"Empirical evidence suggests that the higher-order effects of natural disasters, which affect intangible assets, may be even more important than the material inter-industry effects. However, most existing general equilibrium models ignore higher order effects concerning human capital. Moreover,...

Recent studies in the DRC tend to focus on human rights abuses or on the status of women, however few investigations examine the link between mining and sexual violence. There is a dearth of research specifically into the gender dimensions of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) as a means to...

The objective of this study is to fill the knowledge gaps to help advance Albania's vision of the Blue Economy, in the context of the country's aim of joining the EU. The two most important sectors with this regard are fisheries and tourism. Both industries are well established and offer the...

"Globalization brings opportunities and pressures for domestic firms in emerging markets to innovate and improve their competitive position. Using data on firms in 27 transition economies, the authors test for the effects of globalization through the impact of increased competition and foreign...

"The paper evaluates the effects of privatization in the post-communist economies and China. In post-communist economies privatization to foreign owners results in a rapid improvement in performance of firms, while performance effects of privatization to domestic owners are less impressive and...

"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...

"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'...

"Innovation is key to technology adoption and creation, and to explaining the vast differences in productivity across and within countries. Despite the central role of the entrepreneur in the innovation process, data limitations have restricted standard analysis of the determinants of innovation...

"This paper surveys the recent literature which examines the impact of business climate variables on productivity and growth in developing countries using enterprise surveys. Comparable enterprise surveys today cover some 70,000 firms in over 100 countries around the world. The literature that...

"Using 2005 firm level data for 26 countries in Eastern and Central Europe, this paper estimates performance gaps between male and female-owned businesses, while controlling for location by industry and country. The findings show that female entrepreneurs have a significantly smaller scale of...