This paper reviews the determinants of Latin America's uneven growth based on an accounting decomposition that breaks down countries' growth (relative to the world) into three trade-related channels: (i) an export pull measuring the traction exerted by the country's exports, (ii) an external...

Ghana has experienced a decade of solid and exceptionally high growth. Between 2005 and 2015, income nearly doubled. This paper analyzes the factors driving this impressive growth performance, using tools such as structural change decompositions and growth regressions. For the comparative...

What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

There is a growing body of literature exploring the skill content of jobs. This paper contributes to this research by using data on the task content of occupations in developing countries, instead of U.S. data, as most existing studies do. The paper finds that indexes based on U.S. data do not...

This paper addresses three questions: 1) what would have been the growth and income trajectory of Syria in the absence of war; 2) given the war, what explains the reduction in economic growth in terms physical capital, labor force, human capital, and productivity; and 3) what potential growth...

Malawi can be understood as a microcosm of institutional reform approaches in developing countries more broadly. A common feature of such approaches, whether implemented by government or donors, is reform initiatives that yield institutions that "look like" those found in higher-performing...

Recurrent cyclonic storms in the Bay of Bengal inflict massive losses on the coastal regions of Bangladesh and India. Information on occurrences and severities of cyclones is necessary for understanding household and community responses to cyclone risks. This paper constructs a georeferenced...

This study quantifies the outflow of human capital associated with migration from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras since 1990. To measure the outflow of skills and human capital and how this has changed over time, the study uses information on Northern Triangle migrants residing in the...

Access to school has risen dramatically in recent decades, with large gains from reducing costs. Few studies report long-term impacts, however. This paper reports the impact of an educational intervention that reduced out-of-pocket schooling costs for children in poor communities in Kenya by...

Community-driven development is an approach to development that emphasizes community control over planning decisions and investment resources. Over the past decade, it has become a key operational strategy for many national governments, as well as for international aid agencies, with the World...