Manufacturing enterprises in rural and urban Ethiopia are compared to examine how location and investment climate characteristics affect performance. Urban firms are larger, more capital intensive and have higher labor productivity than rural firms, yet there is no strong evidence of increasing...

We estimate pass-through effects of international food price movements into domestic food prices for 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, using threshold regressions. International price movements transmit to various degrees into domestic prices. Transmission is mostly asymmetric,...

This paper proposes a technique to decompose short-run fluctuations in the terms of trade. Using Ethiopia as an example, we decompose the commodity terms of trade into various components to measure the impact of price and volume shifts as well as export diversification. We use monthly data from...

Loening investigates the impact of human capital on economic growth in Guatemala during 1951-2002 using an error-correction methodology. The results show a better-educated labor force having a positive and significant impact on economic growth. Consistent with microeconomic studies for...

The Chad Rural Policy Note builds on the findings of a rural sector stocktaking exercise. An initial draft of the note was prepared as a just-in-time study designed to contribute to the preparation of the Chad Interim Strategy Note. This finalized version of the note intended mainly to establish...

The objective of this study is to identify likely factors driving the 2010 rice price hike and suggest options to manage rice price volatility in the future. Regional trade is likely the main proximate cause for high glutinous rice prices. Trade with Vietnam was likely the main reason for...

New estimates of pass-through coefficients for the Middle East and North Africa indicate that a rise of global food prices is transmitted to a significant degree into domestic food prices. Over the past decade, transmission from international to domestic prices has been particularly high for...