Welcome to this month’s World Bank Research E-Newsletter, a monthly summary of research conducted by our department.
This month we hosted a conference close to my own area of research: Finance and Development: The Unfinished Agenda. In the opening panel discussion, I argued that services provided by the financial sector exert a first-order impact on growth, which makes new research in this area of central importance. The conference brought together an array of new thinking and insights, ranging from the impact of collateral laws on lending to the role of credit markets in women’s participation in the labor market. Many of the presentations from the conference can be found online.
We also continued our Policy Research Talk series with a discussion of Policies for SME Growth: What Works, What Doesn’t? SMEs employ about half of the workforce in developing countries. Boosting SME growth could translate directly into higher earnings for low-income households. While the World Bank and other development partners have invested heavily in supporting SMEs, until recently the evidence on what works and what doesn’t has been thin. In this talk, Senior Economist Miriam Bruhn presented evidence from Mexico, Georgia, Bosnia and elsewhere on effective policies in the areas of regulation, access to finance, and business practices.
This month’s newsletter focuses on the theme of trade and globalization. Recent papers on trade and globalization examine topics such as migration decisions and transit paths; the economic consequences of the trade slowdown; the impact of a trade facilitation reform; and the domestic value added in Chinese exports.
Enjoy!
—Asli
