This study is the first to explore the short-run impact of armed conflict on firms' performance and their perceptions of the business environment. We focus on the August 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia and use the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey data before and...

The success of an economy depends largely on how successful it is in allocating inputs and outputs across businesses efficiently with minimum disruption and frictions. Market institutions that impact this allocation potentially account for productivity differences across countries. Existing...

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. Their average scores are below emerging countries such as Brazil, China and...

We investigate whether management quality explains firm performance in Russia. We find that it explains relatively little in terms of firm performance, but it does explain some of the differences between firms in Russia’s Far East and the rest of Russia. While management practices may not yet...

Somewhat surprisingly, cross-country empirical evidence (at least in the cross section) does not seem to support the predictions of standard models that economies with stricter regulations on hiring and firing should have a lower pace of job reallocation. One problem in exploring these issues...

Tanzania has just entered a phase of growing dependency rates that will put pressure on job creation so that the larger number of dependents do not fall into poverty. However, the new millions of jobs that will be needed in the next decade is only part of the challenge. It is important to create...

Over the last several years, the Ethiopian government has committed substantial resources for the expansion of public services and infrastructure in rural areas. To what extent do these investments and services reach different social and economic groups in rural areas? This paper applies a...

This report is the second in a series of studies on transport and aid effectiveness in Sub-Saharan Africa. It follows a study on transport costs and prices along the main international trade corridors (Teravaninthorn and Raballand 2008). One of the principal findings of the research on...