This paper studies the effects of water sector privatization on consumers' welfare in 46 municipalities in Colombia. The paper evaluates the impact of privatization on access, price, and quality of water as well as health outcomes using differences-in-differences methodology with variation...

This paper studies the effect of government-backed partial credit guarantees on firms' performance. These guarantees are automatically granted to firms without enough collateral in order to lift their credit constraints. We put together a panel, covering the period 1997-2007, that combines data...

This paper estimates the impact of relative price volatility on sector-level investment allocation using a panel of 65 countries with data for 26 manufacturing industries over the period 1985-2003. Results indicate that volatility distorts efficient investment allocation in that investment is...

The present work summarizes a set of reports which have had the aim of diagnosing the civil service systems of seventeen countries: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago,...

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the...

This paper uses new data on fiscal transparency for a cross-section of countries; these data possess several advantages. First, the data are based on in-depth reports using a standardized methodology and protocol. Second, this study covers 82 countries, more than previous comparable studies....

This paper expands the micro-foundations of the traditional greed and grievance non-cooperative model of civil conflict between a government and a rebel group.First, the papers model allows for greed and grievance to be orthogonal, so that they may affect each other. Second, the model allows for...

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) through its Regional Policy Dialogue, Public Policy and Management Network commissioned this study [update] of the Institutional Assessment of Civil Service systems (CSS) in Barbados. While reforms address key elements of the HRM system, the frameworks,...

Even as Trinidad and Tobago seeks productive diversification away from the energy sector, the process underlying the countrys productive development policies (PDP) is in a state of transition from state-directed industrial policy to a newer approach with extensive private-public participation....

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of fiscal policy, in particular the accumulation of government debt. The authors examine three possible determinants of fiscal balances: opportunistic behavior by policymakers, heterogeneous fiscal preferences of either voters or...