A new World Bank initiative, ‘Impact Evaluation (IE) - connect for impact,’ aims to radically transform and better inform the way that transport and information and communications technology (ICT) projects are designed and implemented. Although multilateral lending to this key strategic...

How do high-growth firms affect the rest of the economy? This paper explores this question using Hungarian administrative microdata. It finds evidence of stronger productivity growth for firms supplying and operating in industries with more high-growth firms. The surge of high-growth firms'...

Governance quality plays a key role in private sector development: competent bureaucrats not only create good policies and regulations, but also effectively implement them to shape the business environment. This paper exploit Vietnam’s decentralization of administrative tasks since the early...

Governance quality plays a key role in private sector development: competent bureaucrats not only create good policies and regulations but also effectively implement them to shape the business environment. The authors exploit Vietnam’s decentralization of administrative tasks since the early...

Foreign banks can play an important role in facilitating international trade. Most research has focused on the financing role banks can play, but less is known about the information role. This paper estimates a gravity model using sub-regional data from Turkey between 2002 and 2010 to explore...

This paper studies the relationship between access to credit, demand shocks, and export market adjustments using firm-level panel survey data for 24 economies in the Eastern Europe and Central Asian region. The study finds that domestic shocks to demand have a significant influence on the firm's...

The Internet has transformed the way countries trade by reducing the costs of exporting. This paper quantifies the impact of Internet adoption on international trade. It shows that the Internet has a positive, nuanced, impact on international trade: bilateral exports are more affected when...

This note examines the relationship between the presence of foreign firms and total factor productivity (TFP) growth of domestic firms (called ‘FDI, Foreign Direct Investment, spillovers’) in Serbia over the period of 2005-16. The analysis finds evidence of FDI spillovers in Serbia. Domestic...

This note examines the relationship between the presence of foreign firms and TFP growth of domestic firms (called FDI spillovers) in Serbia over 2005-2016 period. The analysis finds evidence of FDI spillovers in Serbia like domestic firms on average enjoy higher productivity because of the...

This paper proposes a simple and flexible econometric approach to quantify ex-ante the "deep” impact of trade liberalization and the "hard” effects of protection with the empirical structural gravity model. Specifically, the paper argues that the difference between the estimates of border...