What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

In this paper we argue the case for greater exploitation of synergies between research on specific institutions based on micro-data and the big questions posed by the institutions and growth literature. To date, the macroeconomic literature on institutions and growth has largely relied on...

This paper develops a simple model to analyze how a lack of politi-cal competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth. Wetest the predictions of the model on panel data for the US states. Inthese data, we …nd robust evidence that lack of political competitionin a state is...