Protracted crises in urban contexts of the Middle East and North Africa region present a growing challenge for water supply and sanitation (WSS) service providers and, in turn, the governments and international organizations that support them. The protracted nature of crisis in countries...

This paper provides one of the first comprehensive and most updated studies on the effects of firms’ organizational resources, country institutions, and national culture on the survival and growth of private firms around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzing World Bank Enterprise...

The paper uses a new country-level, panel data set to study the effect of public sector wages on corruption. The results show that wage inequality in the public sector is an important determinant of the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies. Increasing the wages of public officials could...

Drawing on various macro- and micro-data sources, the authors present robust evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between female labor force participation and inequality. Overall, female labor force participation is found to have a strong and significant dis-equalizing impact in at...

Regional trade agreements increasingly include provisions that regulate state-owned enterprises. This paper combines new information on the content of “deep” regional trade agreements and data on Chinese firm-level exports during 2000-11 to analyze the spillover effect of rules on...

Healthcare systems are at the frontline of delivering critical care during emergencies. Yet, already before the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries were struggling to meet even routine demands for health care. Climate change, disasters, pandemics, and demographic changes will increase pressures on...