World Bank

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest U.S. investment bank filed for bankruptcy. Global credit markets tightened. Spreads skyrocketed. International trade plummeted by double digits. Banks were reportedly unable to meet the demand from their customers to finance their international trade operations, leaving a trade finance “gap” estimated at around US$25 billion. Governments and international institutions felt compelled to intervene based on the information that some 80-90 percent of world trade relies on some form of trade finance.

Many of the problems that Cali is currently experiencing are an indication of Colombia's complicated social economic situation. The high levels of crime, increasing poverty, and a distressed financial situation are signs that Cali has been hit harder than other large cities. In order to assist Cali, the World Bank has, along with the city of Cali, collaborated on a City Development Strategy (CDS).

La mayoría de los observadores consideran que Fe y Alegría es una organización exitosa, pero pocas evaluaciones de carácter riguroso se han realizado hasta el momento. Las contribuciones a este volumen están dedicadas a la evaluación del desempeño y de algunos aspectos de la gestión y las prácticas pedagógicas de la federación Fe y Alegría, un movimiento impulsado por la Compañía de Jesús que presta servicios a aproximadamente un millón de personas en 20 países, en su mayoría en América Latina.

The importance of international technology diffusion (ITD) for economic development can hardly be overstated. Both the acquisition of technology and its diffusion foster productivity growth. Developing countries have long sought to use both national policies and international agreements to stimulate ITD. The 'correct' policy intervention, if any, depends critically upon the channels through which technology diffuses internationally and the quantitative effects of the various diffusion processes on efficiency and productivity growth. Neither is well understood.

International policies toward protecting intellectual property rights have seen profound changes over the past two decades. Rules on how to protect patents, copyright, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property have become a standard component of international trade agreements.

With the competitiveness of firms in an open and integrated world environment increasingly reliant on technological capability, universities are being asked to take on a growing role in stimulating economic growth. Beyond imparting education, they are now viewed as sources of industrially valuable technical skills, innovations, and entrepreneurship. Developed and developing countries alike have made it a priority to realize this potential of universities to spur growth, a strategy that calls for coordinated policy actions.

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in a business situation can have a significant effect on the financial results and position of a division or an entire business enterprise. "International Financial Reporting Standards: A Practical Guide" gives private or public sector executives, managers, and financial analysts without a strong background in accounting the tools they need to participate in discussions and decisions on the appropriateness or application of IFRS.

That raising income levels alleviates poverty, and that economic growth can be more or less effective in doing so, is well known and has received renewed attention in the search for pro-poor growth. What is less well explored is the reverse channel: that poverty may, in fact, be part of the reason for a country’s poor growth performance. This more elabborated view of the development process opens the door to the existence of vicious circles in which low growth results in high poverty and high poverty in turn results in low growth.

Environmental Priorities and Poverty Reduction: A Country Environmental Analysis for Colombia proposes cost-effective policy and technical interventions aimed at abating the cost of environmental degradation and supporting more equitable and sustainable economic growth. Environmental degradation is associated with increased morbidity and mortality and decreased productivity.

Concern for the environment is viewed by many as a rich-country luxury. It is not. Environmental degradation has the greatest impact on the world's poorest people in the world's poorest countries. At the same time, poverty is one of the greatest threats to our planet's environment. The second title in the miniAtlas series, the Green miniAtlas is an 'at-a-glance' guide to the most pressing environmental problems around the world.

Governments are becoming increasingly aware of the important contribution that high performance world-class universities make to competitiveness and economic growth. As a result, there is growing recognition of the need to establish world-class universities that can compete effectively with the best of the best. This book explores what are the challenges involved in setting up globally competitive universities, also called elite , or flagship universities. The document starts by attempting to construct an operational definition of a world-class university.

In Latin American and Caribbean history, rural societies have been at the center of both the origins of prosperity and of social upheaval. Rural communities have access to a wealth of natural resources, including arable land and forests, yet they face the highest poverty rates within countries.

Informality: Exit and Exclusion analyzes informality in Latin America, exploring root causes and reasons for and implications of its growth. The authors use two distinct but complementary lenses: informality driven by "exclusion" from state benefits or the circuits of the modern economy, and driven by voluntary "exit" decisions resulting from private cost-benefit calculations that lead workers and firms to opt out of formal institutions. They find both lenses have considerable explanatory power to understand the causes and consequences of informality in the region.