Business training programs are a popular policy option to try to improve the performance of enterprises around the world. The last few years have seen rapid growth in the number of evaluations of these programs in developing countries. This paper undertakes a critical review of these studies...

This paper evaluates the role of export destinations on productivity, employment, and wages of Turkish firms by comparing the performance of firms that export to low-income destinations and high-income destinations with firms that do not export. A combination of propensity score matching and...

This paper surveys the recent literature which examines the impact of business climate variables on productivity and growth in developing countries using enterprise surveys. Comparable enterprise surveys today cover some 70,000 firms in over 100 countries around the world. The literature that...

Using 2005 firm level data for 26 countries in Eastern and Central Europe, this paper estimates performance gaps between male and female-owned businesses, while controlling for location by industry and country. The findings show that female entrepreneurs have a significantly smaller scale of...

The informal sector is an important source of livelihoods and jobs for a vast majority of people in developing countries. However, there is concern that it may undermine growth and development of the formal sector. For instance, the growth literature indicates that research and development...

This paper tests whether structural or firm-specific characteristics contributed more to (labor) productivity growth in the European Union between 2003 and 2008. It combines the Amadeus firm-level data on productivity and firm characteristics with country-level data describing regulatory...

Africa's economic performance has been widely viewed with pessimism. This paper uses firm-level data for 89 countries to examine formal firm performance. Without controls, manufacturing African firms do not perform much worse than firms in other regions. But they do have structural problems,...

The infrastructure gap is one of the most significant impediments to India realizing its growth and poverty reduction potential. Although India s transport network is one of the most extensive in the world, accessibility and connectivity are limited. Only 20 percent of the national highway...

Using panel data models, the author examines the threshold effects of the productivity of infrastructure investment in developing countries. He considers various specifications of an augmented production function that allow for endogenous thresholds. More precisely, these specifications are...