Cross-country regressions suggest that urbanization and FDI are important drivers of growth. However, it is not clear that primacy eventually hurts growth performance. Since it is tough to interpret cross-country growth regressions, we provide detailed evidence on the determinants of outward FDI...

This joint OECD and World Bank Group report, presented to G20 Trade Ministers in October 2015, focuses on the challenge of making GVCs more “inclusive” by overcoming participation constraints for SMEs and facilitating access for LIDCs. Results suggest that SME participation in GVCs is mostly...

The days when it was thought that the development process could and should be managed by governments alone are long past. The challenge today is how to involve other parts of society such as the private sector and NGOs. This book details the activities of the private sector in developing and...

What are the problems faced by SMEs in OECD countries and developing and transition economies in today’s globalising world? What are the framework conditions that influence SMEs’ incentives and capacities to innovate? What is the optimal role of public policy in consolidating and developing...

This paper uses micro-data from the World Bank Investment Climate Surveys 2002-2006 to investigate how foreign ownership and access to external finance affect the likelihood of manufacturers in emerging markets to export and/or import. Applying propensity score matching to control for...

After a decade of research on the relationship between institutions and growth, scholars in this field seem to be divided. Economic institutions perform well in growth regressions and a body of literature argues that this supports the key importance of institutions for development. Other authors...

We investigate the prevalence and determinants of ethnic favoritism, i.e., preferential public policies targeted at the political leader’s ethnic group. We construct a panel dataset of 2,022 ethnographic regions from 139 countries with annual observations from 1992 to 2012, and use nighttime...

If one cluster increases local competitiveness, can politicians, by interlinking clusters, achieve an even better effect at the state level? To answer this question, the paper analyzes the “Cluster Initiative” introduced in 1999 by the Bavarian State Government. The purpose of the initiative...