It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore they are more likely to adopt liberal trading policies. The present paper extends this idea beyond the conventional trade openness measures by analyzing the relationship between country size and the...

Combining two unique data sets, this paper explores the relationship between the relative importance of different financial institutions and their average size and firms' access to financial services. Specifically, the authors explore the relationship between the share in total financial assets...

Survey data from 120 developing countries are used to examine the relation between establishment size and age in the formal sector. Existing research suggests that manufacturing establishments in developing countries do not grow over time, most likely because of market imperfections and...

For an international sample of banks, the authors construct measures of a bank's absolute size and its systemic size defined as size relative to the national economy. They examine how a bank's risk and return, its activity mix and funding strategy, and the extent to which it faces market...

Deteriorating public finances around the world raise doubts about countries' abilities to bail out their largest banks. For an international sample of banks, this paper investigates the impact of government indebtedness and deficits on bank stock prices and credit default swap spreads. Overall,...

The authors examine whether financial development boosts the growth of small firms more than large firms and hence provides information on the mechanisms through which financial development fosters aggregate economic growth. They define an industry's technological firm size as the firm size...

In this paper the authors estimate the rate of return to firm investments in human capital in the form of formal job training. They use a panel of large firms with unusually detailed information on the duration of training, the direct costs of training, and several firm characteristics such as...

How corruption affects economic performance has been studied for over a decade. Yet the lack of detailed firm-level data has limited research regarding who is carrying the real burden of corruption. This study shows that for firms in the Latin America and Caribbean region, bribery significantly...

This paper analyzes the impact of climate change on animal husbandry in Africa. It regresses the net revenue from raising animals in small and large farms across Africa on climate, soil, and other control variables to test the climate sensitivity of livestock. The study is based on a survey of...

This paper reviews the process of job creation and destruction across a sample of 16 industrial and emerging economies over the past decade. It exploits a harmonized firm-level data set drawn from business registers and enterprise census data. The paper assesses the importance of technological...