"The authors explore the relationship between transaction costs and generalized trust. Using panel data from 2,100 households in 135 rural communities of the Philippines, the paper shows that where transaction costs are reduced (proxied by road construction), there is an increase in generalized...

This paper estimates the local welfare impacts of road maintenance investments. We instrument road quality exploiting Indonesia's two-step budgeting process for allocating funding to local road authorities. Using comprehensive data on road quality from 1990-2007, we find that better roads help...

This paper integrates daytime and nighttime satellite imagery into a spatial general-equilibrium model to evaluate the returns to investments in new motorways. Our approach has particular value in developing-country settings in which granular data on economic activity are scarce. To demonstrate...

In 2015, the World Bank embarked on a collaborative effort to understand and address the jobs challenge in Mindanao through the Mindanao Jobs Report (MJR). Good jobs - jobs that raise real income and lift people out of poverty - were needed for more than two million Mindanawons who were either...

This report adds value because its inclusive approach of engaging with a broad-based group of stakeholders at the time of both analysis and engagement has served a means of building support for needed reforms. The goal was to generate ownership among Mindanawons through consultations which were...