This is an update and revision of our 2009 study. Using a broad dataset and an original methodology, this paper reports composite development gaps across economic, social and institutional sectors. We define development gap as the distance between the observed and the expected development level...

This paper estimates agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) in 162 countries between 1991 and 2015 and aims to understand sources of cross-country variations in agricultural TFP levels and its growth rates. Two factors affecting agricultural TFP are analyzed in detail - imported...

Developing and low-income economies face the challenge of increasing public spending to address sizeable infrastructure and social gaps while simultaneously restoring the fiscal discipline weakened to countervail the effect of the global recession. Increasing the efficiency of social spending...

This study uses simulations of state-dependent distributions of fiscal limits for 18 economies in Central America and the Caribbean to better understand governments' ability to service their debt, arising from endogenously determined dynamic Laffer curves. Using a small, open economy model to...

Some recent papers by Dell et al. (2009) and Dell et al. (2012) (DJO) relating weather and economic outcomes, have delivered meaningful messages with clear implications to the effects of a changing climate. In a nutshell, the authors claim that a 1°C increase in global average temperatures...

Universal access to modern energy services, in terms of access to electricity and to modern cooking facilities, has been recognized as a fundamental challenge for development. Despite strong praise for action and the deployment of large-scale electrification programs and improved cookstove (ICS)...

Universal access to modern energy services, in terms of access to electricity and to modern cooking facilities, has been recognized as fundamental challenge for development and is likely to be included in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Despite a strong praise for action and several...

Based on stylized evidence showing variation of the Gini coefficient of income inequality across skill cohorts and on the rapid rise in trade in technology-intensive goods, the ripple effects of technology transmission and income inequality are explored in a global Computable General Equilibrium...