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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 Agarwal, Tristan 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
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
