This report offers recommendations on how major actors such as governments, public development institutions, the private sector and civil society organizations can modify their actions and approaches to enhance the ability of the private sector to advance the development process. It highlights the importance of developing businesses as a means to reducing global poverty.

Private sector activity is crucial for development. It shapes the investment climate, mobilizes innovation and financing in areas such as global health, and can either cause or mitigate social and environmental harm. Yet so far, the international development debate has not focused on the role of the private sector. This volume—written by members of the private sector, philanthropic organizations, and academia—investigates ways to galvanize the private sector in the fight against global poverty. Using a bottom-up approach, they describe how the private sector affects growth and poverty alleviation. They also review the impediments to private capital investment, and discuss various approaches to risk mitigation, including public sector enhancements, and identify some specific new plans for financing development in neglected markets, including an equity-based model for financing small-to-medium-sized enterprises. From the top-down, the authors look at the social and environmental impact of private sector activities, investigate public-private partnerships, explore new perspectives on the role of multinationals, and discuss an in-depth case study of these issues as they relate to global public health. In addition to providing a broad overview of the current issues, this forward-looking volume assesses the action-oriented initiatives that already exist, and provides templates and suggestions for new initiatives and partnerships. Contributors include David DeFerranti (Brookings Institution), Timothy Freundlich (Calvert Social Investment Foundation), Ross Levine (World Bank), Sylvia Mathews (Gates Foundation), Jane Nelson (Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government), Alan Patricof (APAX Partners), Warrick Smith (World Bank), and Julie Sunderland (APAX Partners).

Productive transformation requires seizing the opportunities available and opening new ones in a competitive world. Rethinking Productive Development examines the market failures impeding transformation and the government failures that may make the policy remedies worse than the market illness. To address market failures, the authors propose a simple conceptual framework based on the scope and nature of the policy approach. They then systematically analyze country policies through this lens in key areas such as innovation, new firms, financing, human capital, and internationalization to show the power of this way of thinking. Still, the book warns that policymakers cannot be sure what the right policy interventions are and must set up a process to discover them that calls for public-private collaboration. Recognizing that the risk of capture needs to be checked and that even the best policies will fail without the technical, organizational, and political capacity to implement them, the book concludes with ideas on how to design institutions fostering the right incentives and how to grow public sector capabilities over time.

This report demonstrates the importance of public investment in physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, mass transit, electric power, sewers, etc.) to the stimulation of private sector productivity, profitability, and investment. Specifically, the report argues that the slow-down in spending for infrastructure over the past 25 years has been a major cause of the U.S. economy's poor performance since 1970.

This 2016 OECD Economic Survey of the United States examines recent economic developments, policies and prospects. The special chapters cover: Private sector productivity and Making growth more inclusive.