World Bank Training
65 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
This series of textbooks and sourcebooks provides material geared toward professional training in the field of international development. The World Bank disseminates its expert banking and project management knowledge through workshop programs that have been turned into such handbooks on a variety of topics. These books are provided in both print and electronic formats in order to foster an interactive learning environment for workshops and classrooms.
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 65
-
Publication
Impact Evaluation in International Development: Theory, Methods and Practice
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-17)Impact evaluations are studies that attempt to measure the causal impact of a project, program, or policy on one or more outcomes. This book provides a comprehensive exposition of how to conduct impact evaluations. Part I provides an overview of impact evaluations and comprises five chapters which are accessible to readers who have few or none of the technical (statistical and econometric) skills that are needed to conduct impact evaluations. Parts II and III make use of statistical and econometric methods and are at a level similar to a graduate-student course but written to make them accessible to the ambitious reader whose skills are not at that level. Part II presents, in Chapters 6-10, a comprehensive discussion of the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to conduct impact evaluations, including a general discussion of the ethical issues involved in conducting impact evaluations. Part III presents the main nonexperimental methods that are used to implement impact evaluations when RCTs are not feasible or not recommended for other reasons. Chapters 11 and 12 present regression methods, including difference-in-differences estimation. Matching methods are described in Chapter 13, after which regression discontinuity methods are covered in Chapter 14. Instrumental variable methods, including the estimation of local average treatment effects (LATE), are discussed in detail in Chapter 15. Chapters 16 and 17 cover more advanced topics: quantile treatment effects and control function methods, respectively. Part IV then considers more practical issues when conducting impact evaluations, including designing questionnaires (Chapter 18), data collection methods and survey management (Chapters 19 and 20), and disseminating results to policymakers (Chapter 21). Finally, Part V addresses two topics in impact evaluation: qualitative methods for conducting impact evaluations (Chapter 22), and cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis (Chapter 23). -
Publication
The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-01-16)Two decades after its original publication, The Analysis of Household Surveys is reissued with a new preface by its author, Sir Angus Deaton, recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This classic work remains relevant to anyone with a serious interest in using household survey data to shed light on policy issues. This book reviews the analysis of household survey data, including the construction of household surveys, the econometric tools useful for such analysis, and a range of problems in development policy for which this survey analysis can be applied. The author's approach remains close to the data, using transparent econometric and graphical techniques to present data in a way that can clearly inform policy and academic debates. Chapter 1 describes the features of survey design that need to be understood in order to undertake appropriate analysis. Chapter 2 discusses the general econometric and statistical issues that arise when using survey data for estimation and inference. Chapter 3 covers the use of survey data to measure welfare, poverty, and distribution. Chapter 4 focuses on the use of household budget data to explore patterns of household demand. Chapter 5 discusses price reform, its effects on equity and efficiency, and how to measure them. Chapter 6 addresses the role of household consumption and saving in economic development. The book includes an appendix providing code and programs using STATA, which can serve as a template for the users' own analysis. -
Publication
The Urban Rail Development Handbook
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-09-10)Cities across the globe are looking to develop affordable, environmentally friendly, and socially responsible transportation solutions that can meet the accessibility needs of expanding metropolitan populations and support future economic and urban development. When appropriately planned and properly implemented as part of a larger public transportation network, urban rail systems can provide rapid mobility and vital access to city centers from surrounding districts. High-performing urban rail services, when carefully approached as development projects, can help enhance quality of life by giving citizens access to employment opportunities, essential services, urban amenities, and neighboring communities. The purpose of this Handbook is to synthesize and disseminate knowledge to inform the planning, implementation, and operations of urban rail projects with a view towards: -- Emphasizing the need for early studies and project planning; -- Making projects more sustainable (economically, socially, and environmentally); -- Improving socioeconomic returns and access to opportunities for users; -- Maximizing the value of private participation, where appropriate; and -- Building capacity within project implementing and managing institutions This Handbook provides experiential advice to tackle the technical, institutional, and financial challenges faced by decision makers considering urban rail projects. It brings together the expertise of World Bank staff and the input of numerous specialists to synthesize international 'good practices' and recommendations that are independent of commercial, financial political, or other interests. The material presented is intended as an honest-broker guide to maximize the impact and manage the challenges of urban rail systems in cities in both developed and developing countries. Rather than identify a single approach, this Handbook acknowledges the complexities and context necessary when approaching an urban rail development by helping to prepare decision makers to ask the right questions, consider the key issues, perform the necessary studies, apply adequate tools, and learn from international good practice all at the right time in the project development process. -
Publication
Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition
(Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank, 2016-09-13)The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development. -
Publication
Poverty, Inequality, and Evaluation: Changing Perspectives
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016)The basic premise of this book is that the conversation on the future of development needs to shift from a focus on poverty to that of inequality. The poverty emphasis is in an intellectual and political cul de sac. It does not address the fundamental question of why people are poor nor what can be done structurally and institutionally to reduce and eliminate it. The various chapters illustrate in the context of various countries and sectors around the world, the significant contributions that evaluators can make in terms of improvement of the analytical framework, analysis of the performance and results of specific programs and projects, as well as assessing and designing better public management systems in terms of poverty and inequality reduction. Beyond the specific contributions presented, three characteristics characterize those evaluations to be relevant for poverty and inequality analysis: a global-local approach: Global to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and consider cross-cutting issues, local to account for the diversity of countries, sectors, institutions and cultures considered; a problem-solving orientation: The issue evaluated is the core focus and determines the choice of evaluation methods to analyze this issue from a variety of angles; an evolutionary approach: Chapters presented are from iconoclasts who do not have any pre-established theory or school of thought to defend. This is the result of openness of mind and ability to adapt the analytical framework, the evaluation methods, and the interpretation of results in a constant interaction with the stakeholders. Such characteristics make evaluation a domain that can help understand better complex issues like poverty, inequality, vulnerability, and their interactions as well as propose a relevant and useful theory of change for public policies and projects to improve the plight of a large part of the world population in industrialized and developing countries alike. -
Publication
Logged On : Smart Government Solutions from South Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015)Logged On looks at mobile and smart phone technology through the lens of good government management. How will developing governments deliver goods and services that citizens care about? How will government in these countries leapfrog over traditional public management reforms to help reach out to and collaborate directly with the citizen? This book provides example after example where this has happened and how mobile technology has helped provide solutions to old problems. Our astounding revelation that mobile technology is helping to fight corruption in Pakistan, improve health delivery in Bangladesh, provide access to government by the ordinary citizen in India, and help monitor elections in Afghanistan. If this Is possible in some place in poor South Asian countries considered the most poor in the world, then how can these examples be spread to further in these counties or in other countries? Logged on provides a look back on conventional solutions that have mostly not worked and why mobile solutions are taking hold. The book offers a model called Smart Proactive Government based on a Feedback model being used in Punjab, Pakistan. The book also offers five solutions that are present in every successful mobile and smart phone example that the authors reviewed. -
Publication
Learning from Megadisasters : Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-06-26)The successes of Japan’s disaster risk management (DRM) system as well as the ways in which that system could be improved are reflected in the lessons drawn from the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) and presented in the initial reports from the Learning from Megadisasters project. The GEJE was the first disaster ever recorded that included an earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear power plant accident, a power supply failure, and a large-scale disruption of supply chains. Extreme disasters underscore the need for a holistic approach to DRM. Single-sector development planning cannot address the complexity of problems posed by natural hazards, let alone megadisasters, nor can such planning build resilience to threats. Faced with complex risks, Japan chose to build resilience by investing in preventative structural and nonstructural measures; nurturing a strong culture of knowledge and learning from past disasters; engaging in wise DRM regulation, legislation, and enforcement; and promoting cooperation among multiple stakeholders, between government agencies and ministries, between the private sector and the government, and among multiple levels of governance, from local to national to international. The book consolidates a set of 36 Knowledge Notes, research results of a joint study undertaken by the Government of Japan and the World Bank. These notes highlight key lessons learned in seven DRM thematic clusters—structural measures; nonstructural measures; emergency response; reconstruction planning; hazard and risk information and decision making; the economics of disaster risk, risk management, and risk financing; and recovery and relocation. Aimed at sharing Japanese cutting-edge knowledge with practitioners and decision makers, this book provides valuable guidance to other disaster-prone countries for mainstreaming DRM in their development policies and weathering their own natural disasters. -
Publication
Municipal Finances : A Handbook for Local Governments
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-06-18)This handbook aims to help local government practitioners, particularly staff of medium and large cities, improve strategic management of municipal finances. The demands for pragmatic knowledge are fueled in part by decentralization and fiscal pressures, as transfer of responsibilities from central to local governments are not often accompanied with an adequate transfer of resources. Practitioners seek ideas and tools to control expenditures, strengthen revenues, as well as to tap large external funds, achieve creditworthiness, and adopt good borrowing practices. Advocating sound municipal management based on improved governance and enhanced accountability, this handbook provides a comprehensive picture of municipal finances with a broad scope. The eight chapters cover such topics as fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental finances; management of metropolises; instruments of good financial management; management of revenues, expenditures, assets, and external resources; and performance measurement. Focusing on the perspectives of local officers, this handbook combines theory, pragmatic how-to advice, best practices from global experiences, and possible solutions. -
Publication
Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-05-07)Trade and transport corridors—major routes that facilitate the movement of people and goods between regions and between countries—have existed for millennia. They enable regions and countries to offer high-capacity transport systems and services that reduce trade and transport costs by creating economies of scale. Regional corridors are particularly important to landlocked countries, often providing the only overland routes to regional and international markets. Despite a long and complex history, guidance is often lacking on how to design, determine the components to include, and analyze the impact of corridor projects. The Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit fills this void. The Toolkit synthesizes the experiences of the World Bank and other development agencies in assessing, designing, implementing, and evaluating the impact of trade and transport corridor projects. It saves project developers the task of looking for the best available tools and ensures greater consistency to facilitate comparison and benchmarking. The Toolkit will also be of immense value to policy makers in provincial and national governments as well as regional economic institutions, for several reasons: • Corridors affect the space economy of countries; they are best developed with clear estimates of the spatial impacts that can be expected. • A corridor system has multiple components, including infrastructure (roads, railways, ports), transport and logistics services, and regulations; it is important to appreciate the linkages between them, particularly as the overall performance of a corridor is determined by the weakest component. • Many parties with varying interests and motivations have a stake in corridor development. The Toolkit argues for their full participation in corridor development processes and operations. The best functioning modern corridors in the world did not happen by accident; they are often the results of coordinated development and cooperation over many years. The general principles outlined in this Toolkit should help project teams, government officials, logistics service providers, and the trade community to better appreciate both the importance of good corridor project design and the challenges of, and possibilities from, improving corridor performance. -
Publication
Performance-Based Financing Toolkit
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-02-26)Performance-based financing (PBF) approaches have expanded rapidly in lower-and middle income countries, and especially in Africa. The number of countries has grown from three in 2006 to 32 in 2013. PBF schemes are flourishing and cause considerable demand for technical assistance in executing these health reforms in a rational and accountable manner. Currently there is a lack of knowledge among many health reformers of how to implement performance-based financing pilot projects, and scale them up intelligently. In a context of tremendous demand for solid design and implementation experience and given the rapid expansion of results-based financing (RBF) programs, there is an urgent need to build capacity in designing and implementing PBF programs. As yet there has been little attempt to gather the learning from these experiences together in one volume and, moreover, in a form that serves as a guide to implementers. This toolkit answers the most pressing issues related to the supply-side RBF programs of which PBF forms part.