Any national strategy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals needs to include a clear framework for private sector growth. Many of the public investment strategies outlined in the previous chapters are essential for an efficient and dynamic private sector. For their own part, private enterprises can contribute directly to the Goals through core pursuits such as increasing productivity and ...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) is endemic in Pakistan which ranks fifth amongst the twenty two countries designated to be highly burdened by TB according to the World Health Organization. However, there is paucity of data regarding the knowledge of diagnosis of TB and its management amongst public and private practitioners. In this study, we endeavor to identify this gap in knowledge regarding th...

Europe’s digital cultural heritage content has tremendous exploitation potential in applications such as Education, Publishing, e-Commerce, Public Access and Tourism. Value is hugely amplified if the content can be aggregated, repurposed and distributed at a European level. The eCHASE project seeks to demonstrate that public-private partnerships between content holders and commercial service pr...

We show that municipalities’ credit constraints can have important effects on local economies through a ratings channel. We identify these effects by exploiting exogenous variation on U.S. municipal bond ratings due to Moody’s recalibration of its ratings scale in 2010. We find that local governments increase expenditures and employment due to an expansion of their debt capacity following a rat...

Please ogies in Summary. — This paper examines public–private partnerships (PPPs) for development through the example of telecenters in two Indian states. How might a developmental state position itself with respect to civil society under a PPP model of service delivery? We find that each state’s political economy is reflected in its PPP strategy, but that in both states the emerging middle cla...

Auctions are supposed to procure the best deal money can buy. Yet, practitioners who procure complex contracts by auction are well aware of some basic pitfalls. One concern is that winning bids may not reflect the quality of the bidder but strategic behavior like low-balling bids or underestimating costs. Such behavior may then lead to demands for contract renegotiation by the winning bidder th...

I am very pleased to attend the International Conference on “Public Policy for Credit Reporting System: Strengthening Dialogue and Cooperation between the Government and the Private Sector”. Credit reporting system is essential to the modern financial system and plays a significant role in financial and economic development. In the recent 20 years, credit reporting system has received increased...