This paper uses farm panel data from China to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine investments, and the demand for machine services. Recently, China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion of machine rentals and machine services provided by specialized agents, which has...

Laboratories have historically been under supported in developing country health systems resulting in poor quality diagnosis and inadequate disease surveillance. Laboratory professionals are predominantly male with relatively limited female labor participation, with potential gender based...

The South Asia Economic Focus is a biannual economic update presenting recent economic developments and a near term economic outlook for South Asia. It includes a Focus section presenting more in depth analysis of an economic topic of relevance for stability, growth and prosperity in the region...

Guatemala is the largest economy in Central America, with a GDP of US$46.9 billion (2011). A moderate long-term rate of economic growth of 3.3 percent between 2001 and 2011 translated into a per capita GDP of $3,300 in 2011. However, Guatemala experienced 36 years of civil unrest, which left few...

Global growth again disappointed in 2014 but a lackluster recovery is underway, with increasingly divergent prospects in major economies. Looking ahead, growth is expected to rise slowly, supported by continued recovery in high-income countries and receding domestic headwinds in developing...

This discussion paper examines in its first part, the role of private investment in economic growth. While theoretical growth models developed in the economics literature, make no distinction between private, and public components of investment, there is an emerging appreciation that private...

Two otherwise identical firms that enter the same market in different months, one in January and one in December, will report dramatically different annual sales for the first calendar year of operations. This partial year effect in annual data leads to downward biased observations of the level...

This paper examines the possibility of environmental"development traps,"or"brown poverty traps,"caused by interactions between the impacts of climate change and increasing returns in the development of"clean-technology"sectors. A simple specification is used in which the economy can produce a...

In the aftermath of its long-standing civil war, Sri Lanka is keen to reap the social and economic benefits of peace. Even in the middle of civil conflict, the country was able to grow at rates that surpassed those of its neighbors and most developing countries. It is argued, then, that the...