Once concentrated among a few large
economies, global flows of goods, services, and capital now
reach an ever-larger number of countries worldwide. Global
trade in goods and in services both increased 10 times
between 1980 and 2011, while foreign direct investment (FDI)
flows increased almost 30-fold. A value chain is global when
some of these stages are carried out in more than one
country, most notably when discrete tasks within a

The lessons learned from the
implications of the global crisis for the Armenian economy
led the Government of Armenia to refine its approach to
economic development policy. The business environment, the
market structure, and the incentive pattern had not fostered
reallocation of resources into more productive areas or the
emergence of internationally competitive products and
services. Despite numerous initiatives and multiple efforts,

The growing availability of free or
inexpensive satellite imagery has inspired many researchers
to investigate the use of earth observation data for
monitoring economic activity around the world. One of the
most popular earth observation data sets is the so-called
nighttime lights from the Defense Meteorological Satellite
Program. Researchers have found positive correlations
between nighttime lights and several economic variables.

Economic development critically involves
diversification and structural transformation—that is, the
continued, dynamic reallocation of resources from less
productive to more productive sectors and activities. This
paper documents that, over an extended period, developing
Asia has on average been particularly successful in
diversifying its exports, particularly in comparison with
Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the progress has occurred

This paper examines the micro and macro
correlates of aid project outcomes in a sample of 3,821
World Bank projects and 1,342 Asian Development Bank
projects. Project outcomes vary much more within countries
than between countries: country-level characteristics
explain only 10–25 percent of project outcomes. Among macro
variables, country growth and the policy environment are
significantly positively correlated with project outcomes.

In this context, this note summarizes
the findings of a recent World Bank, SACU Secretariat
assessment of regional trade facilitation based on the Trade
and Transport Facilitation Assessment (TTFA) methodology.
The assessment looks at regional trade facilitation through
the lens of value chains, with the objective to understand
how the region’s trade and transport environment could be
improved to facilitate more extensive and deeply integrated

This paper estimates the effect of
income inequality on real gross domestic product per capita
using a panel of 104 countries during the period 1970–2010.
The empirical analysis addresses endogeneity issues by using
instrumental variables estimation and controlling for
country and time fixed effects. The analysis finds that, on
average, income inequality has a significant negative effect
on transitional gross domestic product per capita growth and

China has used two main spatial policies
to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted
labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration
system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a
96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper
develops a structural new economic geography model to
examine the impacts of these policies. Fitting the model to
available data allows simulating counterfactual scenarios

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most
common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide
evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake
collective actions for the provision of public goods within
village communities. Using a theoretical model, this paper
shows that an elected official, whose aim is to maximize
re-election chances, exerts higher effort in providing
public goods when private citizens undertake collective

Drawing on international trade data,
this paper uses the product space approach to analyze
changes in Morocco’s goods exports in 1990–2010 and future
export priorities. The level of Morocco’s gross domestic
product and its moderate growth match the predictions of
product space analysis, informed by changes in the income
potential of Morocco’s export basket, reflecting relatively
strong capabilities (a high density) in products with

This study estimates the impact of
Kenya’s post-election violence on individual risk
preferences. Because the crisis interrupted a longitudinal
survey of more than five thousand Kenyan youth, this timing
creates plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to civil
conflict by the time of the survey. The study measures
individual risk preferences using hypothetical lottery
choice questions, which are validated by showing that they

Renato and Hecinta are raising six young
children in a rural area of Mozambique’s northern Nampula
Province. On just half a hectare, they grow rice, maize,
beans, cashew, peanuts, cabbage, and tomatoes, selling what
they can and eating the rest. But, like many of the 475
million smallholder household’s worldwide, agricultural
production is just one of their many income-generating
activities. They balance several sources of income, within