This study examined the factors strengthening or weakening the environment for private investment and inclusive growth in eleven middle-income countries. The Policy Practice managed the research and produced a synthesis paper. It undertook two of these studies directly, and identified nine other country experts.

The research findings have been summarised in the Policy Practice Brief NO.12.

The Policy Practice provided a staff member (Alex Duncan) to join a team led by DFID to review the lessons learned by the first phase of the Making Markets Work Better for the Poor Programme, and to design a second phase. The programme had made a good start, and the team designed a second phase which built on the strong research focus of the first phase, but gave greater emphasis to operationalising the approach and to promoting new investments in market chains.

Following our framework paper on this subject, the Policy Practice was commissioned to prepare a five-country comparative study of sub-national growth and poverty. This paper considers the spatial poverty inheritance and processes of poverty creation and maintenance in Vietnam, India, Ghana, Bolivia and Zambia. It synthesises the main points from five country case studies commissioned by DFID, supplementing this with reference to wider literature.

Andrew Barnett and Alex Duncan prepared a paper on research-policy linkages, for presentation at a conference of the Making Markets Work Programme in Vietnam.