"Serrano and Trujillo quantify the evolution of technical efficiency in port infrastructure service provision in the major Spanish port authorities involved in container traffic. They also analyze the extent to which port reforms that took place in the 1990s had an impact on the efficiency of...

World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence container port performance index and underlying data are intended to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement that would benefit all key stakeholders in global trade, including governments, shipping lines, port and terminal operators,...

Maritime transport is the backbone of globalized trade and the manufacturing supply chain, with more than four-fifths of global merchandise trade (by volume) carried by sea. Accordingly, how a maritime port performs is a crucial element in the cost of international trade for a country. Despite...

"Globalization brings opportunities and pressures for domestic firms in emerging markets to innovate and improve their competitive position. Using data on firms in 27 transition economies, the authors test for the effects of globalization through the impact of increased competition and foreign...

"The paper evaluates the effects of privatization in the post-communist economies and China. In post-communist economies privatization to foreign owners results in a rapid improvement in performance of firms, while performance effects of privatization to domestic owners are less impressive and...

"This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The study focuses on competition and market structure, finance and the structure of lending to firms, and...

"Innovation is key to technology adoption and creation, and to explaining the vast differences in productivity across and within countries. Despite the central role of the entrepreneur in the innovation process, data limitations have restricted standard analysis of the determinants of innovation...

"This paper surveys the recent literature which examines the impact of business climate variables on productivity and growth in developing countries using enterprise surveys. Comparable enterprise surveys today cover some 70,000 firms in over 100 countries around the world. The literature that...