This paper uses the construction of India's Golden Quadrangle central highway network, together with comprehensive loan data from the Reserve Bank of India, to investigate the interaction between infrastructure development and financial sector depth. The paper identifies a disproportionate...

Although many studies consider the spatial pattern of manufacturing plants in developing countries, the role of services as a driver of urbanization and structural transformation is still not well understood. Using establishment level data from India, this paper helps narrow this gap by...

Empowering women to engage in productive employment is not only critical to achieving gender equality but also critical for economic growth and poverty reduction. This paper studies the pattern of female activity and gender segmentation in the Indian manufacturing and services sectors. Although...

This paper quantifies the misallocation of manufacturing output and factors of production between establishments across Indian districts during 1989-2010. It first distills a number of stylized facts about misallocation in India, and demonstrates the validity of misallocation metrics by...

This paper complements the results of earlier work on factor misallocation. The paper first expands the methodology and provides two important decompositions for the main indices. The main result is that factor and output misallocation across districts is at least as important as misallocation...

High-growth firms have been widely studied in advanced countries, but little is known about such stellar performers in Africa. Using establishment-level data from Ethiopia, this paper finds that the incidence of high-growth firms stands at an average of 7 percent, a figure comparable to that of...

Embedding management and operational practices survey in a broader firm capabilities survey, this paper finds that an average firm in Croatia scores 0.532 on structured management practices, which is farther from the frontier (0.615 in the United States). This average, however, masks the wide...

Using the management and operational practices survey in the Russian Federation, this paper finds that an average Russian manufacturing firm adopts 43 percent of the structured management practices (a score of 0.43), a value that is far from the frontier (for example, the United States scores...

Trade and participation in global value chains can play a key role in economic diversification and development. This paper deepens the discussion about productivity growth and upgrading in agriculture in Africa, and the role of national, regional, and international value chains in supporting...

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses worldwide with a focus on developing countries. The results are based on a novel data set collected by the World Bank Group and several partner institutions in 51 countries covering...