Based on a novel approach to measuring the cost of trade in services for Modes 1 (cross-border supply), 2 (consumption abroad), and 4 (temporary movement of service suppliers), developed by the World Trade Organization Secretariat, this paper reviews available evidence on factors affecting trade...

There is a global trend toward more production, use, and sale of services by manufacturing firms. This phenomenon is known as the servicification of manufacturing. Services inputs as well as services activities within manufacturing firms account for over half of the value of manufacturing...

Most manufacturing activities use inputs from the financial and business services sectors. But these services sectors also compete for resources with manufacturing activities, provoking concerns about de-industrialization-financial services in industrial countries like the United States and the...

The COVID-19-triggered collapse in oil prices in March and April 2020 was the seventh, and by far the most severe, in a series of such collapses since 1970. This paper, first, compares this most recent collapse and its drivers with previous ones in an event study. It finds that it was associated...

A model of Covid-19 transmission among locations within a country has been developed that is (1) implementable anywhere spatially-disaggregated Covid-19 infection data are available; (2) scalable for locations of different sizes, from individual regions to countries of continental scale; (3)...

The recent surge in the number of forcibly displaced who cross international borders in search of protection has prompted interest in evaluating policies that achieve the possible "end points" of the phenomenon. As envisaged by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), these are the...

There is a long-standing debate over whether new roads unavoidably lead to environmental damage, especially forest loss, but causal identification has been elusive. Using multiple causal identification strategies, this paper studies the construction of new rural roads to over 100,000 villages...

Many innovative start-ups and small and medium-size enterprises have good ideas, but do not have these ideas fine-tuned to the stage where they can attract outside funding. Investment readiness programs attempt to help firms to become ready to attract and accept outside equity funding through a...

The fast spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has resulted in the emergence of several hot-spots around the world. Several of these are located in areas associated with high levels of air pollution. This study investigates the relationship between exposure to particulate...

This study investigates the World Bank's use of lending and non-lending instruments to affect the policy priorities of developing countries. In a typical year, the World Bank lends more than USD 30 billion to its client countries. It also spends approximately USD 200 million on the provision of...