Using household level data from Bangladesh, this paper examines the differences in the rates of return to household attributes over the entire welfare distribution. The empirical evidence uncovers substantial differences in returns between an integrated region contiguous to the country's main...

The economy of the Philippines is open to trade and capital inflows, and has grown rapidly since 2002. Over the last 10 years, however, domestic investment, while stagnant in real terms, has shrunk as a share of GDP. In an open and growing economy, why the decline? Three reasons explain the...

There exist legal channels for informational lobbying of U.S. policymakers by foreign principals. Foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues. This paper empirically studies whether such lobbying...

Asymmetric auctions are among the most rapidly growing areas in the auction literature. The potential benefits from improved auction efficiency are expected to be enormous in public procurement auctions related to official development projects. Entrant bidders are considered a key to enhance...

Subnational insolvency is a reoccurring event in development, as demonstrated by historical and modern episodes of subnational defaults in both developed and developing countries. Insolvency procedures become more important as countries decentralize expenditure, taxation, and borrowing, and...

There is a fundamental shift taking place in the world economy to which the multilateral trading system has failed to adapt. The Doha process focused on issues of limited significance while the burning issues of the day were not even on the negotiating agenda. This paper advances five...

This paper tests the hypothesis that enterprises may forgo formal finance in lieu of informal credit by choice. They do so to avoid the additional regulatory scrutiny and harassment that engaging with the formal financial sector invites. We test this hypothesis using enterprise-level data on...

In spite of the growing concerns about foreign direct investment being diverted from Latin America to China and India, the best available data show that Latin America has performed relatively well since 1997. Foreign capital stocks from OECD countries and the United States in particular in China...

Given that public spending will have a positive impact on GDP if the benefits exceed the marginal cost of public funds, the present paper deals with measuring costs and benefits of public spending. The paper discusses one cost seldom considered in the literature and in policy debates, namely,...

How can countries stimulate and sustain strong export growth? To answer this question, the authors examine 92 episodes of export surges, defined as significant increases in manufacturing export growth that are sustained for at least seven years. They find that export surges in developing...