this paper tries to survey the independence of central bank of iran and its relationship to inflation by using the data of 56 developing countries during 1990s. the results signifies that there are no significant relationship between inflation and the independence of central banks in these countries. in other words, according to the existing evidences, not all the developing countries with high...

The banking sector mirrors the larger economy – its linkages to all sectors make it a proxy for what is happening in the economy as a whole. Efficient functioning of banking sector is required for the growth of overall economy. Banking plays a silent, yet crucial role in our day-to-day lives. The banks work as financial intermediaries, pooling savings and channelizing them into investment, help...

In the mind of the general public, the rural sector is equal to agriculture and for a great majority of policymakers, rural development continues to mean agricultural development. Not surprisingly, it is a sector traditionally covered at the governmental level by the ministries of agriculture, and at the international development level by agencies with an agricultural development mandate such a...

iv Foreword The AIDS epidemic is one of the greatest development challenges of the 20th century. Since 1986 the World Bank has supported member country efforts to fight the epidemic in many ways, including lending, economic and sector analysis, grant support, technical assistance, and policy advice. This paper is the first comprehensive desk study of all World Bank HIV/AIDS-related activities f...

Agriculture and Rural Development Discussion Papers is an informal series produced by the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank. These papers raise concepts and issues for discussion in the broader development community and describe ongoing research and/or implementation experiences from the Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein are those...

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the impact that switching some loans to grants would have on poor countries debt burdens. In July 2001, President Bush proposed that the World Bank and other development banks replace 50 percent of future loans to the worlds poorest countries with grants. A goal of this proposal was to relieve poor countries long-term debt burdens. The presidents grants ...

Present information processing suffers from the lack of coordination among researches on new methods of solving information processing problems and non-interoperability of information processing systems. This thesis suggests a unified web-based bank of knowledge meant for coordinating researches on the new methods, supporting development of interoperable intelligent information-processing syste...

a r t i c l e i n f o Combining data from the Moroccan census of manufacturing enterprises with information from a commune survey, we test whether firm expansion is affected by local financial development. Our findings are consistent with this hypothesis: local bank availability is robustly associated with faster growth for small and medium-size firms in sectors with growth opportunities, with ...