Bøger af World Bank

The State of Social Safety Nets 2018

This publication offers a clear perspective on how to improve learning in basic education in Sub-Saharan Africa, based on extremely rigorous and exhaustive analysis of a large volume of data. The authors shine a light on the low levels of learning and on the contributory factors. They have not hesitated to raise difficult issues, such as the need to implement a consistent policy on the language of instruction, which is essential to ensuring the foundations of learning for all children. Using the framework of "From Science to Service Delivery" the book urges policy makers to look at the entire chain from policy design, informed by knowledge adapted to the local context, to implementation.

Very few studies focus on the growth of labour market opportunities that follow from exports. Entangled is one of the first to systematically examine the localised effects of long-run export growth in South Asia, and evaluates predictions around adjustment costs, worker demand, and wage effects using data from Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.

Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2018

Fair Progress?

This report shows that water security is about much more than just coping with water scarcity. It entails ensuring the delivery of affordable and high quality water to citizens in order to reinforce relationships between service providers and customers and contribute to a renewed social contract.

Getting to Work: Unlocking Women''s Potential in Sri Lanka''s Labor Force

Published semiannually, this World Bank Group Flagship Report report includes analysis of topical policy challenges faced by developing countries through in-depth research in the January edition, and shorter analytical pieces in the June edition.

This book is the first volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.

Drawing from vast international experiences, this report examines how global cutting-edge technology like electric vehicles could be pursued in Bhutan with different socioeconomic characteristics from advanced economies.

Using new firm-level export data collected in eight MENA countries - Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen - this study provides a finer and deeper diagnostic for the region's lack of export growth and diversification.

"The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has the undesirable distinction of being the world's most violent region, with 24.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The magnitude of the problem is staggering and persistent. Of the top 50 most violent cities in the world, 42 are in LAC. In 2010 alone, 142,302 people in LAC fell victim to homicide, representing 390 homicides per day and 4.06 homicides every 15 minutes. Crime disproportionately affects young men aged 20 to 24, whose homicide rate of 92 per 100,000 nearly quadruples that of the region. The focus of Crime Prevention in Latin America and the Caribbean is to identify policy interventions that, whether by design or indirect effect, have been shown to affect antisocial behavior early in life and patterns of criminal offending in youth and adults. Particular attention is devoted to recent studies that rigorously establish a causal link between the interventions in question and outcomes. This publication adopts a lifecycle perspective and argues that as individuals progress through different stages of the lifecycle, not only do different sets of risk factors arise and take more prominence, but their interactions and interdependencies shape human behavior. These interactions and the relative importance of different sets of risk factors identify relevant margins that can effectively be targeted by prevention policies, not only early in life, but throughout the lifecycle. Indeed prevention can never start too early, nor start too late, nor be too comprehensive."--Publisher's description

Eruptions of Popular Anger: The Economics of the Arab Spring and Its Aftermath sets out to answer three puzzles--the "Arab inequality" puzzle of civil uprisings in countries with low-to-moderate and stagnant economic inequality, the "unhappy development" paradox of increasing dissatisfaction at a time of moderate-to-rapid development, and the paradox of political violence in middle-income countries. The book's empirical investigation rules out high and rising inequality as a reason for the Arab Spring uprisings. It shows that the real problem was the erosion in middle-class incomes and the growing dissatisfaction with the quality of life, the shortage of formal sector jobs, and corruption. Frustration was particularly high among the young, educated, middle-class residents in urban areas. The old social contract, which had delivered development results in the past and under which Arab governments provided public-sector jobs and subsidized services in return for subdued voice, was unsustainable and malfunctioning. The public sector could no longer be the employer of choice, but the private sector did not generate enough formal sector jobs, because of distortions that constrained its growth and policies that offered advantages to a few firms with political connections, limiting competition and private investment. The breakdown in the social contract increased the premium on freedom and created impetus for political change. This report shows that the Arab Spring revolutions and the subsequent spread of violence and civil wars in the post-Arab Spring Middle East and North Africa region can be traced to the broken social contract, institutional weaknesses, and regional divisions in societies polarized along ethnic and sectarian lines. The Arab Spring and its aftermath indicate the need for a new social contract under which governments promote private-sector job creation, design public services in a way that holds providers accountable to beneficiaries, and promote inclusion and good governance.

Do current stylized facts about African agriculture and rural livelihoods reflect reality? In rapidly-changing and data-scarce environments they risk being outdated and misleading. This report re-examines conventional wisdom about African farmers, from the bottom up and recognising the complexities involved.