The study reviews the performance of four transition countries - Albania, Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Moldova - in the areas of private, and financial sector development, identifying both their achievements, and challenges, to extract beneficial reform efforts, and alternative...

Many of the distortions in poorly performing economies do not originate in the banking sector, but where state banks still control a large share of the resources in the banking system, they continue to pose a risk to macroeconomic and fiscal stability. State banks are typically vehicles for...

Many of the distortions in poorly performing economies do not originate in the banking sector, but where state banks still control a large share of the resources in the banking system, they continue to pose a risk to macroeconomic and fiscal stability. State banks are typically vehicles for...

This paper introduces a large new cross-country database on political institutions: the Database on Political Institutions (DPI). The authors summarize key variables (many of them new), compare this data set with others, and explore the range of issues for which the data should prove invaluable....

This paper assesses the effect of institutional quality on research and development (R&D) expenditures in developing countries. The paper finds that the risk of expropriation and the rule of law are correlated with R&D expenditures. Since both institutional variables increase as institutional...

In recent years, foreign bank participation has increased tremendously in several developing countries. In Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, for example, more than fifty percent of banking assets are now in foreign-controlled banks. In Asia, Africa, The Middle East, and...

In 1989 the government of Guinea enacted far-reaching reform of its water sector, which had been dominated by a poorly run public agency. The government signed a lease contract for operations and maintenance with a private operator, making a separate public enterprise responsible for ownershipof...

Although theoretical models make distinct predictions about the relationship between financial sector development and income inequality, little empirical research has been conducted to compare their relative explanatory power. The authors examine the relation between financial intermediary...

Infrastructure industries-including telecommunications, electricity, water, and gas-underwent massive structural changes in the 1990s. During that decade, hundreds of privatization transactions valued at billions of dollars were completed in these sectors in developing and transition economies....