Bøger udgivet af World Bank Publications

A decade since the spark of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to suffer from limited creation of more and better jobs. Youth face idleness and unemployment. For those who find jobs, informality awaits. Few women attempt to enter the world of work at all. Meanwhile, the available jobs are not those of the future. These labor market outcomes are being worsened by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Jobs Undone: Reshaping the Role of Governments toward Markets and Workers in the Middle East and North Africa explores ways to break these impasses, drawing on original research, survey data, wide-ranging literature, and young entrepreneurial voices from the region. The report finds that a prominent reason behind MENA's unmet jobs challenge is a lack of market contestability in the formal private sector. Few firms in the region enter the market, few grow, and those that exit are not necessarily less productive. Moreover, firms in the region invest little in physical capital, human capital, or research and development, and they tend to be politically connected. At the macro level, economic growth has been mediocre, labor productivity is not being driven by structural change, and the growth of the stock of capital per capita has declined. New evidence generated for this report shows that the lack of dynamism is due to the prevalence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). They operate in sectors where there is little economic rationale for public activity and they enjoy favorable treatment--flouting the principles of competitive neutrality. Meanwhile, labor regulations add to market rigidity, while gendered laws restrict women's potential. To change this reality, the state must reshape its relationship toward markets, toward workers, and toward women. The region must create a level playing field between SOEs and the private sector, replace labor rigidities with appropriate social protection and labor market programs, and remove barriers to women's economic participation. Governments can also foster new sectors and occupations, gradually propelling market contestability and job creation. All reforms will have to rely on improved data capacity and transparency to create a new social contract between governments and the people of the region.

Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below US$ 1.90 per day has fallen by close to 800 million. The report explores the key drivers for China's achievements in poverty, considers lessons for other developing countries, and puts forward suggestions for China's future policies.

This study aims to raise policy makers' awareness of the business case for investing in gas flaring and methane reduction projects. It focuses on mid-sized flares that are too small to be prioritized by oil companies but represent 58 percent of global flare volumes.

This book shows that there is great potential to reduce the risks and maximize the benefits of temporary migration from South Asia. Building on rigorous analytics, it proposes policies to reduce vulnerability and enhance the benefits of temporary migration for migrants themselves, their families, and the home economy.

Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report. Published semiannually, the 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.

While many countries pledge to phase out fossil fuels in 30-40 years, 6-7 million people die each year from air pollution. This report shows how to design coherent policies that harness synergies and manage tensions between air quality and climate mitigation and that put people's health first while paving the way for long-term decarbonization.

Private cities are an emerging reality in developing countries and are particularly important in South Asia. Weak urban governments are at the root of some of the challenges faced by cities in developing countries. This report seeks to assess the role private cities can play in the urbanization process of developing countries.

This report promotes a more inclusive development and COVID recovery by better understanding how policies can increase productivity and reduce vulnerability in the informal sector.

This report aims to identify and map air pollution hotspots in South Asia in terms of concentration and exposure, understand the various sources of pollution in hotspot areas (from Kabul to Dhaka), and help categorize policy actions and interventions based on a systematic analysis of costs and benefits.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique event demonstrating the risks associated with global value chains as well as ways in which they are a source of resilience in trade. Efforts to reshore production would make all countries worse off and increase the number of people in extreme poverty.

This framework document provides a practical approach for designing representative studies and developing uniform sampling guidelines to support estimates of health outcomes that are explicitly linked to exposure to land-based contaminants from ASGM activities.

This framework document provides a practical approach for designing representative studies and developing uniform sampling guidelines to support estimates of health outcomes that are explicitly linked to exposure to land-based contaminants from ULAB activities.

Women, Business and the Law is a World Bank Group project which measures the laws and regulations restricting women's economic opportunities. WBL informs research and policy discussions about the state of women's economic empowerment and emphasizes the work still to be done to ensure economic empowerment for all.

This report estimates the global, regional, and national costs of health damage from exposure to PM2.5 ambient and household air pollution in 2019. While recognizing the various costs of air pollution to society, this report focuses on the cost of morbidity and premature death from air pollution, the world's leading environmental health risk.

Synthesizes the latest relevant knowledge from multiple disciplines on how young children learn and what skills are most crucial for school-readiness.

The Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and Gender Minorities (EQOSOGI) is a new initiative that applies established World Bank methodology in new areas in development. It seeks to identify laws that discriminate against or protect sexual and gender minorities in six categories around the world.

Presents an inclusive, and resilient solution to Africa'ss wide-ranging food security challenges, particularly in fragility, conflict, and violence-affected countries. The publication assesses the costs and benefits of using two frontier agriculture technologies, insect farming and plant hydroponics, to create a circular food economy in Africa.

By combining case studies, recent research, and the latest developments in tax compliance into a coherent and holistic framework, the book aims to guide policymakers and tax practitioners in their efforts to reform tax administrations and create a more equitable and robust foundation for economic growth.

Extractives for Transformation: An Africa Regional Study

The Economics of Water Scarcity and Water Supply and Sanitation in Middle East and North Africa

Examines the extent and the nature of gender disparities in Africa's labor markets. This study offers a comparative analysis based on standardized nationally representative survey-data for several Sub-Saharan Africa countries and one North Africa country. It also offers gender analysis by using a set of labor market indicators.

This report aims to improve understanding of the potential of the agribusiness sector (primary agriculture plus off-farm agribusiness) to accelerate inclusive recovery from the 2020 recession, create jobs, and reduce poverty.

Converging technologies promise a new era of delivering education, health, and social services to millions of digitally excluded. Hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and beset with low human development outcomes, how can South Asia bring these benefits to vulnerable groups, adapt technologies, and build trust and protection against risks?

This book estimates how crises change labor market flows, assesses how these changes affect people, and discusses the key policy responses.

Outlines how to integrate water management and climate-change adaptation in the design, construction, and maintenance of roads. The guidelines describe how the negative impact of roads on the surrounding landscape can be turned around, and how roads can become instruments of beneficial water management and increased climate resilience.

The argument that digitalisation fosters economic activity has become clear during the current COVID-19 crisis. This report argues that because digital technologies are general purpose, useable across a wide variety of economic activities, the gains from achieving universal coverage of digital services are likely to be large and shared across the economies.

Analyses the patterns of economic transformation that have occurred in Latin American and the Caribbean. A productivity-enhancing reform agenda with a focus on the services sector is a must to reignite its growth process. The region also needs to train its workforce for jobs requiring analytical skills as well as interpersonal skills.