Many development policies, such as placement of infrastructure or local economic development schemes, are "place-based." Such policies are generally intended to stimulate private sector investment and economic growth in the treated place, and as such they are difficult to appraise and evaluate....

China has used two main spatial policies to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a 96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper develops a structural...

Despite the increasing attention in recent years to the spatial dimensions of economic development, consideration of the importance of space and the recognition that macro, aspatial perspectives can prove to be misleading are not new. Around the world, much of the disappointment with the...

Large and sustained differences in economic performance across regions of developing countries have long provided motivation for fiscal incentives designed to encourage firm entry in lagging areas. But empirical evidence in support of these policies has been weak at best. The authors undertake a...

Large and sustained differences in economic performance across regions of developing countries have long provided motivation for fiscal incentives designed to encourage firm entry in lagging areas. But empirical evidence in support of these policies has been weak at best. The authors undertake a...

Financial globalization, defined as global linkages through cross-border financial flows, has become increasingly relevant for emerging markets as they integrate financially with the rest of the world. This paper argues that, because of the way it is often measured, it has also led to the...

This paper uses simple analytical models to study high-income donor countries' willingness to pay to supply mitigation finance to low-income countries; how this depends on modality for finance supply; and how it changes as the global greenhouse gas mitigation agenda moves forward. The paper...

This paper provides new evidence on how effectively piped water consumption subsidies are targeting poor households in 10 low- and middle-income countries around the world. The results suggest that, in these countries, existing tariff structures fall short of recovering the costs of service...

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 $30 billion to its client countries. It also spends approximately $200 million on the provision of...

This paper explores the link between the prevalence of violent conflicts and extremely low female labor force participation rates in South Asia. The Labor Force Surveys from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan are merged with the Global Terrorism Database to estimate the relationship...