Poor management has long been suspected as a major constraint on job creation in the manufacturing sector in low-income countries. In this sector, countless micro and small enterprises in industrial clusters account for a large share of employment. This paper examines the roles of industrial...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, there has been an increased interest in the role of small and medium enterprises in job creation and economic growth. However the lack of consistent indicators at the country level restricts extensive cross-country analyses of lending...

This paper presents evidence on implementation of the World Bank Group and Financial Sector Reform and Strengthening Initiative "Principles for Public Credit Guarantee Schemes for Small and Medium Enterprises" . The evidence is based on a self-assessment of 60 schemes in 54 countries. Overall,...

Joseph Schumpeter argued in 1911 that the services provided by financial intermediaries - mobilizing savings, evaluating projects, managing risk, monitoring managers, and facilitating transactions -stimulate technological innovation and economic development. The authors present evidence that...

A large literature documents the positive influence of a city's skill structure on its rate of economic growth. By contrast, the effect of a city's age structure on its economic growth has been a hitherto largely neglected area of research. This paper hypothesizes that cities with more...

Although emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) weathered the global recession a decade ago relatively well, they now appear less well placed to cope with the substantial downside risks facing the global economy. In many EMDEs, the room for monetary and fiscal policies to respond to...

This paper revisits the relationship between energy intensity and economic growth, using a flexible piecewise linear regression model. Based on a panel data set of 137 economies during 1990-2014, the analysis identifies a threshold effect of income growth on energy intensity change: although...

This paper surveys the literature to document the main stylized facts, risks, and policy challenges related to the expansion of global nonfinancial corporate debt after the 2008–09 global financial crisis. Nonfinancial corporate debt steadily increased after the crisis, especially in emerging...

Students around the world are going to school but are not learning -- an emerging gap in human capital formation. To understand this gap, this paper introduces a new data set measuring learning in 164 countries and territories. The data cover 98 percent of the world's population from 2000 to...