The government of Burundi appealed to the World Bank Institute (WBI) for help in strengthening the capacities of leadership to implement policies and programs that would achieve measurable results. The new government needed to make tough decisions on competing priorities, including allocating an...

Entrepreneurship is of fundamental importance as a catalyst for innovation, job creation, and economic well-being. Policymakers have a strong interest in promoting entrepreneurship given that its development is necessary for fighting poverty and unemployment. This paper is an initial...

This report is the final product of a project financed by a grant from the World Bank's Youth Innovation Fund developed in conjunction with representatives of the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) spanning the period December 2011-June 2012. The report is an advisory document to assist the GoSL...

Development involves change, but many development initiatives produce unimpressive results. The authors ask why and consider how to close the gap between the intended change and what we actually see in the evidence. This paper presents the findings of a study, initiated by the multi-donor Global...

"This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...

"The authors study the effect of reorganization costs on the efficiency of bankruptcy laws. They develop a simple model that predicts that in a regime with high costs, the law fails to achieve the efficient outcome of liquidating unviable businesses and reorganizing viable ones. The authors test...

"Since the early 1980s, China has begun gradually integrating with the global system. In doing so the country has moved toward its own unique brand of market socialism, which recognizes private ownership, and is adopting market institutions and pursuing industrial change within the framework of...