"The authors examine a unique public spending program that is proliferating across developing countries, the constituency development fund, to investigate when legislators exert more effort on behalf of their constituents. Using data from India, they find that legislator effort is significantly...

About 90 percent of the world's nearly 200 sovereign states have national legislatures or parliaments. With the spread of democracy and the rise of multiparty political systems, these bodies are playing larger roles in government. Increasingly, legislatures and their members perform four...

Technology is one of the main drivers of productivity and economic growth. Developing countries have traditionally had difficulties in both developing technology and absorbing foreign technology. However, the recent emergence of tech startups present an opportunity. Tech start-ups are an...

Technology is one of the main drivers of productivity and economic growth. Developing countries have traditionally had difficulties in both developing technology and absorbing foreign technology. Seventy to eighty percent of the productivity gap between developed and developing countries is...

This report evaluates the role, operational models and identifies good practices of programs that seek to accelerate innovative entrepreneurship by managing, nurturing and leveraging social and business networks. The report discusses the role of venture acceleration networks, using networks to...

The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2012 is a pocket edition of the Global Financial Inclusion Index (Global Findex) database providing country-level indicators on the use of formal bank accounts, payments behavior, savings patterns, credit patterns, and insurance decisions. It provides...

"The objective of this paper is to address the main considerations for China of including financial services in its preferential trade agreements. The paper briefly reviews China's financial liberalization process and the state of its domestic financial system, discusses the main considerations...