International Network for Economics and Conflict

This new StAR report examines how bribes, embezzled state assets and other criminal proceeds are being hidden via legal structures – shell companies, foundations, trusts and others. The study also provides policy makers with practical recommendations on how to step up ongoing international efforts to uncover flows of criminal funds and prevent criminals from misusing shell companies and other legal entities.

This IEG evaluation assesses the value of the trust fund vehicle as a way of delivering aid and the effectiveness and efficiency of the deployment of trust fund resources. In addition, the evaluation assesses the Bank’s management and accountability for the use of trust fund resources and the impact of trust funds on the Bank’s development role.

Using a novel dataset with transactions level exports data from four African countries (Malawi, Mali, Senegal and Tanzania), this paper uncovers evidence of a high degree of experimentation at the extensive margin associated with low survival rates, consistent with high and middle income country evidence.

This paper studies the impact of a comprehensive business and financial literacy program on firm outcomes of young entrepreneurs in an emerging post-conflict economy, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This paper studies the cross-country incidence of the 2008-2009 global crisis and documents a structural break in the way emerging economies responded to the global shock.

This paper conducts an up-to-date review of three main strands of the literature analyzing the poverty impacts of climate change : (i) economy-wide growth models incorporating climate change impacts to work out consistent scenarios for how climate change might affect the path of poverty over the next decades; (ii) studies focusing on the poverty impacts of climate change in the agricultural sector; and (iii) studies exploring how past climate variability impacts poverty.

Although both domestic and foreign private banks have gained ground in MENA in recent years, state banks continue to play an important role in many countries. Using a MENA bank-level panel dataset for the period 2001-08, the paper contributes to the empirical literature by documenting recent ownership trends and assessing the role of ownership and bank performance in MENA while accounting for key bank characteristics such as size and balance sheet composition.

Assuming that capital productivity is higher in areas at risk from natural hazards (such as coastal zones or flood plains), this paper shows that rapid development in these areas -- and the resulting increase in disaster losses -- may be the consequence of a rational and well-informed trade-off between lower disaster losses and higher productivity.