Policy makers have long used investing in public infrastructure as a means of reducing geographical disparities and promoting growth. The goal of this paper is to provide insights to development practitioners on designing interventions to maximize the development impact of infrastructure. For...

Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and through the more recent Asian Crisis of 1997 and Great Recession of 2008/09, governments have experimented with Keynesian style fiscal stimulus to support employment and accelerate economic recovery. The effectiveness of these policies depends on the...

This paper takes stock of the literature on infrastructure and jobs published since the early 2000s, using a conceptual framework to identify the key channels through which different types of infrastructure impact jobs. Where relevant, it highlights the different approaches and findings in the...

Evidence of public expenditure on infrastructure is extremely sparse. Little is known about the trends and patterns of infrastructure expenditure, and there is no real basis for assessing the adequacy and efficiency of infrastructure spending. Drawing on the World Bank's novel BOOST database,...

India has attained much economic success in the past three decades. Yet an economic deceleration in recent years has generated worried commentaries about the country's growth outlook. This paper offers a long-term perspective on India's growth experience. Analyzing the past five decades of data,...

India has attained much economic success in the past three decades. Yet an economic deceleration in recent years has generated worried commentaries about the country's growth outlook. This paper offers a long-term perspective on India's growth experience. Analyzing the past five decades of data,...

We look at a part of the spatial angle of economic growth. We introduce a new measure Spatial Population Concentration (SPC) that captures the weighted average population surrounding every person within a geographic area. The weights are a function of the distance between the person in question...

This study documents how the demographics of new infections and mortality changed over time across US counties. We find that counties with a larger population share aged above 60 were hit harder initially in terms of both cases and mortality in March and April while counties with a larger...

Can the selective opening of bank branches and the timing of public bank branch openings turn into a political opportunity? This issue is present in many countries where public-sector banking exists. I explore this question through the lens of Türkiye by studying the effect of political...