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July 11, 2023

Macroeconomics and Growth

Growth is the essential ingredient for sustained poverty reduction. The Macroeconomics and Growth Research Program focuses on identifying the contribution of policies and institutional changes to the diversity in growth and aggregate economic performance around the world. Studies are organized around three themes: foundations of growth, macroeconomic stability and international finance, and governance and political economy.


FEATURED RESEARCH

Partial view of the Long Term Growth Model book cover. It depicts the Trappen van Strada Reale in Valetta, Malta. 1900-1910

The Long Term Growth Model: Fundamentals, Extensions, and Applications

Policy Research Talk, Mar 21, 2023

Economic growth is the foundation on which social and economic development rests. It helps to create jobs, generate income opportunities, and reduce poverty. In this Policy Research Talk, World Bank economists Norman Loayza and Steven Pennings summarize some of the key findings of the new book The Long Term Growth Model: Fundamentals, Extensions, and Applications.

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Improving the Multilateral Pandemic Response

Policy Research Talk, June 13, 2022

The world is transitioning out of the crisis phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, aided by immunity from vaccination and prior infection. In this Policy Research Talk, World Bank economist Tristan Reed assessed the merit of this criticism, highlighting successes, misunderstandings, and lessons learned about how multilateral institutions can more effectively respond to future public health emergencies of international concern.

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Long-Term Growth in Developing Countries

Policy Research Talk, December 14, 2021

In this Policy Research Talk, World Bank economist Steven Pennings presented the Long-Term Growth Model (LTGM) and a suite of papers and tools with various extensions to simulate and analyze future long-term growth scenarios in developing countries with sufficiently low data requirements, and which can be readily applied to almost every country.

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The Human Capital Index 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19

January 2021

This report updates the Human Capital Index launched in 2018 using health and education data available as of March 2020. It documents new evidence on trends, examples of successes, and analytical work on the utilization of human capital using new data collected before the global onset of COVID-19.

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From Micro to Macro: Using Micro Data to Understand Macroeconomics and Public Policy

e-Seminar, May 7, 2021, Chile Research and Development Center

In this online seminar, Marcela Eslava, Roberto Fattal Jaef, Federico Huneeus provided examples of how firm data can shed light on macroeconomic issues such as growth, inequality, market structure, misallocation of capital, production networks, and productivity.Jose de Gregorio led the discussion. This event was held in Spanish with a focus on Latin America.

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From Micro to Macro: Entry Barriers, Misallocation, and Aggregate Productivity

Policy Research Talk, February 23, 2021

In this talk, World Bank economist Roberto Fattal Jaef discussed the role of distortions in firms’ business environment that reduce competition, innovation, and allocative efficiency.


LATEST WORKING PAPERS

The Internationalization of China’s Equity Markets
Juan J. Cortina, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, Sergio L. Schmukler, Jasmine Xiao
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10513, June 2023

Is the Global Economy Deglobalizing? And If So, Why? And What Is Next?
Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, Tristan Reed
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10392, April 2023

On the Welfare Costs of Premature Deindustrialization
Roberto N. Fattal Jaef
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10344, March 2023

Effective Tax Rates and Firm Size
Pierre Bachas, Anne Brockmeyer, Roel Dom, Camille Semelet
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10312, February 2023

Understanding Home Bias in Procurement : Evidence from National and Subnational Governments
Manuel García-Santana, Marta Santamaría
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10311, February 2023

More Working Papers


LATEST JOURNAL ARTICLES

The Internationalization of China’s Equity Markets
Juan J. Cortina, Maria Soledad Martinez Peria, Sergio L. Schmukler, Jasmine Xiao
IMF Economic Review, 2023

Bilateral international investments: The big sur?
Fernando Broner, Tatiana Didier, Sergio L. Schmukler, Goetz von Peter
Journal of International Economics, 103795, July 2023

Media's Influence on Citizen Demand for Public Goods
Philip Keefer, Stuti Khemani
Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2023

The Importance of Political Selection for Bureaucratic Effectiveness
James Habyarimana, Stuti Khemani, Thiago Scot
Economica, vol. 90, April 2023

Financing vaccine equity: funding for day-zero of the next pandemic
Ruchir AgarwalTristan Reed
Oxford Review of Economic Policy, vol. 38, December 2022

International reserves and central bank independence
Agustin Samano
Journal of International Economics vol. 139, November 2022

Using Individual-Level Randomized Treatment to Learn about Market Structure
Tristan Reed
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics vol. 14, no. 4, October 2022


BOOKS AND REPORTS 

nighttime city view with digital lines connecting buildings and lighted highway
Realizing the Promise of (Partial) Decentralization
Shanta Devarajan, Stuti Khemani, September 2023

A well-established argument, pioneered by Musgrave (1959) and Oates (1972), states that devolving responsibility to sub-national governments leads to better economic and governance outcomes. However, the empirical evidence on this has been mixed. In this chapter, Development Research Group researcher Stuti Khemani identifies two factors missing from this analysis on the impact of decentralisation. This chapter appears in the book "Decentralised Governance: Crafting Effective Democracies Around the World".

Aerial view of Bargny. Inhabitants say in the last couple of decades, the water eroded more than 200 meters of coast.
Strengthening Personal Income Taxation in Senegal - Case Study
Pierre Bachas, Leo Czajka, Aissatou Diallo, Justine Knebelmann, Anaelle Toure, June 2023

As part of its medium-term revenue strategy, Senegal’s Finance and Budget Ministry plans to raise its tax-to-GDP ratio to 20 percent. The tax administration (Direction Générale des Impôts et Domaines, DGID) aims to accomplish this by broadening the tax base and equitably raising tax compliance under the YAATAL project. Focusing on the top of the distribution, this project uses new administrative tax data to describe the current state of the personal income tax (PIT) in Senegal and possible ways it can be improved.

Water Scarcity in MENA 2023
The Economics of Water Scarcity in The Midde East and North Africa: Institutional Solutions
Dominick de Waal, Stuti Khemani, Andrea Barone, Edoardo Borgomeo, Amal Talbi, Rajesh Advani, Sally Zgheib, Mili Varughese, Mohamad Hamid, Luke Gates, Elvira Broeks Motta, April 2023

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is facing an acute lack of water for life and livelihoods. Despite significant infrastructure investments over decades, countries in the region are grappling with unprecedented, ever-worsening water scarcity due to population growth, climate change and socioeconomic development. The Economics of Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa: Institutional Solutions confronts the persistence and severity of water scarcity in MENA. The report draws on the tools of public economics to address two crucial challenges facing states in MENA: lack of legitimacy and trust.

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Going Viral: COVID-19 and the Accelerated Transformation of Jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean
Guillermo Beylis, Roberto Fattal Jaef, Michael Morris, Ashwini Rekha Sebastian, and Rishabh Sinha, Washington, DC: World Bank, September 2020

This book focuses on three important pre-pandemic trends observed in the labor market in the region—premature deindustrialization, servicification of the economy, and task automation—that have been accelerated by the crisis.

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The Rise of Domestic Capital Markets for Corporate Financing
Facundo Abraham, Juan J. Cortina, and Sergio L. Schmukler, Washington, DC: World Bank, June 2019

The case of East Asia shows that domestic markets have been a key driver of the observed trends in capital market financing since the early 2000s. 

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Making Politics Work for Development: Harnessing Transparency and Citizen Engagement
Stuti Khemani, Ernesto Dal Bó, Claudio Ferraz, Frederico Finan, Corinne Stephenson, Adesinaola Odugbemi, Dikshya Thapa, and Scott Abrahams, Policy Research Report, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016

The forces of transparency and citizen political engagement are on the rise, and together hold the potential to make politics work for rather than against economic development.

More Books and Reports »




MANAGER

Sergio Schmukler

Research Manager, Macroeconomics and Growth

Research Staff Arrow