A few Sub-Saharan countries, by improving their business environment, have begun to attract more substantial foreign direct investment than other African countries with bigger domestic markets and greater natural resources. Like Ireland and Singapore, perhaps they can become competitive...

Establishing an investment promotion agency has become a central part of most countries' development strategies. Today there are more than 150 investment promotion agencies worldwide. Yet very little is known about what these agencies have been really doing, notably in emerging countries, and...

Recent international experience has shown that excessively complex administrative procedures required to establish and operate a business discourage inflows of foreign direct investment. Morisset and Lumenga Neso present a new database on the administrative costs faced by private investors in 32...

How does uncertainty about the extent of global warming affect decisionmaking to reduce it? Which policy options to choose and how long to delay implementing them?Uncertainty is inherent in the analysis of global warming issues. Not only is there considerable scientific uncertainty about the...

Globalization has been a persistent phenomenon of the post-war period. The gross volume of cross-border capital flows has grown at an average of 25 percent a year, and trade in goods and services has also increased, albeit not as dramatically, but at least twice as fast as world GDP over the...