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Bhutan is a small, landlocked country deep in the eastern Himalayas between India and China. Over a horizontal distance of just 100-150 km, the elevation rises from about 150 meters above sea level in the south to over 7,000 meters in the north. The population of about 735,0001 is scattered across steep mountain slopes and valleys, many in remote and far-flung hamlets. This makes Bhutan one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, ranked 182 out of 215 countries. Nearly half the land area is protected to help preserve biodiversity. With forest coverage exceeding 70 percent, Bhutan is the only carbon-negative country in the world, absorbing more greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) than it produces, and not counting the carbon that its hydropower exports displace in India. Bhutan started opening up to the outside world only in the early 2000s, but its political and economic ties are still mainly with India. Despite sharing a long border with China in the north, the formal relationship is limited. Bhutan's independence throughout its history has helped preserve its rich cultural heritage and traditions. As its development policies demonstrate, Bhutan strives to be self-sufficient and to conserve its environment and culture. Bhutan's unique development philosophy, GNH, guides its development plans, emphasizing a holistic and inclusive approach to sustainable development. The four pillars of GNH are (a) good governance, (b) sustainable socioeconomic development, (c) preservation and promotion of culture, and (d) conserving the environment. Since 2008, Bhutan has had a development management system guided by the Constitution, with development strategies and annual budgets driven by GHN principles. The GNH Index and the GNH Policy Screening Tool are its main instruments for operationalizing GNH into the formulation of development policies. The GNH Index measures Bhutan's progress toward maximizing GNH; the GNH Policy Screening Tool assesses how a new policy will affect GNH. Many of Bhutan's development achievements can be attributed to this unique development framework, which has been supported by continued efforts to ensure good governance.

Energy --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Human Capital --- Hydro Power --- Hydropower --- Inequality --- Poverty Reduction --- Private Sector Development --- Renewable Energy

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In October 2012, the Government of Ethiopia launched the Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP), with the aim of increasing the earnings and employment of growth-oriented micro and small enterprises (MSEs) owned or partly-owned by women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. In doing so, it created the first ever women-entrepreneur focused line of credit in Africa, and one of few such operations in the world. In addition to the USD 45.9 million in financing, WEDP also offered a variety of innovative training opportunities, designed to not only enhance the business skills of its clients, but their entrepreneurial mindset and practices as well.

Access to Finance --- Business Development Services --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Gender --- Gender and Economics --- Microenterprises --- Private Sector Development

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The Enterprise Surveys (ES) focus on many aspects of the business environment. These factors can be accommodating or constraining for firms and play an important role in whether an economy's private sector will thrive or not. An accommodating business environment is one that encourages firms to operate efficiently. Such conditions strengthen incentives for firms to innovate and to increase productivity, key factors for sustainable development. A more productive private sector, in turn, expands employment and contributes taxes necessary for public investment in health, education, and other services. Questions contained in the ES aim at covering most of the topics mentioned above. The topics include infrastructure, trade, finance, regulations, taxes and business licensing, corruption, crime and informality, access to finance, innovation, labor, and perceptions about obstacles to doing business.

Access To Finance --- Business Environment --- Business Regulation --- Corruption --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Infrastructure --- Private Sector Development --- Public Sector Development

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Traditionally, government and business had few incentives to actively collaborate. For the most part, government regulated business, and business lobbied government on areas of economic interest. When partnerships did occur, they were usually undertaken to invest in large infrastructure projects through formal contractual agreements (Rosenbaum, L., Van Buren, E. and Mennel, J., 2013). With the growing complexity and diversity of socio-economic challenges, the nature of public-private collaborations has seen a fundamental change. Both sides realized that business problems are now government problems-and vice versa-and both are proactively intensifying new approaches to forging partnerships at the highest levels. Consequently, public-private dialogues (PPD) as a form of institutional arrangements have been pivotal in stimulating reform activity and improving a country's investment climate. Against this backdrop, this study explores the key tenets of successful public-private dialogues and its importance in the overall development of an economy in its first chapter. This chapter also seeks to study the various challenges associated with PPDs to caution against their poor administration and consequent threat to diminish the anticipated public good.

Business Environment --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Investment Climate --- Private Sector Development --- Public Sector Development --- Public-Private Partnerships --- Regulatory Reform --- Small and Medium Size Enterprises

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Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for firm growth. The standard approach in many business support programs is to attempt to train the entrepreneur to develop these skills, through classroom-based training or personalized consulting. However, rather than requiring the entrepreneur to be a jack-of-all-trades, an alternative is to move beyond the boundary of the entrepreneur and link firms to these skills in a marketplace through insourcing workers with functional expertise or outsourcing tasks to professional specialists. A randomized experiment in Nigeria tests the relative effectiveness of these four different approaches to improving business practices. Insourcing and outsourcing both dominate business training; and do at least as well as business consulting at one-half of the cost. Moving beyond the entrepreneurial boundary enables firms to use higher quality digital marketing practices, innovate more, and achieve greater sales and profits growth over a two-year horizon.

Business Development Services --- Business Practice --- Business Services Market --- Business Support --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Entrepreneurship --- Firm Growth --- Insourcing --- Outsourcing --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics