Urban areas tend to have much more productive labor and higher salaries than rural areas, and there are vast differences across urban areas. Areas with high salaries and high productivity tend to have employers that invest in much more research and development than areas with low salaries and...

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...

This paper reviews the determinants of Latin America's uneven growth based on an accounting decomposition that breaks down countries' growth (relative to the world) into three trade-related channels: (i) an export pull measuring the traction exerted by the country's exports, (ii) an external...

The growth of India's manufacturing sector since 1991 has been attributed mostly to trade liberalization and more permissive industrial licensing. This paper demonstrates thesignificant impact of a neglected factor: India's policy reforms in services. The authors examine the link between those...

In this report the authors analyze the CMEA trading relationship using the standard concepts of 1) specialization in accord with comparative advantage, and 2) the incentives to resist trade liberalization because of rents accruing to industry specific factors of production (including job...

This paper examines the impacts of U.S.-China trade tensions via the lens of East Asian stock markets. Studying 10 indices of the main East Asian stock markets, it finds that announcements of "trade war" escalation translated into 50 to 60 percent of the total declines in two major Chinese stock...

This study intends to increase understanding of how different types of mobile money services have developed in different environments. For this purpose, two countries were selected, the Republic of Korea and Uganda. From these study cases, some conclusions emerge. The development of mobile...

This paper reviews the literature relevant to understanding political constraints to economic reforms. Reform refers to changes in government policies or institutional rules because status quo policies and institutions are not working well to achieve the goals of economic well-being and...

A unilateral trade reform generates two opposite effects: market access expansion and strengthening of competitive pressures in the liberalized market. Using detailed trade and firm-level data from France, the authors investigate how French firms' product scope and export sales changed after...