This report shows that in MENA, policies that lower competition and create an unleveled playing field abound and constrain private sector job creation. These policies take different forms across countries and sectors but share several common features: they limit free-entry in the domestic...

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, when thousands of young women and men fought for the opportunity to realize their aspirations and potential, the question of jobs continues to be crucial in the Middle East and North Africa region. This report uses jobs as a lens to weave together the complex...

Serbia spends relatively large amounts on state aid programs, many of which will have to be phased out or restructured to comply with EU laws. There is room to restructure the existing programs to target activities that have more growth and job dividends; for example, by targeting startups and...

This paper uses a unique firm-level data set for Mexico, with information never used for research before, to assess how use of information technology (IT henceforth) influences firm performance. Further, the paper explores if, in the context of increasing competition from China, this effect is...

Beyond its environmental damage, climate change is predicted to produce significant economic costs. Combining novel high-frequency geospatial temperature data from satellites with measures of economic activity for the universe of US listed firms, this article examines a potentially important...

This paper uses a unique data set that captures the elimination of subnational regulatory barriers to firm entry and competition across 1,800 municipalities and matches it with establishment census panel data to estimate the impact on establishment productivity and markups. The elimination of...

Bangladesh has made notable developmental progress over the past two decades. Economic growth has been among the top 10 percent globally, and poverty has been reduced by 80 percent over the same period. Exports also saw a dramatic jump from US 6.5 billion dollars in 2000 to US 57.5 billion...

This paper assesses the impact of favoritism in public procurement on private sector productivity growth. To this end, it combines three novel microeconomic data sets: administrative data on firms, including more than 4 million firm-year observations and rich financial and ownership information;...

Are firms adapting to climate change? This paper studies this question by combining geocoded World Bank Enterprise Survey data with spatially granular weather data to estimate temperature response functions for nearly 160,000 firms in 134 countries over a 15-year period. Our results show that...

The European Commission's "NextGenerationEU" COVID-19 recovery package has underscored interest in the size of regional fiscal multipliers in Europe. While the objective of these funds is the long-term transformation toward more sustainable green growth and digitalization in EU economies,...