This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses worldwide with a focus on developing countries. The results are based on a novel data set collected by the World Bank Group and several partner institutions in 51 countries covering...

Experience shows that there is often ample room for more effective and efficient use of investment tax incentives in low-income countries. Tax incentives generally rank low in investment climate surveys in low-income countries, and there are many examples in which they are reported to be...

The expansionary fiscal contraction (EFC) hypothesis states that fiscal austerity can increase output or consumption when a country is under heavy debt burdens because it sends positive signal about the country's solvency situation and long-term economic wellbeing. Empirical tests of this...

This paper explores the determinants of public employment across the world and finds that it is negatively associated with country size (by population) and positively associated with the income level. The findings show that a country's openness to trade is positively associated with public...

A large literature documents the positive influence of a city's skill structure on its rate of economic growth. By contrast, the effect of a city's age structure on its economic growth has been a hitherto largely neglected area of research. This paper hypothesizes that cities with more...

Despite the importance of the public procurement market, little effort has been made to systematically and consistently collect reliable statistics on a number of critical dimensions. To date, no attempt has been made to collect comparable statistics on the size of public procurement in...

The spread of COVID-19 and implementation of "social distancing" policies around the world have raised the question of how many jobs can be done at home. This paper uses skills surveys from 53 countries at varying levels of economic development to estimate jobs' amenability to working from home....

The paper uses Google mobility data to identify the determinants of social distancing during the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. The findings for the United States indicate that much of the decrease in mobility is voluntary, driven by the number of COVID-19 cases and proxying for greater awareness of...