Using a comprehensive database of firms in Western and Eastern Europe, the authors study how the business environment in a country drives the creation of new firms. They focus on regulations governing entry, although they also examine the effects of a developed financial sector, a well-trained...

This paper uses cross-section data for 107 countries to explore the relationship between gender inequality and economic growth. The paper departs from the literature by using a broad measure of gender inequality that goes well beyond gender inequality in education, which has been the focus of...

This paper uses student answers to publicly released questions from an international testing agency together with statistical methods from Item Response Theory to place secondary students from two Indian states -Orissa and Rajasthan -on a worldwide distribution of mathematics achievement. These...

The authors use comparable micro level panel data for 14 countries and a set of identically specified empirical models to investigate the relationship between exports and productivity. The overall results are in line with the big picture that is by now familiar from the literature: Exporters are...

The authors present the first comparable dynamic panel estimates of labor demand elasticity, using data from Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. They examine the benefits, and limits of the Arellano, and Bond GMM in differences estimator, and the Blundell, and Bond GMM system estimator. They also...

Explicit deposit insurance has been spreading rapidly in recent years, even to countries not advanced in financial and institutional development. Economic theory indicates that deposit insurance design features interact--for good or ill--with country-specific elements of the financial and...