Countries vary systematically with respect to the incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods, and to reduce poverty. Even in developing countries that are democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents, and to private transfers that benefit a...

A large number of public pension schemes around the world have accumulated significant reserves. Pre-funding might reduce the risk that future governments will not be able to meet pension obligations. The management of these funds therefore, has a direct effect on financial sustainability and...

This paper contains a numerical listing of working papers prepared by the Policy, Research Complex. Each citation contains a brief abstract, and the contactpoint for the paper.

The question of the most effective order of reforming state-owned enterprises has been hotly debated over the years. In the early 1990s, many western advisers encouraged Eastern European countries, and the former Soviet Union, to privatize firms quickly under the assumption that market...

The Latvian economy made great strides in recovering from the economic shock of the early transition and the adverse aftereffects of the 1998 Russian financial crisis. Nevertheless, Latvia faces serious challenges to its future growth and prosperity despite these impressive achievements and the...

This report analyzes the World Bank's experience with project analysis from a sample of 1,105 projects. The authors compare estimated rates of return at appraisal with re-estimated rates of return at the project completion. Their findings confirm a high degree of uncertainty in project analysis....

The neoclassical theory of project evaluation is based on models in which agents discount the future at a constant exponential rate. But there is strong empirical evidence that people discount the future hyperbolically, applying larger annual discount rates to near-term returns than to returns...

The authors explain how the output growth effect from liberalizing the service sectors differs from the effect from liberalizing trade in goods. They also suggest using a policy-based rather than outcome-based measure of the openness of a country's service regime. They construct such openness...

The World Bank has increasingly focused on firm-level surveys to build the data foundation needed for accurate policy analysis in developing and transition economies. The authors take stock of some recent Bank surveys, and discuss how to improve their results. Lessons on data issues, and...

The authors used the policy game approach to gain insight into a problem that has puzzled analysts of high inflation economies. Why are programs based on tight fiscal and monetary policies slow at reducing inflation in high inflation countries? Distinguishing between regimes of rule and...