Many low-income countries contend with a governance syndrome characterized by a difficult combination of seeming openness, weak institutions, and strong inter-elite contestation for power and resources. In such countries, neither broad-based policy nor public management reforms are likely to be...

This paper summarizes the methodology of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project, and related analytical issues. The WGI cover over 200 countries and territories, measuring six dimensions of governance starting in 1996: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of...

This study presents two case studies, each on a current initiative of contracting for primary health services in Brazil, one for the state of Bahia, the other for the city of Rio de Janeiro. The two initiatives are not linked and their implementation has independently sprung from a search for...

This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism,...

This paper describes a simple model of technology adoption which combines the two engines of growth emphasized in the recent growth literature: human capital accumulation and technological progress. Our model economy does not create new technologies, it simply adopts those that have been created...

Economic growth in Denmark in the post-war years has been close to the OECD average. The `golden age' of very high growth was, however, of shorter duration in Denmark than in most other OECD countries. The main emphasis in this paper is on the description of productivity performance in the...

Governance indicators are now widely used as tools for conducting development dialogue, allocating external assistance, and influencing foreign direct investment. This paper argues that available governance indicators are not suitable for these purposes as they do not conceptualize governance...

This paper provides a direct test of the causal link from electoral rules to economic policy. Our theoretical model delivers unambigous predictions on the interaction between institutions and a time varying event, namely the unemployment rate in pivotal and non-pivotal districts. We use local...

Sweden is home to a remarkably large number of prosperous multinationals. We argue that this is partly the result of industrial policies that have been biased in favour of large firms, and partly the result of an institutional setting where regulations and controls have facilitated investment...

In the late 1980s, after decades of poor economic management, many Latin American and Caribbean countries undertook structural reform that placed them on a path toward superior economic performance. The authors examine the experience in structural reform in five areas: governance (reforming...