External financing conditions for developing countries have been remarkably favorable in recent months, reflecting expectations of a more drawn-out period of monetary policy accommodation in high-income countries and some narrowing of external vulnerabilities. Additional easing by the European...

Access to reliable cross-country data on private sector development is crucial when formulating responses to economic crises. When downturns affect exports, investment, and growth negatively, making life easier for business is a significant step towards economic recovery. This has become obvious...

The little data book is a pocket edition of the global financial development database published as part of the work on the Global Financial Development Report 2014 : financial inclusion. The book has put more emphasis on access indicators and, in particular, includes additional variables...

In this introduction, the authors do three things. They first introduce the puzzle and relate it to existing interpretations from market reformists and their critics, arguing that both sets of views are inadequate. The authors then offer an alternative interpretation: that entrenched inequities...

Access to reliable cross-country data on private sector development is crucial when formulating responses to economic crises. When downturns affect exports, investment, and growth negatively, making life easier for business is a significant step towards economic recovery. This has become obvious...

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a large and highly complex worldwide statistical program conducted under the charter of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC). The ICP is designed to provide globally comparable economic aggregates in national accounts that can be used by...

Twelve years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, domestic and international analysts of the transition economies by and large agree that the transition from central planning to a market economy has been exceedingly difficult. There has also been a major debate about the extent to which the...