Understanding how e-commerce platforms are affecting the small, informal firms that sell on them is a question of growing importance to researchers and policy makers in developing countries. This paper...
This paper measures trends in factor misallocation in India between 1999 and 2014, using data from a rich panel of Indian firms. The misallocation of a factor is modeled as an adjustment cost, that is...
Stringent employment protection laws are argued to be a cause of reduced employment flexibility, slower growth and increased reliance on temporary employment contracts in many countries, including India...
South Asia region’s economies continue on a recovery path, with production and export having recovered to pre-COVID trend levels. But the recovery has been uneven across countries and sectors, and significant...
Labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing driven by the ready-made garments industry has transformed Bangladesh's economy. But with automation, changing trade patterns and servicification reducing...
The COVID-19 pandemic is having unequal impacts. Research has highlighted that across race, gender, age, and income groups, the health and economic consequences of this crisis are far from uniform and...
The COVID-19 pandemic, which is still impacting South Asia, has temporarily brought the region to a near standstill. Governments proactively stabilized activity through monetary easing, fiscal stimulus...
This policy note was prepared in parallel to the report Pakistan at hundred - shaping the future. The report Pakistan at hundred discusses options to accelerate and sustain growth in Pakistan so that the...
The purpose of this Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) is to assess opportunities and constraints holding back private sector growth. It conducts a diagnostic of the main cross-cutting constraints...
This paper estimates the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral and North-South-East-West Highways in India on welfare, social inclusion, and environmental quality. The analysis uses district-level data for...
A key prediction of dynamic labor demand models is that firing restrictions attenuate firms’ employment responses to economic fluctuations. The authors provide the first direct test of this prediction...
Internal mobility is a critical component of economic growth and development, as it enables the reallocation of labor to more productive opportunities across sectors and regions. Using detailed district-to-district...
This paper examines how the 2008-09 financial crisis affected labor markets in Central and Western Europe, and how this impact depended on employment protections laws. Using a differences-in-differences...
Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why...
In this paper, the authors use the lab to test a series of policy proposals designed to constrain rent-seeking behaviour in a policymaking context. The baseline governance game is conducted in the following...
The impact of business regulations on firms could depend on how the regulations are enforced in practice. Exploiting variation in enforcement capacity across the Russian Federation's administrative regions...
This paper examines whether labor productivity converged across Peru’s regions (“departments”) during 2002-12. Given the large differences in labor productivity across the regions of Peru, such convergence...
Sub-Saharan Africa has just experienced one of the best decades of growth since the 1960s. Between 2000 and 2012, gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 4.5 percent a year on average, compared to...
Sub-Saharan Africa has just experienced one of the best decades of growth since the 1960s. Between 2000 and 2012, gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 4.5 percent a year on average, compared to...
Sub-Saharan Africa has just experienced one of the best decades of growth since the 1960s. Between 2000 and 2012, gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 4.5 percent a year on average, compared to...