Embedding management and operational practices survey in a broader firm capabilities survey, this report finds that: (i) relative to the rest of Croatia, an average firm in the lagging region of the country (Eastern Croatia) is only slightly behind in the adoption of structured management...

Although many studies consider the spatial pattern of manufacturing plants in developing countries, the role of services as a driver of urbanization and structural transformation is still not well understood. Using establishment level data from India, this paper helps narrow this gap by...

In Localizing Development, Mansuri and Rao survey theory and evidence for development strategies based on local community empowerment. This note extends their theoretical argument by focusing on local government as a vital source of new leadership. Local leaders who provide better public service...

The differences in financial development across Indian states, while seeming substantial, have a minor effect on firm lifecycle and growth. These results hold controlling for differences in labor regulations across states, capital intensity, and for firms born before and after the major reforms....

Regression discontinuity designs applied to a set of household surveys from the 1980-90s allow to examine whether Cote d'Ivoire's aggregate wealth was translated at the borders of neighboring countries. At the border of Ghana and at the end of the 1980s, large discontinuities are detected for...

Tourism is one of Latin America's fastest growing industries but the impact of tourism on the poor and the effects on lagging regions are under debate. Many studies have evaluated the growth impacts of the tourism sector but few have analyzed the impact of tourism on the economy and poverty at...

In the last two decades the Indian economy has been growing unabatedly, with memories of the Hindu rate of growth rapidly fading. But this unprecedented growth has also resulted in widening spatial disparities. While cities such as Hyderabad have emerged as major clusters of high development,...

Infrastructure improvements boosted growth in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) by one percentage point per capita per year during 1995-2005, primarily thanks to growth in information and communication technology. Deficient power infrastructure held growth back by 0.1...

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...

Nearly one billion people worldwide live in rural areas without access to the paved road network. This paper measures the impacts of India's $40 billion national rural road construction program using regression discontinuity and data covering every individual and firm in rural India. The main...