Strong cyclical dynamics, together with an easing of macroeconomic policies in the United States and elsewhere, have boosted large parts of the global economy, into the initial phase of a recovery in 2002. Nonetheless, the global recovery is fragile, because investment spending is insufficient...

This paper looks at firm-level evidence on the African business environment from surveys undertaken for Investment Climate Assessments by the World Bank in 2000-2004. These surveys confirm a pattern of generally low "factory-floor" productivity, and show that this is partly due to business...

"Loayza and Rancire study the apparent contradiction between two strands of the literature on the effects of financial intermediation on economic activity. On the one hand, the empirical growth literature finds a positive effect of financial depth as measured by, for instance, private domestic...

For FDI to help stimulate economic growth and alleviate poverty in developing countries, two conditions have to be met. The first requirement is to improve developing countries' attractiveness to foreign investors. Second, the host-country environment in which foreign investors operate must be...

A Development Emergency: the title of this year's Global Monitoring Report, the sixth in an annual series, could not be more apt. The global economic crisis, the most severe since the Great Depression, is rapidly turning into a human and development crisis. No region is immune. The poor...