This is a technical note for the 2011 the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) carried out in Mexico. The focus of this document is the new technology-enabled channels to scale up financial access being employed. Key issues such as a pro-inclusion policy environment and harnessing...

This report is based on a study of the costs of retail payments in Kosovo, using a methodology (A Practical Guide for Measuring Retail Payment Costs) developed by the World Bank's Payment System Development Group (PSDG), part of the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice. The...

"Drawing on the World Bank Investment Climate Assessment surveys, this paper investigates the relationship between firm-level technical efficiency and the investment climate for 22 developing economies and eight manufacturing industries. The authors first propose three measures of firms'...

"During the 1990s, foreign direct investment in producer service sectors in Latin America was massive. Such investment may increase the quality of services, reduce their cost, and offer opportunities for knowledge spillovers to downstream users of the services. This paper examines the effects of...

"Using recent matched employer-employee data from the manufacturing sector in 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, the authors analyze how the supply of skills and legal origin of the country affect the wage setting process. The wage analysis yields three main findings. First, increasing returns to...

"The author studies the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) for manufacturing firms in Bangladesh using data from a recent survey. She obtains TFP measures by making use of firm-specific deflators for output and inputs. Controlling for industry, location, and year fixed effects, she...

"The authors use a panel of manufacturing firms to analyze the adjustment process in capital blue collar and white collar employment in Uruguay during a period of trade liberalization when average tariff protection fell from 43 to 14 percent. They calculate the desired factor levels arising from...