Urbanization is simultaneously a major driver of development, wealth creation, and poverty reduction, as well as one of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century. Urbanization can and should be embraced as an opportunity to reduce poverty. The building regulatory capacity assessment...

The recent wave of US corporate governance failures prompted a round of legal and regulatory reform which has attracted worldwide attention. The author's essay puts the debate into a wider context for the US. The missing link here is the rights of the shareholders in the US who have...

"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...