Ideas to action: independent research for global prosperity
Search
Filters:
Experts
Facet Toggle
Topics
Facet Toggle
Content Type
Facet Toggle
Publication Type
Facet Toggle
Time Frame
Facet Toggle
WORKING PAPERS
April 04, 2024
Star firms, defined as the top 10 percentile of firms in the world in terms of return on invested capital, are more likely to occur in high-income countries and manufacturing industry, but there is an increasing share of star firms from middle-income countries and the services sector. Star firms hav...
WORKING PAPERS
April 02, 2024
Starting in 2001, duty-free access to U.S. markets under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) led to a brief boom in African manufacturing exports, particularly apparel, which then fizzled in the face of unfettered Chinese competition after 2005. The looming expiration of AGOA—and eroding C...
WORKING PAPERS
February 08, 2024
A fracturing of the institutional infrastructure undergirding globalization would harm efforts to cope with urgent national problems and international crises. The imperative for the leading economic powers is to defuse threats to globalization and to promote resilience of global value chains. The fl...
WORKING PAPERS
August 29, 2023
The war in Ukraine was associated with large changes in the prices of key food and fuel commodities in 2022 which produced macroeconomic gains for exporters and losses as import costs increased. Across 49 countries benefitting, these gains averaged about 8 percent of GDP and reach up to 36 percent o...
WORKING PAPERS
July 10, 2020
We highlight a lesser known consequence of China’s growth and integration into the world economy in relation to the United States: the rise of services trade. We demonstrate that the US’s trade deficit in goods cycle back as a surplus in exports of education services. Focusing on China’s accession t...
WORKING PAPERS
March 16, 2018
This paper presents short-term results from an experiment randomizing the promotion and registration of a mobile savings account among women microentrepreneurs in Tanzania, with and without business training. Six months post-intervention, the results show that women save substantially more through t...
WORKING PAPERS
February 05, 2018
Prior research on foreign investment and supply chains in emerging markets has focused almost exclusively on the creation of international networks in manufacturing and assembly. This paper extends that research, looking beyond manufacturing into supply chain creation in horticulture in developing c...
WORKING PAPERS
July 13, 2016
As mobile phone surveys are gaining popularity among researchers and practitioners in international development, one primary challenge is improving survey response and completion rates. A common solution is to provide monetary compensation to respondents. This paper reports on our experience with us...
WORKING PAPERS
May 21, 2015
In rural areas of developing countries, education programs are often implemented through community teachers. While teachers are a crucial part of the education production function, observing their effort remains a challenge for the public sector. This paper tests whether a simple monitoring system, ...