Violent conflict between nomadic herders and settled—mostly agricultural—communities in Nigeria occurs as both groups clash over the use of land and resources, in part, due to a changing climate. This...
This paper considers the political influence of private firms. While such influence is frequently discussed, there is limited analysis of how firms combine political interactions, and under what conditions...
To what extent are personal trust, mutual interests, and third parties important in enforcing agreements to trade? How do firms combine these to form transactional governance structures? This paper answers...
Informal business activity is ubiquitous around the world, but it is nearly always uncaptured by administrative data, registries, or commercial sources. For this reason, there are rarely adequate sampling...
Total factor productivity is a key element of economic growth and an important performance metric for policy makers. This note describes the methodology for measuring firm-level total factor productivity...
New representative survey data for Harare, Zimbabwe are used to analyze the conditions under which informal businesses encounter requests for bribes. A simple model develops basic expectations of bribe...
Turkey’s pace of income convergence has globally been one of the most remarkable of the past fifteen years. Sustaining growth and improvements in living standards in Turkey will require higher productivity...
An expanding body of literature has shown that better management practices can offer significant boosts to firms' productivity; this research illustrates that firms in South America are no exception. Using...
This note summarizes findings from a new paper, which lays out a methodology to determine the types of mechanisms, be they the legal system, civil organizations, or shared business interest, that firms...
To what extent do firms use trust, law, and third-parties to ensure fulfillment of agreements to transact? How do they combine these mechanisms to form transactional governance structures? How do answers...
This paper presents new evidence that cronyism reduces long-term economic growth by discouraging firms' innovation activities. The analysis is based on novel establishment survey data from The Arab Republic...
This paper details the results from the first comprehensive survey of private firms across major urban areas in the Syrian Arab Republic -- including Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Latakia, and Damascus -- since...
Payroll taxes in Sweden were reduced substantially for people ages 26 years or younger on July 1, 2007. The objective of this tax cut was to lower youth unemployment. The question of how gains from payroll...
Creating productive jobs is one of the greatest challenges in Ghana. This paper looks at job creation and its relationship with firm productivity and the quality of jobs among registered firms in the Ghanaian...
The subject of which firms are the key employers—and which of these create or destroy jobs at a faster rate—is eminently important for academics and policy makers. The relative importance of small versus...
This paper uses a unique data set of panel firms from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys in 47 economies, to provide estimates of the patterns of firm exit, and analyzes various firm characteristics and...