We use bank level data to study the efficiency of banks in Sub-Saharan African middle-income countries and provide possible explanations for the difference in the efficiency levels of banks. We find that banks, on average, could save 20-30 percent of their total costs if they were operating...

Current estimates of global poverty vary substantially across studies. In this paper we undertake a novel sensitivity analysis to highlight the importance of methodological choices in estimating global poverty. We measure global poverty using different data sources, parametric and nonparametric...

We combine some newly developed panel co-integration techniques and common factor analysis to analyze the behavior of the real exchange rate (RER) in a sample of 64 developing countries. We study the dynamic of the RER with its economic fundamentals: productivity, the terms of trade, openness,...

A well-functioning public expenditure management (PEM) system is considered a critical pillar of government efficiency, on par with a low-distortion tax system and efficient tax administration. The paper discusses PEM systems in developing countries using an analytical framework based on...

Using panel data from 120 developing countries from 1975 to 2000, this paper explores the direct and indirect channels linking social spending, human capital, and growth in a system of equations. The paper finds that both education and health spending have a positive and significant direct...

This paper examines the effects of IMF financial assistance on economic governance in developing countries, based on panel data analyses of perceived governance indicators. It uses a two-stage approach to address possible endogeneity issues. The results show that successful implementation of IMF...

In this paper, we focus on the connections between creativity, social capital and economic performance and growth. Our working hypothesis is that both creativity and social capital influences the economy, both each per se, but also through their influence on each other. We regard creativity as...

We assess the impact of the location of genuinely new ventures and spinoffs on these firms’ survival, productivity and growth. The study distinguishes between four different categories of locations: metro cities, metro regions, urban areas, and rural areas. Using a unique database covering...

A longstanding research tradition assumes that endogenous technological development increases regional productivity. It has been assumed that measures of regional patenting activity or human capital are an adequate way to capture the endogenous creation of new ideas that result in productivity...