Using a unique dataset comprising information for (up to) 153 firms in the machine building sector in Belarus, we investigate the determinants of firm growth for an economy where state ownership of enterprises is widespread. We use panel data models based on generalizations of Gibrat’s law,...

This paper builds on the analysis of job creation developed in World Bank (2013) to provide an empirical investigation of the industry and firm-specific determinants of the job creation process in eleven new European Union (EU11) economies. It relies on the Amadeus dataset of firms during...

This report studies impediments to investment and private sector development in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro. It aims to yield fundamentally new insights for improving the region's...

This paper uses model averaging techniques to identify robust predictors of sovereign default episodes on a pooled database for 46 emerging economies over the period 1980-2004. Sovereign default episodes are defined according to Standard & Poor s or by non-concessional International Monetary...

The empirical literature on the relationship between natural disaster risk and investment in education is inconclusive. Model averaging methods in a framework of cross-country and panel regressions show an extremely robust negative partial correlation between secondary school enrollment and...

The author assesses empirically the relationship between natural disaster risk and investment in education. Although the results in the empirical literature tend to be inconclusive, using model averaging methods in the framework of cross-country and panel regressions, this paper finds an...

The empirical literature on the relationship between natural disaster risk and investment in education is inconclusive. Model averaging methods in a framework of cross-country and panel regressions show an extremely robust negative partial correlation between secondary school enrollment and...

This paper investigates the drivers of growth and prosperity in a group of eleven European countries -- Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia (the EU11). Since the EU11 began the transformation process, this group of...