Since the Global Financial Crisis, world trade growth has been subdued and lagging slightly behind growth of gross domestic product. Trade is growing more slowly not only because growth of global gross domestic product is lower, but also because trade itself has become less responsive to gross...

This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. The analysis uses an empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and...

This paper re-examines the roles of changes in income and inequality in poverty reduction. The study provides estimates of the relative effects of inequality reduction versus growth promotion in reducing poverty for countries with different levels of initial poverty. The analysis uses country...

This paper studies the relationship between inequality of opportunity and development outcomes in a cross-country setting. Scholars have long debated the impact of inequality on growth, development, and the quality of institutions in a society. The empirical relationships are however confounded...

Focusing on the welfare of the less well off as a measure of real societal progress is the fundamental principle underlying the WBG indicator of "shared prosperity" , namely income growth of the bottom 40 percent in every country. This paper uses a database assembled by the World Bank Group to...

This paper uses the dramatic expansion of access to the Internet in China to analyze the impact of the Internet on firm performance. The paper combines firm-level production data with province-level information on Internet penetration to examine how the rollout of the Internet across Chinese...

East Asia, for long the epitome of successful engagement in trade, faces serious challenges: technological change that may threaten the very model of labor intensive industrialization and a backlash against globalization that may reduce access to important markets. A detailed analysis of the...