The paper examines the ways in which recent economic growth has been uneven in China and India and what this has meant for inequality and poverty. Drawing on analyses based on existing household survey data and aggregate data from official sources, the authors show that growth has indeed been...

The 2009 global recession demonstrated, once again, the importance of crisis prevention as well as the critical need for preserving policy room so that emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) can act when their economies are hit by shocks. And now, with the global growth outlook still...

This paper presents new evidence on the patterns of cyclicality in the fiscal policy stance of developing and industrialized countries over a period of more than three decades covering 180 countries during 1980?2012. First, the paper considers issues of robustness in the choice of the proxy for...

Since the 2008-09 global financial crises, interest among policy makers in promoting innovative, ventures has exploded. The emerging great hubs of entrepreneurial activity, like Bangalore, Dubai, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Tel Aviv, bear the unmistakable stamp of the public sector....

This paper analyzes and reconciles macro and micro evidence on savings and factors that affect savings, as well as possible policy implications. At the aggregate level, the main question is how savings are affected by growth and macroeconomic policies and variables (fiscal policy, exchange rate,...

The paper analyzes the impact of the recent global crisis in the context of the previous two decades' growth and capital flows. Growth decomposition exercises show that Egyptian growth is driven mostly by capital accumulation. To estimate the share of labor in national income, the analysis...

Active economic policies by developing countries? governments to promote growth and industrialization have generally been viewed with suspicion by economists, and for good reasons: past experiences show that such policies have too often failed to achieve their stated objectives. But the...

This paper discusses the theory that less politics makes better economics. It argues that this perspective on politics misrepresents the dynamics of policymaking in developing countries and is seriously limited in its ability to explain how policy changes come about or how policies are chosen...

The authors estimate the effect on business start-ups of a program that significantly speeds up firm registration procedures. The program was implemented in Mexico in different municipalities at different dates. Authors estimates suggest that new start-ups increased by about 4 percent in...

What policies encourage firms to become formal? The standard approach emphasizes reducing the costs of compliance with government regulation. This is unlikely to be sufficient. Instead we need to understand compliance as a function not only of firm-level costs and benefits but also in terms of...