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East Asia and the Pacific is a region of dynamic growth. Women have contributed significantly to this growth and have benefited from it through active participation in the labor market. However, women are still disproportionately represented in the informal sector and in low paid work. Efforts to identify barriers to women's business and entrepreneurial activities in the region are critical not only to facilitate inclusive growth in a national context but also to counter the increasing trend of female migratory flows in the region. This report highlights' both the challenges and the economic opportunities for businesswomen in the region offers some useful potential pointers for reform.

This report is part of a broader effort by the World Bank Group to understand the motives and challenges of small entrepreneurs in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS). The report's key finding is that, compared to entrepreneurs elsewhere, entrepreneurs in FCS have different characteristics, face significantly different challenges, and thus may be subject to different incentives and have different motives. Therefore, it is recommended that both the current analytical approach and the operational strategy of the World Bank be informed by the findings that follow. The report summarizes findings of recent World Bank Enterprise Surveys (ES) conducted across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Asia, and the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region as well as Doing Business indicators and additional World Bank Group studies and field observations. The report finds that the majority of entrepreneurs in FCS countries are small, informal, and concentrated in the trade/services sectors. According to the ES, and after controlling for the level of development (that is, GDP per capita): 1) the average FCS firm in SSA and the ECA Region produces less output than non-FCS firms; 2) the average FCS firm in ECA is by 20 percent less likely to innovate (that is, to introduce/upgrade new products and services) than its non-FCS counterpart; and 3) FCS firms start smaller and grow significantly more slowly, or even shrink (in the number of employees) over time, compared to non-FCS firms in the Regions analyzed. The report also highlights the differences in sector and business environment characteristics between FCS and non-FCS business environments.

Banking the Poor explores level and determinants of financial access in 54 countries, mostly in Africa. It collects information from two sources: central banks and leading commercial banks in each surveyed country. It explores associations between countries' banking policies and practices and their levels of financial access, measured in terms of the numbers of bank account per thousand adults. It builds on the previous work measuring financial access through information from regulators, from banks, and also from users' perspectives in household surveys.

Nigeria's Vision 2020 has expressed a bold desire for the country to be among the world's top 20 economies by the year 2020. The economy has posted impressive growth figures since 2003, driven by higher oil revenues and a series of home-grown economic reforms. The country is now firmly on the road to middle-income status. But what else do government and the private sector need to do to create the jobs and growth that will underpin the national development strategy? What are the challenges that Nigeria's businesses face today? 'An Assessment of the Investment Climate in Nigeria' provides answers to these questions. Based on a survey of 2,300 companies, it provides evidence-based recommendations designed to support Vision 2020 and the president's seven-point agenda. The authors find that government must move quickly to create jobs and reduce poverty. Key challenges include a desperate shortage of energy and a poor transportation network, as well as low levels of education and continuing unrest in the Niger delta. In addition, Nigeria's workers need to become more productive in order to compete in a globalized economy. As a matter of fact, they are less productive than workers in more dynamic countries, such as Brazil, China, and Kenya. Improving productivity will require simultaneous efforts to foster competition, improve specific aspects of the business environment, and facilitate better management and training within individual firms. In addition to the issues of productivity, Nigeria's best firms have not been able to expand their market share. Consequently, policy makers need to address and elimate obstacles to competition, including barriers to entry, convoluted taxation, property registration, and licensing.

Women are a powerful force for sustainable economic growth. A growing body of microeconomic empirical evidence and emerging macroeconomic analysis shows that gender inequality limits economic growth in developing economies. Research also shows that considerable potential for economic growth could be realized if countries support women's full economic participation. Increases in women's income tend to correlate with greater expenditure on family welfare and children, because women often spend a greater share of their income on their children's nutrition, health care, and education. From an economic perspective, removing gender biases and maintaining a level playing field reduces possible market distortions or malfunctioning. Moreover, promoting women's participation in business may bolster women's overall participation in the labor market, because women-owned businesses are more likely to employ other women. This report analyzes the main reasons for this disparity in the Arab Republic of Egypt and proposes solutions to level the playing field and enable women's full economic contributions. The Investment Climate Survey (ICS) of 1,156 enterprises from the manufacturing sector was carried out in October 2008, using the World Bank standard methodology. The recall questionnaire of 566 enterprises was conducted in October 2008. The gender workers module was conducted in August 2005. It sampled about 15 full-time workers from each firm covered by the ICS recall survey. About 70 percent of the ICS sample is made up of small and medium firms, about 85 percent of which are owned by individuals or families. Large firms employing more than 150 workers account for about 30 percent of the sample. In about 35 percent of the sample, a woman is a main shareholder; in 15 percent of these firms, women own the majority of the firm.

Peer-to-peer lending, as an alternative to classic bank loans, has become popular all over the world. On the basis of the conceptual characteristics, it can be expected that loans should be more advantageous from the view of costs. But as the studies describe, there are significant differences due to the factors, which can be affected by borrowers with the aim to get funded. We have examined the role of the particular factors, as part of provided data by borrowers for the decision-making process by investors in the dataset from the peer-to-peer lending website Bondora, managed by the Estonian company Isepankur. With the method of the multinomial logistic regression model, we described the importance of borrowers’ decisions and their effects on funding results. The debt to income rate is the most significant variable and the highest negative impact is reached by the home ownership type variable. There are 28 factors with a nonnegative impact and 20 factors have a negative influence. Comparison of these findings to other studies enable us to describe the impacts of the social identity data and information about the loan for investors, within the peer-to- peer lending market environment.

This paper analyzes the factors explaining borrower discouragement for a sample of SMEs operating in a bank-based economy. We find that higher informational asymmetries and loan application costs increase the likelihood of borrower discouragement for smaller firms and for firms working with less banks. We also show that firms whose managers show an attitude towards growth and business improvement are less likely to be discouraged from applying for a loan. Este trabajo analiza los factores explicativos del desánimo del prestatario en una muestra de PYME que operan en una economía dominada por los bancos. Los resultados muestran que elevadas asimetrías informativas y costes de solicitud del préstamo incrementan la probabilidad del desánimo del prestatario entre las empresas más pequeñas y aquellas que trabajan con menos bancos. También mostramos que es menos probable que empresas cuyos gerentes muestren una actitud proactiva hacia el crecimiento y la mejora del negocio se desanimen a solicitar un préstamo.

This paper considers a task assignment problem for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs are set to perform attack tasks on a collection of ground targets in a severe uncertain environment. The UAVs have different attack capabilities and are located at different positions. Each UAV should be assigned an attack task before the mission starts. Due to uncertain information, many criteria values essential to task assignment were random or fuzzy, and the weights of criteria were not precisely known. In this study, a novel task assignment approach based on stochastic Multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) method was proposed to address this problem. The uncertainties in the criteria were analyzed, and a task assignment procedure was designed. The results of simulation experiments show that the proposed approach is useful for finding a satisfactory assignment under severe uncertain circumstances.

We examine factors that affect borrowing and lending when borrowers have experienced one or more failed funding applications. Using a unique dataset of 1,2 million loan applications from a peer-to-peer (P2P) loan platform in China, we investigate whether decision to apply varies with respect to the number of previous consecutive failures. Our results suggest that borrowers with better education are not likely to apply after a failed attempt. Repeat applicants provide less information in their loan narratives and are likely to pay higher interest rates per loan. We also find that females are discouraged early on. In relation to lender behavior, similar preferences apply across those who had one or more previous rejections as they prefer applications with high credit ratings and high income. Finally, our results are generally similar for both consumer and business loans.

Doing Business 2007 focuses on reforms, identifies top reformers in business regulation, and best practices in how to reform. This volume is the fourth in a series of annual reports investigating global regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Co-sponsored by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation - the private sector arm of the World Bank Group - this year's report measures quantitative indicators on business regulations and their enforcement compared across 175 countries - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - and over time. Doing Business 2007 updates indicators developed in the three preceding reports.The ten indicators are: starting a business, dealing with licenses, hiring and firing, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, trading across borders, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, and closing a business. The indicators are used to analyze economic and social outcomes, such as informality, corruption, unemployment, and poverty. This annually published report gives policymakers the ability to measure regulatory performance in comparison to other countries, learn from best practices globally, and prioritize reforms. This year's report covers 20 additional countries.