The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) is The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products.
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Total publications: 38,764
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Publication Supporting Access to Justice in South Sudan - A 2025 JUPITER Assessment(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-07) Bosio, Erica; Upegui Caro, VirginiaThis report assesses the state and performance of the justice system of South Sudan through the JUPITER methodology. JUPITER uses qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate both de jure and de facto justice delivery metrics, identifying gaps in the legal framework and its implementation and creating comparable metrics to benchmark against similar indicators and other economies. The study focuses on the system’s effectiveness in service delivery across three areas: Access to Justice, Efficiency, and Quality. JUPITER aims to identify strengths and areas of improvement in these key areas, serving as a basis for policy dialogue.Publication Cash Is Queen: Local Economy Effects of Cash Transfers to Women in West Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-06) Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Gonzalez, Paula; Goldstein, Markus; Friedman, JedThis paper examines the direct and spillover effects of cash transfers paid in a rural and low-income setting. In the short run, an unconditional cash transfer program for ultra-poor households in Northern Nigeria led to a 12 percentage point increase in micro-enterprise formation for program recipients. Moreover, benefits continued to increase in magnitude after program cessation and also extended to nearby non-beneficiary households when compared to counterparts in other villages where no cash transfers were paid. One year after program cessation, beneficiary women increased their enterprise ownership rate by 20 percentage points, while the rate for non-beneficiary women increased by 13 percentage points. Both groups of households enjoyed higher consumption and food security, and shifted away from husband-centered toward joint intrahousehold decision-making. One mechanism for this growth spillover is a boost to aggregate demand for local goods, in part identified by the positive link between the (randomly determined) neighborhood density of cash transfer households and enterprise creation. The increase in local female entrepreneurial activity translates to a partial income multiplier of at least 0.32. Women face restrictive social norms around work in this context and the slack productive resource brought into activity by the cash transfer is female labor, specifically female-led entrepreneurship near the home.Publication The Caribbean Connection: Building Digital Jobs in the Caribbean Bit by Bit(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-06) World BankThe Caribbean region faces a growing youth employment challenge, as outdated infrastructure and limited digital skills continue to constrain economic opportunities and resilience. For much of the last decade, dependence on legacy copper networks led to high prices, low bandwidth, and widespread coverage gaps. Schools lacked the internet capacity to serve large student populations, and slow speeds eroded the competitiveness of key industries like tourism. Education systems also rarely emphasize digital competencies as a core outcome. At the same time, emerging IT and IT enabled services (ITES) sectors struggled with underdeveloped broadband infrastructure and a shortage of job-ready talent, limiting the region’s ability to attract investment. Women and young people were particularly affected, with fewer accessible pathways to build digital skills or launch tech-driven enterprises. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the need for reliable connectivity and market-relevant information and communication technology (ICT) training to support remote learning, employment, and entrepreneurship - especially in marginalized groups.Publication Navigating Fiscal Realities for Equitable Growth in Georgia(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-05) World Bank GroupGeorgia has made impressive economic progress over the past two decades, achieving strong and resilient economic growth and development despite numerous external and domestic shocks. This Fiscal Incidence Analysis (FIA) report serves as a baseline for evaluating current fiscal policy and potential policy reforms to enhance fiscal equity and sustainability. The Commitment to Equity (CEQ) methodology helps understand which population subgroups benefit the most from public expenditures and which subgroups are paying the taxes that finance those expenditures. It traces changes in the distribution of household incomes from market income (before taxes and transfers) to final income, identifying changes in income inequality and poverty attributable to different fiscal policy interventions such as taxes, transfers, and social expenditures. The equity aspect of fiscal policy is critical to informing Sustainable Development Goals Indicator 10.4.2, which measures the redistributive impact of fiscal policy. The FIA helps identify spending priorities based on their contributions to reducing poverty and inequality and examines how fiscal space can be created without increasing the burden on poor and vulnerable households.Publication Sierra Leone: Agriculture Risk Management(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-05) World BankThis report is intended to support the government of Sierra Leone in the development of a risk management action plan and for disaster risk financing investments. It was compiled with extensive analysis of crop and livestock production, price, and meteorological data records between 2003–2022. It includes evidence from a literature review on production, market, and enabling environment risk events occurring over the foregoing time period and from stakeholder interviews held with farmers, traders, processors, and others sector players, as well as with government and agricultural research staff between June 2023 and March 2024. The results of the analysis are considered in light of the different stakeholders’ vulnerability to the effects of ex post shock events and the resulting ex ante impact upon investment. The most salient issues and results of this analysis are outlined in the report. A considerable volume of supporting data is supplied in the appendixes, including (1) key crop production zones, (2) further analysis of rainfall time series data, and (3) detailed crop yield loss records, among others.