This book aims to fill that gap by using extensive and new firm-level data. It provides an alternative, albeit complementary, approach to previous studies of the determinants of the region's growth performance, which are mostly based on cross-country regressions using aggregate data. This book...

In most developing and industrial countries, infrastructure services have traditionally been provided by government enterprises, but in developing countries at least, these enterprises have often proven to be inefficient, unable to provide much-needed investments, and manipulated to achieve...

This book conducts a micro-level analysis of various determinants of infrastructure sector performance that affect development. This book focuses on the distribution segment of three basic infrastructure services: electricity, water and sanitation, and fixed telecommunications. This books aims...

This report focuses not only on the gaps facing Latin America in both education and technology, but especially on the interactions between the two. The central premise of the report is that skills and technology interact in important ways, and this relationship is a fundamental reason for the...

This book argues for the urgent need for countries to move forward aggressively on adopting and upgrading quality and standards. The focus is on developing countries, many of which are lagging in the race for standards adoption, and within that category, on middle-income countries. The book...

As numerous countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere are moving toward a second phase of private participation in infrastructure programs mostly through public-private partnership schemes and other countries are just beginning the process, several concerns remain from the...

Beyond the terrible toll in human lives and suffering, the Ebola epidemic currently afflicting West Africa is already having a measurable economic impact in terms of forgone output; higher fiscal deficits; rising prices; lower real household incomes and greater poverty. These economic impacts...

International Debt Statistics (IDS) 2015 is a continuation of the World Bank’s Global Development Finance publication, Volume II (1997 through 2009) and the earlier World Debt Tables (1973 through 1996). IDS 2015 provides statistical tables showing the external debt of 128 developing countries...

In 2013, the World Bank Group adopted two new goals to guide its work: ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. More specifically, the goals are to reduce extreme poverty in the world to less than 3 percent by 2030, and to foster income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the...