing world. First, the crisis has increased poverty in the East Asian crisis countries, Brazil, and the Russian Federation, and elsewhere. Chapter 2 reviews the evidence on the crisis' social impact on East Asia and other developing countries, and addresses the broader issue of the impact of external shocks on poverty in developing countries. Second, though the East Asian crisis countries are experiencing a strong cyclical recovery, severe structural problems remain. Chapter 3 outlines the depth of the problems faced by the corporate and financial sectors of these economies, analyzes the challenges facing the restructuring process, and discusses the appropriate role of government in supporting restructuring and reducing systemic risk. Third, exchange rate depreciations and declines in demand in East Asia exacerbated the fall in primary commodity prices that began in 1996. Chapter 4 examines how the most commodity-dependent economies in the world--the major oil exporting countries and the non-oil exporters of Sub-Saharan Africa--have adjusted to the commodity price cycle.

The patent system is now reaching into the tools of medical research, including gene sequences themselves. Many of the new patents can potentially preempt large areas of medical research and lay down legal barriers to the development of a broad category of products. Researchers must therefore consider redesigning their research to avoid use of patented techniques, or expending the effort to obtain licences from those who hold the patents. Even if total licence fees can be kept low, there are enormous negotiation costs, and one "hold-out" may be enough to lead to project cancellation. This is making it more difficult to conduct research within the developed world, and poses important questions for the future of medical research for the benefit of the developing world. Probably the most important implication for health in the developing world is the possible general slowing down and complication of medical research. To the extent that these patents do slow down research, they weaken the contribution of the global research community to the creation and application of medical technology for the benefit of developing nations. The patents may also complicate the granting of concessional prices to developing nations - for pharmaceutical firms that seek to offer a concessional price may have to negotiate arrangements with research-tool firms...