The future prosperity of most people of the Middle-East and North Africa—and the social cohesion of their countries—rests in great part on the ability of governments to enable the private sector to respond to this job creation challenge. This is what this report is about. It is about...

This paper analyzes the impact of infrastructure on growth of total factor productivity and per capita income, using both growth accounting techniques and cross-country growth regressions. The two econometric techniques yield some consistent and some different results. Regressions based in the...

Among the principal constraints for SME lending is the lack of SME transparency, poor credit information from credit registries and bureaus, and weak creditor rights. If constraints can be addressed, lending can potentially reach bank targets of 21 percent. State banks still play an important...