Journal Issue: World Bank Research Observer, Volume 21, Issue 2
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21
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2
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What Have We Learned from a Decade of Manufacturing Enterprise Surveys in Africa?
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-08-02) Bigsten, Arne; Söderbom, Måns
In the early 1990s the World Bank
launched the Regional Program on Enterprise Development
(RPED) in several African countries, a key component of
which was to collect data on manufacturing firms. The data
sets built by these and subsequent enterprise surveys in
Africa generated considerable research. This article surveys
the research on the African business environment, focusing
on risk, access to credit, labor, and infrastructure, and on
how firms organize themselves and do business. It reviews
the research on enterprise performance, including enterprise
growth, investment, and exports. The article concludes with
a discussion of policy lessons.
Access to Financial Services : A Review of the Issues and Public Policy Objectives
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-08-02) Claessens, Stijn
This article reviews the evidence on the
importance of finance for economic well-being. It provides
data on the use of basic financial services by households
and firms across a sample of countries, assesses the
desirability of universal access, and provides an overview
of the macroeconomic, legal, and regulatory obstacles to
access. Despite the benefits of finance, the data show that
use of financial services is far from universal in many
countries, especially developing countries. Universal access
to financial services has not been a public policy objective
in most countries and would likely be difficult to achieve.
Countries can, however, facilitate access to financial
services by strengthening institutional infrastructure,
liberalizing markets and facilitating greater competition,
and encouraging innovative use of know-how and technology.
Government interventions to directly broaden access to
finance, however, are costly and fraught with risks, among
others the risk of missing the targeted groups. The article
concludes with recommendations for global actions aimed at
improving data on access and use and suggestions on areas of
further analysis to identify constraints to broadening access.
Banking and Regulation in Emerging Markets : The Role of External Discipline
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-08-05) Vives, Xavier
This article reviews the main issues of
regulating and supervising banks in emerging markets with a
view toward evaluating the long-run options. Particular
attention is paid to Latin America and East Asia. These
economies face a severe policy commitment problem that leads
to excessive bailouts and potential devaluation of claims of
foreign investors. This exacerbates moral hazard and makes a
case for importing external discipline (for example,
acquiring foreign short-term debt). However, external
discipline may come at the cost of excessive liquidation of
entrepreneurial projects. The article reviews the tradeoffs
imposed by external discipline and examines various
arrangements, such as narrow banking, foreign banks and
foreign regulation, and the potential role for an
international agency or international lender of last resort.
Macroeconomic Stability in Developing Countries : How Much Is Enough?
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-08-09) Montiel, Peter; Servén, Luis
Over the 1990s macroeconomic policies
improved in most developing countries, but the growth
dividend from this improvement fell short of expectations,
and a policy agenda focused on stability turned out to be
associated with a multiplicity of financial crises. This
article examines the contents and implementation of the
macroeconomic reform agenda of the 1990s. It reviews the
progress achieved through fiscal, monetary, and exchange
rate policies across the developing world and the
effectiveness of the changing policy framework in promoting
stability and growth. The main lesson is that more often
than not slow growth and frequent crises resulted from
shortcomings in the reform agenda of the 1990s. These
concern limitations in the depth and scope of the reform
agenda, its lack of attention to macroeconomic
vulnerabilities, and its inadequate attention to
complementary reforms outside the macroeconomic sphere.
Is There a Case for Industrial Policy? A Critical Survey
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-07-22) Pack, Howard; Saggi, Kamal
What are the underlying rationales for
industrial policy? Does empirical evidence support the use
of industrial policy for correcting market failures that
plague the process of industrialization? This article
addresses these questions through a critical survey of the
analytical literature on industrial policy. It also reviews
some recent industry successes and argues that public
interventions have played only a limited role. Moreover, the
recent ascendance and dominance of international production
networks in the sectors in which developing countries once
had considerable success implies a further limitation on the
potential role of industrial policies as traditionally
understood. Overall, there appears to be little empirical
support for an activist government policy even though market
failures exist that can, in principle, justify the use of
industrial policy.