In the latest 30 years, Costa Rica's real GDP per capita has more than doubled, driven by increasing labour utilisation. Labour productivity has instead stagnated at around 30% of the more advanced OECD countries. Productivity growth has been lacklustre despite the opening up of markets to...

Advancements in science and technology are important drivers of economic growth and well-being and have the potential to help countries leapfrog stages of development. Greater investments are needed to strengthen developing countries’ research capacity and exploit the benefits of modern...

This study investigates transition finance in Lebanon, an upper middle-income country in the MENA region transitioning from a significant adverse shock. Lebanon’s development path has been historically non-linear and, most recently, the Syrian conflict adversely affected the country’s...

This Working Paper presents the main findings and recommendations of the pilot study carried out on the treatment of peace and security expenditures in the statistical measure of total official support for sustainable development (TOSSD). The pilot study explored the relevance of including...

China, Japan and Korea have deployed a multiplicity of co-operation efforts at different levels of government to promote air quality and curb transboundary pollution. This paper identifies the existing arrangements for air quality co-operation in North East Asia and provides guidance to advance...

Divestment by multinational enterprises is an important yet understudied phenomenon. The few available estimates indicate that about a fifth of all foreign affiliates are divested every five years. This paper presents the findings from a novel cross-country firm-level dataset with financial and...