This paper estimates the survival time of nearly 7,000 firms in a dozen high-income and middle-income countries in a scenario of extreme economic distress, using the World Bank's Enterprises Surveys. Under the assumption that firms have no incoming revenues and cover only fixed costs, the median...

Using panel data for 189 economies from 2005 to 2013, this paper shows that business-friendly regulations are correlated with the poverty headcount at the country level. This association is significant using the World Bank's Doing Business indicators on getting credit and contract enforcement....

This paper investigates to what extent media impacts political decisions. A viable practical approach to test the relationship between mass media and political actions is through the use of the World Bank's Doing Business data, specifically, by assessing local media coverage of Doing Business...