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Publication Exploring the Gender Divide in Real Estate Ownership and Property Tax Compliance(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-07) Flores, Tatiana; Cruces, Guillermo; Bermúdez, Jose Carlo; Scot, Thiago; Schiavoni, Juan Luis; Tortarolo, DarioThis paper investigates gender disparities in residential property ownership and tax compliance in a large Argentine municipality using detailed tax administrative data. While ownership is evenly distributed between women, men, and co-owned properties up to the 40th percentile of the value distribution, higher-value properties exhibit significant gender disparities, with women’s share dropping to less than 20% in the top 1%. Tax compliance increases with property value, with an average evasion rate of 46%, and men and women are equally likely to meet their tax obligations across the distribution. However, women face slightly higher effective tax rates due to owning lower-value properties, which are disproportionately affected by a mildly regressive tax schedule. Gender responses to enforcement measures are also comparable. A soft randomized communication campaign significantly increased timely payments equally for both men and women, with men responding more quickly. Similarly, the findings show no gender-based differences in responses to macroeconomic shocks such as COVID-19. The study underscores the role of property tax in promoting equitable revenue mobilization and highlights the importance of gender-disaggregated data for informing tax policy and enforcement strategies.Publication Design of Partial Population Experiments with an Application to Spillovers in Tax Compliance(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-07) Cruces, Guillermo; Tortarolo, Dario; Vazquez-Bare, GonzaloThis paper develops a framework to analyze partial population experiments, a generalization of the cluster experimental design where clusters are assigned to different treatment intensities. The framework allows for heterogeneity in cluster sizes and outcome distributions. The paper studies the large-sample behavior of OLS estimators and cluster-robust variance estimators and shows that (i) ignoring cluster heterogeneity may result in severely underpowered experiments and (ii) the cluster-robust variance estimator may be upward-biased when clusters are heterogeneous. The paper derives formulas for power, minimum detectable effects, and optimal cluster assignment probabilities. All the results apply to cluster experiments, a particular case of the framework. The paper sets up a potential outcomes framework to interpret the OLS estimands as causal effects. It implements the methods in a large-scale experiment to estimate the direct and spillover effects of a communication campaign on property tax compliance. The analysis reveals an increase in tax compliance among individuals directly targeted with the mailing, as well as compliance spillovers on untreated individuals in clusters with a high proportion of treated taxpayers.Publication The Temptation of Social Networks under Job Search Frictions(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2025-02-07) Matsuda, Norihiko; Nomura, ShinsakuThis paper presents descriptive evidence that although social networks help find jobs, the jobs found through social networks tend to be mismatched. The paper uses nationally representative matched employer-employee data in Bangladesh that includes direct measures of match quality. Less educated and seemingly poorer workers are more likely to have found their jobs through social networks. Compared to workers at the same occupation level in the same firm who were matched through formal channels, those matched through social networks found their jobs quicker but had lower match quality and earned less. The mechanism, suggested by a theoretical model, is as follows: even when social networks are connected to mismatched jobs, workers can be tempted to use social networks to find mismatched jobs for fear of finding nothing. This temptation is more potent for less skilled and poorer workers because costly formal channels are less rewarding and affordable for them.Publication Too Hard, Too Easy, or Just Right: The Productivity of Schooling and the Match between Child Skill and School Complexity(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2025-02-07) Castro, Juan F; Villacorta, LuccianoThis study proposes a novel way of modeling the heterogeneous effects of schooling based on the notion that learning is maximized when the skill of the child matches the complexity of the learning experiences at school. It offers direct evidence about the importance of this match using longitudinal information on test scores and schooling attained by children from Peru, India, and Vietnam. Using data from Peru, it also finds that the relation between the effect of schooling and early childhood skill can follow an inverted-U shape. Increasing early childhood skill will raise the productivity of the school up to the point where it matches school complexity. Further increases in child skill, however, will reduce the productivity of schooling as they will widen the mismatch. If one relates the quality of schools to the amount of learning they produce, this framework predicts that quality gains can be achieved by reducing these mismatches.Publication Global Skill Partnerships for Migration: Preparing Tomorrow’s Workers for Home and Abroad(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-07) Acosta, Pablo; Özden, Çağlar; Lebow, Jeremy; Rodriguez, Limon; Dahlgren, EvelinaMobility is essential to human existence and progress. Some people move internally within the borders of their country. Some move across borders to other countries. While most migrants move in hopes of better economic opportunities for themselves and their children, some are displaced by conflict and violence, and others escape the consequences of climate change or natural disasters. Often, it is a combination of reasons. Regardless of the underlying causes, most migration experiences significantly improve the lives of both the migrants themselves and their communities, at home and their destination. But migration also entails significant risks, costs, and challenges. The task faced by governments and development partners is to identify the right policies and interventions to help maximize and more evenly distribute gains while reducing the costs, especially for those most affected. This report reviews the state of knowledge of GSPs, considers terminology and approaches, provides a roadmap for policymakers who want to implement GSPs, and clarifies the role of multilateral development institutions in this pivotal agenda. Various GSP and GSP-like programs and pilots have already been implemented globally and financed through various sources. The report reviews the essential features of GSPs, existing examples, their significant advantages in different settings, and the specific features of GSP design. Before highlighting these features, the report discusses the current global economic landscape, focusing on demographic and education trends and why they call for global partnerships to invest in education and training for workers to participate in domestic and international markets.Publication Implementing FPIC Stakeholder Engagement in Geothermal Projects: Technical Guidelines(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-07) World BankIndonesia has enormous potential and challenges in terms of development and renewable energy. Significant developments will necessitate using new energy sources such as solar, water, wind, and geothermal. However, renewable energy production and transition affect, and are affected by, the surrounding population throughout the project’s life, including indigenous peoples (IP) many of whom retain deep cultural ties and rely on the natural resources of their home territories. Meaningful stakeholder engagement (SE) is becoming more widely acknowledged as an essential component of social risk management. This is because it assists projects in obtaining a social license to operate and reduces the potential risk of rejection from affected people or criticism from civil society. A good understanding of how enhanced meaningful SE can lead to free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) and what additional activities and documentation are needed to meet FPIC requirements will help renewable energy projects overcome potential social risks while minimizing compliance risks. A heightened awareness of international good practice on SE and FPIC in the renewable energy sector will also have a spill-over effect in other sectors since many principles, processes, and procedures on meaningful SE and FPIC are similar across sectors. These technical guidelines (TG) aim at assisting development practitioners tasked with the social safeguards of development projects that significantly affect IP and or face major stakeholder risks. The TG can help them implement policy requirements for pursuit of FPIC as a form of enhanced SE.Publication Protecting Paradise: Opportunities for Insurance to Support Marine-based and Coastal Tourism in the Caribbean(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-06) World BankThis report explores the case for introducing innovative insurance products for businesses within the tourism industry that leverage and conserve coastal and marine ecosystems. It presents an overview of the insurance market in the Caribbean, an analysis of the potential of insurance products to protect natural assets, and a consideration of international examples to be applied in the region. Insurance has great potential to mitigate disaster risk, but realizing this potential will require investing in education to expand insurance uptake, drawing lessons from prior experiences, minimizing financial burdens, exploring new products and types of insurance, ensuring that solutions are scalable, and improving quantitative tools and data.Publication Dynamic, High-Resolution Wealth Measurement in Data-Scarce Environments(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-06) Zheng, Zhuo; Wu, Timothy; Lee, Richard; Newhouse, David; Kilic, Talip; Burke, Marshall; Ermon, Stefano; Lobell, David B.Accurate and comprehensive measurement of household livelihoods is critical for monitoring progress toward poverty alleviation and targeting social assistance programs for those who most need it. However, the high cost of traditional data collection has historically made comprehensive measurement a difficult task. This paper evaluates alternative satellite-based deep learning approaches using detailed household census extracts from four African countries to accelerate progress toward comprehensive, fine-scale, and dynamic measurement of asset wealth at scale. The results indicate that transformer architectures solve multiple open measurement problems, by providing the most accurate measurement of local-level variation in household asset wealth across countries and cities, as well as changes in household asset wealth over time. Experiments that artificially restrict data availability show the model’s ability to achieve high performance with limited data. The proposed approach demonstrates the promise of combining satellite imagery, publicly available geo-features, and new deep learning architectures for hyperlocal and dynamic measurement of wealth in data-scarce environments.Publication Safeguarding Marine Ecosystems and Society: The Role of Insurance in Protecting Nature and Supporting Sustainable Tourism(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-06) Cook, S.; Wilks, A. Rios; Wilson, P.This report aims to highlight opportunities for developing ecosystem-linked insurance - that is, insurance that integrates the effect of ecosystems in products covering coastal hazards. These products can provide funds for ecosystem restoration after a disaster occurs. This report points to several opportunities and ways forward for developing ecosystem insurance. Despite the challenges facing efforts to develop such insurance, advances are possible and could benefit both the insurance sector and Caribbean tourism industry.Publication Kosovo: Education Digital Readiness Assessment 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-05) Rajasekaran, S.; Jena, N.; Rillo, K.; Uka, A.; Wang, K.; Olszak-Olszewski, A.This report aims to identify barriers, needs, and potential opportunities for Kosovo to digitally transform its basic education system to strengthen efficiency and improve student performance in foundational skills (including digital skills). The rest of the report is structured as follows. Chapter 1 offers a brief introduction, and Chapter 2 delves in greater detail into the essential education context, including recent reforms, learning outcomes, and overall governance. Chapter 3 presents the country and sector vision for a digital strategy. Chapter 4 details the methodological approach for this study, which unfolds over the two following chapters. Chapter 5 presents the DISA (Digital Skills Analysis Deep Dive), and Chapter 6 presents the EDRA (Education Digital Readiness Assessment), followed by a synthesis of key recommendations and actions in Chapter 7 and complemented by a series of relevant annexes. The annexes include a detailed summary of recommendations (Annex A), a short background on the basic education system in the country (Annex B), the education strategy for 2022-2026 (Annex C), detailed EDRA methodology and framework (Annex D), and the stakeholder mapping (Annex D), as well as a glossary of key terms (Annex E). For technical audiences, reviewing the detailed methodology described in Annex D as a prerequisite to reviewing the EDRA analysis in Chapter 6 may be helpful.