Modern smartphones come with high computing power, a variety of sensors and customization abilities that allow creation of a range of practical applications (apps). These features, coupled with the mobility and accessibility in terms of cost that smartphones offer, make them a potential...

The accumulation of personal wealth, stemming from ownership and control of assets, plays a critical role in advancing women's and men's economic opportunities. Yet, it is an understudied dimension of inequality across the developing world. To study individual-level wealth inequality and gender...

Using geo-coded, firm-level data on more than 51,000 establishments in 649 metropolitan areas in 98 developing economies, from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys and a new global database on city-level mobility and congestion, this paper estimates the "pure" firm productivity gains of urban...

Institutional weaknesses limit the capacity of local governments to support efficient urbanization in developing countries. They also lead to the emergence of large developers with the clout to build entire cities. This paper analyzes the urbanization process when local governments are weak and...

Public debt in developing economies rose at a fast clip during 2020-21, at least partly due to the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman opined in early 2021 that "fighting covid is like fighting a war." This paper argues that the Covid-19 pandemic shares many traits...

Air pollution is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, especially affecting poorer people who tend to be more exposed and vulnerable. This study contributes (i) updated global exposure estimates for the World Health Organizations's 2021 revised fine particulate matter (PM2.5) thresholds,...

Developing countries face a major challenge of decarbonizing their light-duty vehicle fleet and transitioning to the broad use of electric vehicles. However, there is little evidence on which policies can most effectively facilitate that transition in these countries, distinguished by relatively...

This study examines how firms have made strategic choices and performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the organizational resources and strategic change literature, it uses World Bank Enterprise Surveys and the COVID-19 Follow-up Enterprise Surveys to examine how different endowments...

The 2015 Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) concluded that El Salvador was "trapped" in vicious cycles of low poverty reduction and growth and argued for a "big push" in six priority areas. Three mutually reinforcing cycles hampered growth and shared prosperity: (i) low growth and violence,...

Global value chains (GVCs) have driven dramatic expansions in trade, productivity, and economic growth in developing countries over the past three decades. Reshaping Global Value Chains in Light of COVID-19: Implications for Trade and Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries examines the...

Despite a vast literature documenting the negative effects of climate change on various socio-economic outcomes, little, if any, evidence exists on the global impacts of hotter temperature on poverty. Analyzing a new global dataset of subnational poverty in 166 countries, we find higher...

This paper offers an overview toward assessing the implementation of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) or Republic Act 8435, the country's landmark legislation on the sustainable and equitable development of its agriculture and fisheries. The study presents a Theory of...

A great deal of the foreign aid-growth literature finds that the net effect of aggregate aid on total growth appears to be insignificant. This study argues that this aid-growth nexus can be better explained by testing the variation responses for each of growth sectors to their corresponding...

This study aims to assess the effect of financial inclusion and competitiveness on banks’ financial stability, considering the moderating role of financial regulation. To do so, we compare the effects of these variables in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) and Latin American and Caribbean (LAC)...

This study proposes a model to explain the effect of digital capabilities on firm performance in the "new normal" context from a firm-level perspective. Moreover, it analyzes the mediating role of technological capabilities and the Human Development Index (HDI) in explaining firm performance....

Modern smartphones come with high computing power, a variety of sensors and customization abilities that allow creation of a range of practical applications (apps). These features, coupled with the mobility and accessibility in terms of cost that smartphones offer, make them a potential...

This paper seeks to evaluate whether there is any impact on aid effectiveness when there is a different gender composition of parliaments in recipient countries. The sample observed refers to 40 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2007-2019. The findings gained demonstrate that a...

This paper examines whether and how climatic shocks influence individual migration decisions. The authors use census microdata across 64 countries over the period 1960 to 2012, covering 442 million individual records, combined with geo-referenced temperature and precipitation data summarized for...

Economics literature suggests that, even in the absence of fiscal costs, a persistently high and increasing public debt ratio may have a detrimental effect on long run economic growth in an economy that is not over-accumulating capital like Finland today. High public debt creates expectations...

This paper examines the effects of country-level governance—such as voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption—on the capital structure and investment financing decisions of firms. The full sample...

This paper reviews the current state of literature on the impacts of urbanisation on rural development in developing countries, with an emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Assessments of these effects diverge greatly. While some authors see urbanisation as strongly benefitting rural areas, for...

Ocean conservation and sustainable use cannot be pursued or achieved without consideration of the planetary impacts of climate change, and particularly the role of the oceans in both mitigation and adaptation. For this reason, the international community has increasingly committed to providing...

This DIIS Working Paper provides a broad overview of the Great Green Wall initiative to draw out lessons learnt from the first half of the programme. Overall, the authors find it unrealistic for the Great Green Wall to significantly alter root causes of migration and conflict in the Sahel region...

Objective: The objective of this article is to examine the role of democracy in strengthening the resilience of developing economies in the face of exogenous negative external shocks. Research Design & Methods: To achieve our research objectives, we used the duration model to estimate how...

In many high-income economies, the recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented declines in women's employment. We examine how the forces that underlie this observation play out in developing countries, with a specific focus on Nigeria, the most populous country in...

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) on the development of African stock exchanges. The study examined a panel of 11 African stock exchanges for the period 2008-2017 and employed the generalised method of moments (GMM) to...

One of the focuses of recent literature has been the macroeconomic effects of macroprudential policy instruments. The innovation of this paper is that it studies the effects of transparent macro-prudential policies on price stability. The results presented herein provide the first empirical...

This study explores the effect of regulatory governance on financial stability using cross-sectional data from 55 countries. The findings show that regulatory governance and various subcomponents of regulatory governance are positively correlated with financial stability in the selected...

Employing propensity score reweighting and event-based strategies, we provide evidence that sustained real exchange rate (RER) misalignments have significant effects on economic development: positive on GDP per capita and capital stock in the case of undervaluation, and negative on the capital...

Sustainable development is a priority to the United Nations. Moreover, investment managers consider environmental, social and governance score as an important variable in portfolios selection. The fifth goal in the 2030 Agenda is gender equality. Besides, European countries have established...

The outbreak of COVID-19 brought back to the forefront the crucial importance of structural change and productive development for economic resilience to economic shocks. Several recent contributions have already stressed the perverse relationship that may exist between productive backwardness...

Does financial development shield countries from the pass-through of financial shocks to real outcomes? We evaluate this question by characterising the probability density of expected GDP growth conditional on financial stability indicators in a panel of 28 countries. Our robust results unveil a...

Drawing on a comprehensive panel data of 137 low income and developing countries, this study queries the macro-economic drivers of Public Private Partnership (PPP) in these countries. PPP is mainly used as a method to address infrastructure needs of nation states which cannot allocate their...

International remittances by immigrants to their home countries is key in the funding development in migrant-sending countries. This study investigates the combined impact of international remittance inflows and financial inclusion on economic growth using a sample of 60 low- and middle-income...