The Forum on Economic Freedom web site was developed by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) to build and strengthen democracy around the world through promoting private enterprise. The highlight of the site is Economic Reform Today, a journal published by CIPE to help educate policymakers on successful economic strategies. Recent issues have focused on challenges for...

Authored by Monica Das Gupta, Helene Grandvoinnet, and Mattia Romani, this compelling 31-page report is part of the World Bank's Policy Research Working Paper Series. The report, released in January 2003, begins by asking the question that has perplexed many policymakers on the national and international level: How can poor developing countries make their institutional settings more conducive to...

As part of the upcoming 2002 Johannesburg Summit, the United Nations report "Global Challenge, Global Opportunity: Trends in Sustainable Development" was issued on August 13, 2002. The report, in part, tells that "if current patterns of development continue, nearly half of the world's people will suffer from water shortages within the next 25 years, the use of fossil fuels, along with greenhouse...

This week's In the News examines mounting concern for economic well-being around the world. The ten resources discussed provide background information on the global economy, current international market news, and developments in US, IMF, and World Bank reform efforts. In order to curb economic crises in Asia, Russia, and Latin America (reviewed in the September 24, 1998 Scout Report for Business ...

New York University's Development Research Institute (DRI) has created this fascinating "interactive documentary" where viewers can explore four centuries of development history on one block of Greene Street in what is known today as New York City's Soho neighborhood. Here, readers will find a richly detailed multimedia presentation guiding viewers through Greene Street's incredibly varied...

A project of the Global Accords Consortium for Sustainable Development (located at MIT), this site offers a collection of over 2,500 abstracted, indexed, and cross-referenced online resources on sustainable development. Users have four options for searching the index: text (keyword and advanced) and three graphical browsers, one indexing all holdings (organized by subject and problems and...

The Global Trade Analysis Project brings together contributors across the world to "provide data, a standard model and software, and training for multi-country computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis." The project is coordinated by the Center for Global Trade Analysis, the Department of Agricultural Economics, and Purdue University. The site contains several GTAP Technical Papers available...

Released on Monday July 12, the tenth edition of the United Nation Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report has garnered considerable attention from the international press all week. The report ranks 174 countries on quality of life indicators such as life expectancy, wealth, and literacy, ranking Canada at the top and Sierra Leone at the bottom. The report pays particular attention...

The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report Office provides two useful selections from its Human Development Report 1997. Overview of HDR 1997 is a detailed summary of the contents of the report, discussing world poverty and a six point strategy for poverty reduction. HDR 1997 Rankings contain Human Development Index, Gender-Related Development Index and Gender Empowerment...

Released on July 10, the latest edition of the United Nation Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report ranks 162 countries on quality-of-life indicators such as life expectancy, wealth, and literacy. It also includes analysis of the progress of countries towards meeting international development targets as well as assessing the technology achievements of 72 countries. This year,...