This paper surveys the recent literature exploring the causes of urban pollution in the developing world and the implications of such pollution for a city's competitiveness. Within a system of cities, cities compete for jobs and people. Those cities that specialize in heavy industrial activity...

Financial globalization has gathered attention since the early 1990s because of its macro-financial implications and growing importance. But financial globalization has taken shape via different forms over time. This paper examines two important, concurrent dimensions of financial globalization:...

Although market concentration is one of the main impediments to productivity growth globally, data constraints have limited its analysis to developed countries or cross-country studies based on definitions of market concentration across nations and industries. This paper takes advantage of a...

Does democratization promote economic competition? This paper documents that the disruption of political connections associated with Suharto's fall had a modest pro-competitive effect on Indonesian manufacturing industries in which his family had extensive business interests. Firms with...

This paper uses a unique firm-level data set for Mexico, with information never used for research before, to assess how use of information technology (IT henceforth) influences firm performance. Further, the paper explores if, in the context of increasing competition from China, this effect is...

Globalization is creating many new trade and growth opportunities, with services trade increasingly becoming an issue for export-oriented economies. Services are important to country trade strategies, because they represent activities in which countries may have a comparative advantage, and they...

The Russian Federation's regions not only have highly uneven degrees of development, they also have very uneven degrees of foreign orientation. Regions with the highest foreign orientation--exports of goods per capita or inbound foreign direct investment per capita?almost across the board have...

Ecuador is one of the least diversified countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, depending heavily on oil and agriculture. This policy paper examines how services and innovation can play a role in transforming the Ecuadorian economy from one based on natural resources to one based on...

Special economic zones can be an effective instrument to promote industrialization if implemented properly in the right context. In China, starting in the 1980s, special economic zones were used as a testing ground for the country's transition from a planned to a market economy, and they are a...