Despite the importance of trade facilitation as an area of trade and development policy, there have been very few impact evaluations of specific trade facilitation reforms. This paper offers an evaluation of in-house clearance, a reform that allows qualified firms in Serbia to clear customs from...

This survey reviews the current state of the economic literature, assessing the impact of transport policies on growth, inclusion, and sustainability in a developing country context. The findings are summarized and methodologies are critically assessed, especially those dealing with endogeneity...

This paper assesses the relation between access to markets and cultivated land in Sub-Saharan Africa. Making use of a geo-referenced panel over three decades (1970-2005) during which the road network was significantly improved, the analysis finds a modest but significant positive association...

This paper addresses an old and recurring theme in development economics: the slow adoption of new technologies by farmers in many developing countries. The paper explores a somewhat novel link to explain this puzzle -- the link between market access and the incentives to adopt a new technology...

In conflict-prone situations, access to markets is necessary to restore economic growth and generate the preconditions for peace and reconstruction. Hence, the rehabilitation of damaged transport infrastructure has emerged as an overarching investment priority among donors and governments. This...

Using two surveys from Bangladesh, this paper provides evidence on the effects of microfinance competition on village moneylender interest rates and households' dependence on informal credit. The views among practitioners diverge sharply: proponents claim that competition of microfinance...

Using two surveys from Bangladesh, this paper provides evidence on the effects of microfinance competition on village moneylender interest rates and households' dependence on informal credit. The views among practitioners diverge sharply: proponents claim that MFI competition reduces both the...

Transport infrastructure is deemed to be central to development and consumes a large fraction of the development assistance envelope. Yet there is debate about the economic impact of road projects. This paper proposes an approach to assess the differential development impacts of alternative road...

This paper uses a unique data set on 143,000 poor households from Northern Bangladesh to analyze the effects of microfinance membership on a household's ability to cope with seasonal famine known as Monga. We develop an estimation strategy that exploits a jump and a kink at the 10 decimal land...

This paper assesses the relationship between access to markets and land cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a geo-referenced panel over four decades (1970-2010) during which the road network was significantly improved, we find a modest impact of improved market accessibility on local...