This paper studies the impact of the rapid expansion of the Brazilian road network, which occurred from the 1960s to the 2000s, on the growth and spatial allocation of population and economic activity across the country's municipalities. It addresses the problem of endogeneity in infrastructure...

The paper examines the consequences of the deficiencies in the legal protection of creditors` rights and the low efficiency of judicial enforcement on the functioning of credit markets in Paraguay, as well as the solutions developed to compensate for the informality and enforcement flaws of...

Since the 1980s, privatization of formerly state-owned firms has been extensively implemented by governments across Latin America. Despite the fact that most evaluations of the process fail to find significant adverse efficiency and welfare effects, there has been a strong surge in public...

This paper applies two distinct approaches—growth regressions and growth accounting—to analyze the link between infrastructure, growth, and productivity in developing Asian countries. The main conclusion is that a number of countries in developing Asia have significantly improved their basic...

Many developing countries are unable to provide their industrial sector with reliable electric power and many enterprises have to contend with insufficient and unreliable electricity supply. Because of these constraints, enterprises often opt for self-generation even though it is widely...

A standard view holds that removing barriers to entry and improving judicial enforcement would reduce informality and boost investment and growth. We show, however, that this conclusion may not hold in countries with a concentrated bank- ing sector or with low financial openness. When the formal...