The World Trade Indicators (WTI) database and ranking tool cover country level indicators of trade performance and policies and institutions that affect trade. The purpose of this initiative by the World Bank is to benchmark progress in these areas while highlighting important data gaps. The...

This country assitance evaluation assesses the development effectiveness of World Bank assistance to India during the 1990s. The Bank has been India's largest source of external long-term capital and has financed a sizable share of its public investment. Its lending and nonlending services have...

The Country Assistance Evaluation (CAE) for Russia, covering the period 1992-2001, showed disappointing, but improving results for the Bank's activities in the Russian Federation. Despite unsatisfactory ratings during 1992-98, with only modest institutional development impacts, the Operations...

Governments play a very important role in supporting innovation, managing the disruptive effects of innovation, and ensuring that the benefits of innovation are broadly shared in the long run. This paper reviews the literature on market mechanisms that translate innovation into jobs and policies...

This paper defines institutions, presents their basic characteristics, and discusses forces for institutional change. It draws on a wealth of research and study by scholars in different fields and follows from the flagship 2002 World Development Report on this topic, including relevant new...

Contents of the report are: Overview : from media markets to policy; by Roumeen Islam. The media's influence on public policy decisions; by David Stromberg, and James M. Snyder Jr. National media and local political participation : the case of the New York Times; by Lisa M. George, and Joel...

This paper provides an overview of the period prior to the recent global crisis, and the policies that were adopted around the world in response to the crisis. It highlights a number of key issues regarding economic and financial policies that governments have faced both globally and nationally....

Good institutional quality (function) and similar institutional design (form) can promote international trade by reducing transactions costs. The authors evaluate the relative importance of function versus form in a gravity model, using an indicator of different legal systems as a proxy for...

Aid is expected to promote better living standards by raising investment and growth. But aid may also affect institutions directly. In theory, these effects may or may not work in the same direction as those on investment. The authors examine the effect of aid on economic institutions and find...

In trying to explain institutional quality, different authors have come to conflicting conclusions. In tackling the problem themselves, the authors show three things. First, openness is positively and pretty robustly associated with institutional quality. To minimize selection bias, the authors...