This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...

When prices spike in international grain markets, national governments often reduce the extent to which that spike affects their domestic food markets. Those actions exacerbate the price spike and international welfare transfer associated with the terms of trade change. Several recent analyses...

The volume-based Special Safeguard Mechanism was proposed as essential for small, poor farmers and became the proximate cause of the collapse of the Doha Agenda negotiations in 2008. But is it helpful for these farmers, given that it is likely to be applied when farm output is depressed and many...

Using a panel of administrative data and regression discontinuity analysis, this paper examines how the introduction of preferential tax regimes for Georgian micro and small businesses in 2010 affects formal firm creation and tax compliance. The results show that the new tax regime for micro...

This paper finds that shareholder-friendly corporate governance is positively associated with bank insolvency risk, as proxied by the Z-score and the Merton's distance to default measure, for an international sample of banks over the 2004-08 period. Banks are special in that"good"corporate...

This paper analyzes the dynamic nature of rainfall insurance purchasing decisions, specifically looking at whether and why receiving an insurance payout induces a greater chance of purchasing insurance again the next year. This analysis uses customer data from the Indian micro-finance...

This paper investigates the African financial development and financial inclusion gaps relative to other peer developing countries. The paper uses a set of variables related to financial development and inclusion. It first estimates the gaps between African countries and other developing...

This paper seeks to provide evidence on the extent of household vulnerability to exogenous economic shocks in the Pacific region and consider policy options that help to manage this risk. Characteristics of the region such as remoteness, small size, dispersion, and urbanizing populations lead to...