Albania

Group identity in the form of family, ethnicity, or gender is a powerful predictor of social preferences, as shown by theory and empirical work. In particular, people generally favor in-group over out-group... Show More + members. Such favoritism can have positive or negative repercussions. On the one hand, it can lead to inefficient transactions and lost opportunities. On the other hand, group identity may also entail trust, reciprocity, and efficiency due to shared norms and understandings. In recent research with Patrick Behr and Andreas Madestam, we gauge these opposing hypotheses, examining one important form of group identity, gender, and the consequences of own-gender preferences for outcomes in the credit market. We use microcredit transactions as they are an ideal ground to test these different hypotheses, relying heavily on transaction between loan officers and borrowers.Using a large dataset of loan transactions from a commercial microlender in Albania, we investigate whether the officer-b Show Less -

First published in The Washington Post on Thursday, January 24, 2013.The weather in Washington has been like a roller coaster this January. Yes, there has been a deep freeze this week, but it was the sudden... Show More + warmth earlier in the month that was truly alarming. Flocks of birds — robins, wrens, cardinals and even blue jays – swarmed bushes with berries, eating as much as they could. Runners and bikers wore shorts and T-shirts. People worked in their gardens as if it were spring.The signs of global warming are becoming more obvious and more frequent. A glut of extreme weather conditions is appearing globally. And the average temperature in the United States last year was the highest ever recorded.As economic leaders gathered in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum, much of the conversation was about finances. But climate change should also be at the top of our agendas, because global warming imperils all of the development gains we have made.If there is no action soon, the future w Show Less -

New Year festivities are around the corner. A magic time is, once again, upon us when people put behind the disappointments of the past to eagerly embrace a better promise of the next year. This time,... Show More + the magic is especially needed.The economic news around the year-end is grim. According to the just released World Bank’s regular economic report (RER) covering Albania and five other countries in South–East Europe (SEE)[1], the Eurozone recession continues into 2013, while several Western Balkan countries have negative or no growth this year. Against this picture, Albania’s projected growth of still positive 0.8 percent in 2012 – despite the odds of close economic ties to Italy and Greece, power sector problems, and budget crunch – speaks for admirable resilience of its economy. But it is not nearly enough to maintain tangible improvements in living standards and jobs. The prospect for Albania in 2013 is the same as for the group of six SEE countries - a sluggish growth of about 1.5 Show Less -

With double-dip recession hitting the eurozone, leaders across Europe are rightly turning attention to restarting the growth engines of their economies. The continued eurozone turmoil has translated into... Show More + a marked slowdown of growth in all Western Balkan countries, including Albania where World Bank’s latest growth projection for 2012 has been revised down to about 1.5 percent.  In 2009, when the first wave of the global crisis hit, its impact on Albania was partially cushioned by significantly increased public spending that year, largely for infrastructure projects. It may be tempting to apply that recipe again, especially given that the sharp slowdown in growth coincides with the beginning of the 2013 election pressures. Yet, with the exhausted fiscal space and greater external risks in 2012, this recipe is no longer applicable and will make Albania’s economic growth prospects worse.One of the lessons from the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone periphery is that once macro-eco Show Less -

Policy makers under pressure can get preoccupied with the fixation of the moment. For the eurozone, that idée fixe has been “the firewall”. How big is big enough? Who contributes and how?Now that the eurozone... Show More + finance ministers have exhausted themselves with a multilayered package of hundreds of billions of euros, the debate will go global at this week’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The next preoccupation will be how many more hundreds of billions of euros should be pledged to the IMF. It will be Firewall II: the Sequel.I beg to differ. Not with firewalls exactly, but with the preoccupation.The survival of the eurozone now depends on Italy and Spain. They are the countries that are too big to fail – or to rescue. Extraordinary action by the European Central Bank has lowered the interest rates that Italy and Spain pay on their debt, but not solved their problems.In one sense, the much-badgered Germans are right. The fates of Italy and Spain depen Show Less -

Ms. Lvovsky, you are Country Manager in the Tirana WB office and you have a long carreer in the WB. Can you tell us what is the key of your success?Answer: For me, the key is to enjoy what you are doing,... Show More + to try new things and not be afraid to recognize and learn from mistakes. Working at such a global and diverse institution as the World Bank, it is also important to respect different views, cultures, and experiences. Development is a process of learning for all of us, so willingness to constantly learn and effectively share what you have learned with the others is another key qualification.In the last years the WB office in Tirana has also been run by another woman (Camille Nuamah) is a simple incidence or a Bank strategy?Answer: This is coincidence for Albania and, at the same time, part of a broader World Bank strategy to achieve 50-50 gender balance at managerial positions.Your country of origin is Russia. Where do Russian women managers change from the Albanian ones (base on the o Show Less -

 *As published on the Financial Times online on Tuesday, January 24, 2012For almost 60 years, Germans have maintained that it is their responsibility to participate in a modern Europe. Today, Germany’s... Show More + responsibility is to lead in saving that Europe. This shift is not easy for Germans, who have often been urged to step forward, only then to be criticised for aggressiveness. But no other country can lead Europe out of crisis and into revival.Europe has stumbled from one partial solution to another, buying time without solving the interconnected problems of sovereign debt, banks and competitiveness. Germany has recently urged a fiscal pact as part of a renovated European project. Chancellor Angela Merkel knows that while Germans do not want to waste money, they are deeply committed to their European identity and will offer support if presented with an achievable plan.Combined with new governments pushing fiscal discipline and structural reform in Italy and Spain, as well as support Show Less -

From cave drawings to navigational charts to GPS, people have created and used maps to help them define, order and navigate their worlds. Four hundred years ago, in the Age of Exploration, it was cartographers,... Show More + often working alone, who used the stars, mathematics and early attempts to represent longitude to map the New World. Today, in the Age of Participation, it’s crowds, not scholars, who are charting their own New World. A combination of the old art of mapping with the relatively new art of crowdsourcing — the open calls for action via the Web — offers the potential to open up a new path for the developing world: helping citizens map their own country’s facilities and thereby have a greater say in charting the future. Citizen cartographers can be a powerful force. In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, rescue workers used real-time data uploads on Open Street Map, via text and cellphone messages, to help create up-to-date maps of Haiti and find the injured. Engineers f Show Less -

Imagine if a city of almost four million people disappeared every year. A Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Yokohama. It would be hard to miss. Yet it goes largely unnoticed that almost four million girls... Show More + and women “go missing” each year in developing countries when compared to their female counterparts in developed countries. About two-fifths are never born; a sixth die in early childhood, and more than a third die in their reproductive years. High mortality rates are just one of many barriers to equality between men and women, as argued in the World Bank’s new report. Equality is not just the right thing to do. It’s smart economics. How can an economy achieve full potential if it ignores, sidelines or fails to invest in half its population? The world has taken significant steps over the past 25 years toward narrowing the gaps between men and women in education, health and labor markets. Today, girls and boys participate equally in primary education in most developing cou Show Less -

1. The World Bank has established the office in Tirana since about 20 years now. What is the total of World Bank financing during all this years?Albania joined the World Bank in 1992. Since then, we have... Show More + financed 69 projects in different sectors totaling over US$1.4 billion when all sources of financing managed by the World Bank are counted.  Of this, about US$900 million has been disbursed.  Our current portfolio is at $230 million plus we signed with the government a new loan of $25 million last month. In the next 12 months, we plan to approve four new projects with the total value of $115 million in our financing, in addition to substantial funding by other development partners. Overall, the World Bank Group financing to Albania for the four years from 2011 to 2014 is expected to reach US$300 million from IBRD to support critical reforms and public investments. At the same time, our private sector arm, IFC is projected to provide up to $150 million to private sector projec Show Less -