Developing countries are increasingly concerned about improving country competitiveness and productivity, as they face the increasing pressures of globalization and attempt to improve economic growth and reduce poverty. Among such countries, Investment Climate surveys (ICs) at the firm level,...

This book argues for the urgent need for countries to move forward aggressively on adopting and upgrading quality and standards. The focus is on developing countries, many of which are lagging in the race for standards adoption, and within that category, on middle-income countries. The book...

As numerous countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere are moving toward a second phase of private participation in infrastructure programs mostly through public-private partnership schemes and other countries are just beginning the process, several concerns remain from the...

This book aims to fill that gap by using extensive and new firm-level data. It provides an alternative, albeit complementary, approach to previous studies of the determinants of the region's growth performance, which are mostly based on cross-country regressions using aggregate data. This book...

In most developing and industrial countries, infrastructure services have traditionally been provided by government enterprises, but in developing countries at least, these enterprises have often proven to be inefficient, unable to provide much-needed investments, and manipulated to achieve...