Can perceptions data help us understand investment climate constraints facing the private sector? Or do firms simply complain about everything? In this paper, the authors provide a picture of how firms'views on constraints differ across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the World Bank's...

Satisfaction surveys offer a potentially convenient and cost-effective means for measuring the quality of services. However, concerns about subjectivity and selection bias impede greater use of satisfaction data. This paper analyzes satisfaction data about health and educational services from...

This paper seeks to understand whether Mauritanian firms deem corruption as an obstacle to operate and grow, to identify the profile of firms that are more likely to make informal payments, and to quantify the size of these payments. The results of the analysis show that perceptions of...

Countries are increasingly being ranked by some new"mashup index of development,"defined as a composite index for which existing theory and practice provides little or no guidance to its design. Thus the index has an unusually large number of moving parts, which the producer is essentially free...

This paper surveys 11 international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution, and the elderly. Although it focuses on OECD economies, some 44 countries are covered. The paper addresses a series of questions. What level are the incomes of the elderly relative to the population as a...

The paper is intended to provide an orientation to the past and present work of the Social Development network and a contribution to its future strategy. It presents a brief overview of the history of the Social Development network or family; it illustrates both continuity and change in the way...

The authors use panel data on the number of new firm registrations in 95 countries to study the impact of the business environment and 2008 financial crisis on new firm registration. The data show that more dynamic formal business creation occurs in countries that provide entrepreneurswith a...

In Localizing Development, Mansuri and Rao survey theory and evidence for development strategies based on local community empowerment. This note extends their theoretical argument by focusing on local government as a vital source of new leadership. Local leaders who provide better public service...

Using a data-driven empirical case study method, the paper evaluates the impact of one identified reform program on development outcomes. The paper uses the World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment Ratings to identify large scale structural and macro-level policy interventions in...

This paper examines whether natural resource dependence has a negative influence on various indicators of institutional quality when controlling for the potential effects of other geographic, economic and cultural initial conditions. Analysis of a panel of countries from 1996 to 2010 indicates...