Using data on more than 56,000 enterprises in 90 countries, this study finds that objective conditions in the business environment vary substantially across firms of different sizes and that there are important nonlinearities in their impact on employment growth. The study focuses on four areas:...

For developing countries, remittances are an important and expanding source of capital, equivalent to two-thirds of overall foreign direct investment and nearly 2 percent of gross domestic product. This article examines the relationship between remittance inflows, financial sector development,...

We predict sovereign ratings for developing countries that do not have risk ratings from agencies such as Fitch, Moody's, and Standard and Poor's. Ratings are important in determining the volume and cost of capital flows to developing countries through international bond, loan, and equity...

The current financial crisis is global in nature, but it will have differing impacts within the developing world. Some people and some countries are more vulnerable than others. The author believes that it also threatens to have lasting impacts for some of those affected, notably through the...

Development aid and policy discussions often assume that poorer countries have less internal capacity for redistribution in favor of their poorest citizens. The assumption is tested for 90 developing countries. Most countries fall into one of two groups: those with little or no realistic...

Western notions of the 'middle class' are of little obvious relevance to developing countries. Instead, the middle class is identified here as those living above the median poverty line of developing countries, even if still poor by rich-country standards. Over 1990-2005, economic growth and...

This paper examines the relative contribution of openness and the R&D content of trade to North-South trade-related knowledge diffusion and TFP growth. The measure of foreign R&D used in the literature on trade-related knowledge diffusion imposes identical contributions to TFP of openness and...

This paper argues that there are many challenges to designing and implementing water and sanitation interventions that actually deliver economic benefits to the households in developing countries. Perhaps most critical to successful water and sanitation investments is to discover and implement...

This article proposes a general pattern of rural development in which increases in per capita income are associated with a decline in the importance of agricultural production and a rise in the importance of non-agricultural income sources. Following the approach to examining Engel's Law, we use...

This paper presents a dynamic macroeconomic model that captures key linkages between foreign aid, public investment, growth, and poverty. Public capital is disaggregated into education, core infrastructure, and health. Dutch disease effects associated with aid are accounted for by endogenizing...