Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations and Data Notes -- Overview -- The investment climate is central to growth and poverty reduction -- Tackling costs, risks, and barriers to competition -- Progress requires more than changes in formal policies -- A process, not an event -- Focus on delivering the basics -- Going beyond the basics involves additional challenges -- The international community can lend a hand -- PART I -- Improving the Investment Climate -- 1 The investment climate, growth, and poverty -- Understanding the investment climate -- How investment climate improvements drive growth and reduce poverty -- Sharpening the focus on poverty reduction -- Creating a better investment climate for everyone -- 2 Confronting the underlying challenges -- The basic tension: Firm preferences or the public interest? -- Restraining rent-seeking -- Establishing credibility -- Fostering public trust and legitimacy -- Ensuring policy responses reflect a good institutional fit -- Making progress -- 3 Tackling a broad agenda -- The investment climate as a package -- Setting priorities -- Managing individual reforms -- Maintaining momentum -- Strengthening capabilities -- PART II -- Delivering the Basics -- 4 Stability and security -- Verifying rights to land and other property -- Facilitating contract enforcement -- Reducing crime -- Ending the uncompensated expropriation of property -- 5 Regulation and taxation -- Regulating firms -- Taxing firms -- Regulating and taxing at the border -- 6 Finance and infrastructure -- Financial markets -- Infrastructure-connecting firms and expanding opportunities -- 7 Workers and labor markets -- Fostering a skilled and healthy workforce -- Crafting interventions to benefit all workers -- Helping workers cope with change -- PART III -- Going Beyond the Basics? -- 8 Selective interventions.

The allure-and traps-of selective interventions -- Experience in specific areas -- 9 International rules and standards -- International arrangements and the investment climate -- Enhancing credibility -- Fostering harmonization -- Addressing international spillovers -- Future challenges -- PART IV -- How the International Community Can Help -- 10 How the international community can help -- Removing distortions in developed countries -- Providing more, and more effective, assistance -- Tackling the substantial knowledge agenda -- Bibliographical note -- Endnotes -- References -- Background papers for the WDR 2005 -- Case studies commissioned by the U.K. Department for International Development for the World Development Report 2005 -- Selected Indicators -- Measuring the investment climate -- Challenges in measuring the investment climate -- The World Bank's new measures -- Technical notes -- Selected world development indicators -- Data sources and methodology -- Changes in the System of National Accounts -- Classification of economies and summary measures -- Terminology and country coverage -- Technical notes -- Boxes -- 1 The investment climate perspective -- 2 How do firms in developing countries rate various investment climate constraints? -- 3 Tackling a broad agenda-lessons from China, India, and Uganda -- 4 Main messages from World Development Report 2005 -- 1.1 What do we mean by the investment climate? -- 1.2 New sources of investment climate data from the World Bank -- 1.3 Geography matters, but it is not destiny -- 1.4 The environment matters for well-being and productivity: Main messages from WDR 2003 -- 1.5 Improving the investment climate and growth: the cases of China, India, and Uganda -- 1.6 Measuring productivity -- 1.7 Growth with a poor investment climate-possible, but unlikely to be sustained.

1.8 Developing a product is a learning process-as Hyundai shows -- 1.9 Firm dynamics -- 1.10 Showing potential returns to investment climate improvements -- 1.11 How growth translates to rising incomes for poor people -- 1.12 Women and the investment climate -- 2.1 Governance and the investment climate -- 2.2 Firms in history -- 2.3 Firms and social responsibility -- 2.4 How do firm differences affect their policy preferences and priorities? -- 2.5 The predation of Gécamines in Mobutu's Zaire -- 2.6 Natural resource endowments: Blessing or curse? -- 2.7 Combating corruption in Botswana and Lithuania -- 2.8 The form of intervention: How many cheers for transparency? -- 2.9 Business associations and the investment climate -- 2.10 Reducing policy uncertainty to stimulate investment -- 2.11 Entrepreneurship and uncertainty -- 2.12 The power of credibility -- 2.13 Building credibility through persistence in Uganda -- 2.14 Shining the light on government -firm dealings in natural resources and infrastructure -- 2.15 Decentralization and the investment climate -- 2.16 E-government and the investment climate -- 3.1 Improving the investment climate, China's way -- 3.2 India's path -- 3.3 Do small firms play a special role in economic growth? -- 3.4 International integration is especially important for small states -- 3.5 Exporting and productivity-what is the link? -- 3.6 Trade liberalization in India-recent evidence -- 3.7 Foreign locals-the role of emigrants and diaspora -- 3.8 Expanding the zone of feasible and desirable policy improvements -- 3.9 The Bulldozer initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- 3.10 Consultative mechanisms in Latvia and Turkey -- 3.11 Shepherding investment climate improvements in Vietnam -- 3.12 The evolution of a reform champion in Senegal -- 3.13 Networks of regulatory professionals in infrastructure.

4.1 Macroeconomic stability and the investment climate -- 4.2 Property rights reform in China: Even modest progress can ignite a strong response -- 4.3 Secure property rights and environmental stewardship -- 4.4 The distribution of property rights -- 4.5 Thailand's 20-year program to title rural land -- 4.6 De-monopolizing property transaction professionals -- 4.7 Intellectual property rights:The ongoing debate -- 4.8 Crime, poverty, and inequality -- 4.9 New York City's police reforms-are they exportable? -- 4.10 Property wrongs: Is there ever a statute of limitations? -- 5.1 Public ownership, regulation, and the investment climate -- 5.2 Regulating in Jamaica-from transplants to better institutional fit -- 5.3 Environmental regulation and global integration -- 5.4 Easing business registration requirements in Vietnam and Uganda -- 5.5 One-stop shops-or one-more-stop shops? -- 5.6 Balancing the tradeoffs between specificity and discretion in regulation -- 5.7 Contracting for certainty -- 5.8 Competition laws in developing countries -- 5.9 Taxation and global integration: A race to the bottom? -- 5.10 Who pays taxes levied on firms? -- 5.11 Tax receipts as lottery tickets? -- 5.12 Dealing with short-term international capital flows -- 5.13 Reducing customs delays in Singapore and Ghana -- 5.14 Contracting out customs in Mozambique -- 6.1 Governments and finance markets: A long and difficult history -- 6.2 Expanding access to finance in rural areas-new approaches in India -- 6.3 Commercial micro financiers enter the market -- 6.4 Establishing a registry for movable collateral in Romania -- 6.5 Improving corporate governance in Brazil and South Korea -- 6.6 The political economy of electricity in India -- 6.7 Improving the investment climate for small private providers of infrastructure -- 6.8 Better government accounting, better government policy.

6.9 Expanding rural access to electricity and telecommunications -- 6.10The power to improve productivity in Nigeria -- 6.11 Port reform in Colombia and India -- 6.12 The benefits of rural roads in Morocco and elsewhere -- 7.1 Malaria and HIV/AIDS cloud the investment climate -- 7.2 Why Intel chose Costa Rica as the site of a multimillion dollar plant -- 7.3 Tackling skill imbalances through public support for training and retraining programs -- 7.4 The core labor standards -- 7.5 The role and impact of unions -- 7.6 Labor regulation and global integration -- 7.7 Do firms' perceptions square with actual labor regulations? -- 7.8 Reforming severance pay in Colombia and Chile -- 8.1 Unforeseen successes in Bangladesh and Kenya -- 8.2 Picking "winners" can be an expensive gamble-SOTEXKA in Senegal -- 8.3 Integrating informal traders in Durban -- 8.4 Rural credit in Brazil -- 8.5 Staying small in India-by design -- 8.6 China's special economic zones -- 8.7 Export processing zones in Mauritius and the Dominican Republic -- 8.8 The WTO and selective intervention -- 8.9 Rolling the dice in Indianapolis -- 8.10 Competing to attract investment within countries -- 8.11 Fixing the FDI strategy for Mexico's computer industry -- 8.12 Successful "linkage programs" in Singapore and Ireland -- 8.13 Public-private partnerships for R&D -- 9.1 Evaluating rules and standards-compliance mechanisms and participation -- 9.2 BITs-enhancing credibility one bit at a time? -- 9.3 NEPAD and its peer review mechanism -- 9.4 The evolving system of investor-state dispute settlement -- 9.5 Harmonizing business law in Africa-OHADA -- 9.6 International cooperation to combat corruption -- 9.7 Privatizing international cooperation on corporate social responsibility -- 9.8 A multilateral agreement on investment?.

10.1 Multidonor technical assistance facilities and the investment climate.