Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
555 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 23
-
Publication
Typology of Economic Women’s Groups Programs in South Asia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-04-13)Women’s groups models vary widely across contexts but context-specific documentation is limited. This wide variation coupled with inconsistent terms used to describe these groups creates challenges in using the evidence collected on group-based interventions to inform policy. The typology presented in this brief focuses on economic women’s group models implemented in South Asia. Using program documents and evidence from evaluations, it identifies implementation models, key characteristics, and the implications of investing in women’s groups to improve economic outcomes in South Asia. -
Publication
Enabling Scaled-Up Risk Reduction Investments in the Philippines: Establishing a Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Program to Better Safeguard Against Hazards
(Washington, DC, 2023-04-10)The Philippines is one of the most natural hazard-prone countries in the world. Disasters in the country can quickly roll back hard-won economic and social development gains. To better safeguard the country against these disasters, it is critical to ramp up the institutional capacity and policies for a comprehensive disaster risk management program and to improve coordination between oversight and implementing agencies through upgraded legislation with disaster risk reduction measures while also building the capacity of government agencies by introducing resilience-building tools and resources. The program demonstrated that a whole-of-government approach is critical for meaningful results in a multi-sectoral engagement on disaster risk management. An engaged, committed core team of counterparts across all relevant sectors within government, including central oversight agencies, were crucial in the achievement of the program’s desired outputs and outcomes. -
Publication
What do We Know About Interventions to Increase Women’s Economic Participation and Empowerment in South Asia?: Financial Products
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-04-07)The World Bank’s South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab (SARGIL) is conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions with direct or indirect effects on measures of women’s economic empowerment. The review focuses on changes in labor market outcomes, income, and other empowerment indicators. The goal is to document what has and has not worked for women in the region (covering all countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), understand the types of interventions implemented, and identify gaps in knowledge and action. Interventions are organized into five categories: Skills, Assets, Financial Products, Care, and Empowerment. This brief summarizes the main findings from the financial products category. -
Publication
Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor: 21 March 2023
(Washington, DC, 2023-03-21)The economy resumed moderate expansion as private consumption and tourism improved at the beginning of 2023, after a disappointing Q4 outturn. However, lingering soft global demand continued to weigh on goods exports, manufacturing, and private investment. Inflation slowed amid easing global energy prices but remained above the Bank of Thailand’s target range of 1-3 percent. As a result, authorities extended energy-related subsidies while maintaining monetary policy normalization. The Thai baht depreciated the most among major ASEAN currencies in February as the current account turned deficit due to slowing export of goods while substantial portfolio flows exited the equity and bond markets. -
Publication
Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor: February 2023
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03-14)Growth decelerated more than expected to 1.4 percent in Q4 2022 amid the global economic slowdown. Goods trade contracted while manufacturing production and investment weakened. However, robust private consumption and tourism recovery continued to strengthen the outlook. Headline inflation declined but the second-round impact on domestic prices remained. This prompted the Bank of Thailand to continue monetary policy normalization and the government to extend energy-related subsidies. The current account balance returned to surplus in Q4 2022 on the back of substantially improved tourism receipts, supporting the Thai baht. -
Publication
Emerging Trends in National Financial Inclusion Strategies that Support Women’s Entrepreneurship
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03-10)Starting a business is a way for women to generate income and become more resilient when dealing with shocks. However, large gender gaps in formal entrepreneurship impede women’s livelihoods and global development. The persistence of gender-based barriers-notably, unequal access to financial accounts, constrained credit, and normative roles that keep women in the role of primary caregivers underscores the need for broader support and regulatory reform, including reform of the financial sector. This brief presents data collected by the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law (WBL) project on selected contours of National Financial Inclusion Strategies that can support women’s entrepreneurship. In all, fifty-two economies worldwide had valid financial inclusion strategies in force as of June 30, 2022. An increasing number are now highlighting the need to promote women’s financial inclusion. However, as this initial foray shows, more could be done in National Financial Inclusion Strategies to promote credit to women entrepreneurs and enhance the national-level collection and reporting of financial data disaggregated by sex. The analysis also shows that the field for developing indicators at both the policy and regulatory level remains ripe for exploration by the WBL project and others. -
Publication
Effectively Engaging the Private Sector in the Business Reform Process
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-12-09)This brief discusses critical considerations for engaging the private sector in the process of reforming and implementing business regulations, along with channels and mechanisms that have been successfully used around the world. Using novel data from the Business Reform Committee project (BRC) covering 160 economies, the Brief presents global trends across income groups on the existence of reform committees and stages of engaging the private sector while reforms are being implemented. The brief further draws from experiences across countries on making policy decisions and the implementation of reforms more consultative, while providing critical caveats so that policy makers can determine what mechanisms are best suited for their country. -
Publication
Floods in Pakistan: Human Development at Risk
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-11-01)This note assesses the effects of the 2022 floods on human capital in Pakistan. It focuses on the results of a Pakistan-wide phone survey that gathered information on the experiences of approximately 4,000 families with children ages 3 to 17. The survey was originally designed to track children’s return to school after school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the team adapted the survey methodology to ensure that it could better document and understand the challenges families with children are facing during the 2022 floods and that the country is experiencing as it seeks to protect and rebuild human capital for the future. -
Publication
Behind on Rent or Left Behind: Measuring Housing Poverty in Urban Pakistan
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09-08)Pakistan’s urban areas face a looming housing crisis: forty-seven percent of households live in over-crowded housing units in informal settlements (katchi abadis) with inadequate infrastructure and services. In response to the growing housing shortage, the Government of Pakistan launched the ambitious Naya Pakistan Housing Program (NPHP) in April 2019 with the objective of providing five million housing units across the country in five years, prioritizing those in lower income brackets for whom affordable housing is out of reach. To assist in targeting, and for monitoring the effectiveness of this policy and others, it is important to determine an objective criterion for housing affordability. This note proposes a modified Residual Expenditure Methodology (REM) approach, drawing on existing poverty measurement methodology, to measure housing poverty in urban Pakistan. -
Publication
Monitoring Impacts of COVID-19 and Other Shocks: Uganda High Frequency Phone Survey (UHFPS), Round 9, August 2022
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-08)In June 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, with the support from the World Bank, has launched the High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19 to track the impacts of the pandemic on a monthly basis for a period of 12 months. In June 2022, the scope of the survey was expanded to monitor economic sentiments and the socioeconomic impact of other shocks such as the Russia-Ukraine war and extreme weather events. The survey aimed to recontact the entire sample of households that had been interviewed during the Uganda National Panel Survey 2019/20 round and that had phone numbers for at least one household member or a reference individual. This report presents the findings from the ninth round of the survey that was conducted between August 5th and August 29th, 2022.