World trade contracted dramatically during the global economic crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Disruptions in international supply chains were widely reported as governments imposed containment measures (lockdowns) to halt the spread of the disease. At the same time, demand declined as...

While expanding public investment can help filling infrastructure bottlenecks, scaling up too much and too fast often leads to inefficient outcomes. This paper rationalizes this outcome looking at the association between cost inflation and public investment in a large sample of road construction...

Despite starting as one of the poorest countries in the mid-1980s, Vietnam has achieved rapid developmental progress, reaching lower middle-income status in 2010. In line with rapid economic growth, Vietnam has achieved impressive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during...

This brief paper accompanies the Green Energy and Jobs tool, which is a simple excel-based tool to estimate the job-creation potential of greening the electricity sector. Specifically, it calculates the net job gains or losses from increasing the level of energy efficiency, and from increasing...

We provide broad-based evidence of a firm size premium of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in Europe after the Global Financial Crisis. The TFP growth of smaller firms was more adversely affected and diverged from their larger counterparts after the crisis. The impact was progressively...

We study the role of financial frictions in explaining the sharp and persistent productivity growthslowdown in advanced economies after the 2008 global financial crisis. Using a rich cross-country,firm-level data set and exploiting quasi-experimental variation in firm-level exposure to the...

We may be on the cusp of a 'second industrial revolution' based on advances in artificialintelligence and robotics. We analyze the implications for inequality and output, usinga model with two assumptions: 'robot' capital is distinct from traditional capital in itsdegree of substitutability with...

It takes many years for more efficient electronic payments to be widely used, and the fees thatmerchants (consumers) pay for using those services are increasing (decreasing) over time. Weaddress these puzzles by studying payments system evolution with a dynamic model in a twosidedmarket setting....

How important is foreign knowledge for domestic innovation outcomes? How is this relation shaped by globalization and the attendant intensification of international competition? Our empirical approach extends the previous literature by analyzing a large panel comprising industries in both...

The latest advancement in financial technology has posed unprecedented challenges for incumbent banks. This paper analyzes the implications of these challenges on bank competitveness, and explores the factors that could support digital advancement in banks. The analysis shows that the...