Until recently, utility services (telecommunications, power, water, and gas) throughout the world were provided by large, usually state-owned, monopolies. However, encouraged by technological change, regulatory innovation, and pressure from international organizations, many developing countries...

Previous work has shown that firms in low and middle-income countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia that feel greater pressure to innovate from their competitors are more likely to introduce new products and services than firms that do not feel pressure (Carlin and others 2001; World Bank...

Over the past few years, many studies have looked at the macroeconomic, cultural, and institutional determinants of corruption. This study complements these cross-country studies by focusing on microeconomic factors that affect bribes paid in a single sector of the economy. Using...

If the Internet made it easier for firms to enter new markets by reducing communication and search costs, then it may also have made it easier to export goods and services. The authors find that higher Internet penetration in developing countries is correlated with greater exports to industrial...

Introducing private sector participation (PSP) into the water and sewerage sectors in developing countries is difficult and controversial. Empirical studies on its effects are scant and generally inconclusive. Case studies tend to find improvements in the sector following privatization, but they...

This paper uses a unique data set with 1.1 million customer transactions from a microfinance institution in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2017 to 2018. The paper provides evidence of assortative gender matching in agent banking transactions, as clients prefer to transact with agents of...

What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

This paper summarizes the latest update of the World Bank Bank Regulation and Supervision Survey. The paper explores and summarizes the evolution in bank capital regulations, capitalization of banks, market discipline, and supervisory power since the global financial crisis. It shows that...

This paper uses a randomized controlled trial to study the effects of access to agent banking. Individuals were encouraged to open an account and transact at a banking agent or a branch of a financial institution. Compared with individuals who were sent to the branch, individuals sent to an...

This paper presents recent trends in government and foreign bank ownership across countries and summarizes the evidence regarding the implications of bank ownership structure for bank performance and competition, financial stability, and access to finance. The evidence reviewed suggests that...