World Bank Group client governments as well as donors often ask about the effects of business entry reforms and the persistence of those effects. Four clear findings emerge from existing research. First, more firms enter the market when registration procedures and costs are cut. Second, a large...

This paper uses mirror statistics and research in the field to estimate the magnitude of Tunisia's informal trade with Libya and Algeria. The aim is to assess the scale of this trade and to evaluate the amount lost in taxes and duties as a result as well as to assess the local impact in terms of...

When seeking a public service, users may be required to pay in bribes more than the official price. Consequently, some users may be discouraged and choose not to seek a service due to the higher price imposed by the bribery "tax." This paper explores the price and quantity components of the...

The Sustainable Development Goal agenda lays out an ambitious set of 231 indicators to track progress. Countries continue to fall short in terms of reporting on the indicators in general, and this is particularly the case for the subset of 50 gender-related indicators, where countries reported...

Men die at higher rates in nearly all places and at all ages beyond age 45. Using World Health Organization excess mortality estimates by sex and age groups for 75 countries in 2020 and 62 countries in 2021, this paper analyzes how patterns of excess mortality varied by sex and age groups across...

The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this...

Despite the importance of agriculture to economic development, and a vast accompanying literature on the subject, little research has been done on the quality of the underlying data. Due to survey logistics, agricultural data are usually collected by asking respondents to recall the details of...

Although reproductive health advocates consider family planning programs the intervention of choice to reduce fertility, there remains a great deal of skepticism among economists as to their effectiveness, despite little rigorous evidence to support either position. This study explores the...

Labor market statistics are critical for assessing and understanding economic development. In practice, widespread variation exists in how labor statistics are measured in household surveys in low-income countries. Little is known whether these differences have an effect on the labor statistics...

This study explores to what extent migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in Tanzania. Using a thirteen-year panel survey, we find that migration between 1991 and 2004 added 36 percentage points to consumption growth. Although moving out of agriculture resulted in...