Country Economic Memorandum
235 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 16
-
Publication
Poland Country Economic Memorandum: The Green Transformation in Poland – Opportunities and Challenges for Economic Growth
(Washington, DC, 2022)Poland’s economic development story is one of success: since the early 1990s, the country has transitioned to a market economy, integrated into the European Union economy and global supply chains and sustained robust growth, avoiding the middle-income trap and increasing the resilience of its economy. Poland has sustained strong growth over the past three decades, making substantial advances in converging towards the European Union (EU-27) average per capita income, although there is still a considerable gap in both productivity and income convergence when compared with aspirational peers. Poland successfully transitioned to an EU-integrated market economy, moving from upper middle-income to high-income status in less than a decade and a half. Its economy underwent a deep structural transformation, supported by cost-competitiveness, and is now well-diversified and more resilient to shocks. Long-term growth has been supported by increased total factor productivity (TFP), grounded in efficiency gains, although capital accumulation has remained the main contributor to growth. While capital deepening did occur, investments in Information Communication and Technology (ICT) and in intangible assets that have high growth potential lagged those of peers. A skilled labor force has contributed more to growth in the case of Poland than it did in peer countries. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has resulted in important learning losses, as observed throughout the world, and together with reversals in education reforms in recent years could weigh down on labor quality and productivity in the future.COVID-19 -
Publication
From Swimming in Sand to High and Sustainable Growth: A Roadmap to Reduce Distortions in the Allocation of Resources and Talent in the Pakistani Economy
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022)This report focuses on growth in Pakistan, and on key aspects of its proximate determinants: productivity, capital, and talent accumulation. Productivity is crucial in accounting for differences in standards of living across countries and time. In addition, and particularly at the level of development of Pakistan, factor accumulation, investment, and human capital, also matters. Specific and policy relevant questions around these broad themes are this report's center of attention. The underlying framework of analysis and orientation of public policy recommendations is what is known as the 'ABC' of growth. This 'ABC' implies improving allocative efficiency of resources and talent, encouraging business-to-business connections and spillovers, and strengthening firms' capabilities. Public policies oriented to create an enabling environment around these three pillars will be powerful in boosting sustainable growth. However, the efficient allocation of talent and resources, and the business-to business interactions leading to spillovers and the conditions to upgrade capabilities, are limited by economic distortions (or market failures) that inhibit the growth process, sometimes making it as difficult as swimming in sand. -
Publication
Bangladesh Country Economic Memorandum: Change of Fabric
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022)Bangladesh’s development progress over the past decades has been remarkable. Bangladesh has been among the fastest growing economies in the world. Economic development has translated into higher living standards and improved social and health outcomes. The next years will determine Bangladesh’s longer term development trajectory. The milestones ahead reflect the deep structural transformation of Bangladesh’s economy over the past decades, but also serve as a reminder that further transformation will be required for a prosperous future. Sustaining fast growth and addressing these global challenges will require overcoming three critical growth constraint. This report explores these constraints and proposes actionable reforms to sustain development. It is expected to inform the public and help the authorities design policies to achieve the goals set out in the eighth five year plan and Bangladesh vision 2041. The report focuses on three growth constraints: (i) diversifying exports and increasing competitiveness to reach the next development stage through export-led growth; (ii) mobilizing domestic and international savings to channel them toward productive investment; and (iii) upgrading urban areas, unleashing secondary cities, and improving connectivity to sustain structural transformation and increase productivity. In addition, the implications of digital development and climate change are explored as crosscutting themes across the three topics. -
Publication
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Development for Peace
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09)This report sheds light on the interlocked long-term territorial development challenges and the recently realized systemic risks affecting the Lake Chad region. It summarizes the findings of seven technical papers, each investigating different aspects of the interlinked challenges faced by the region. These studies are accompanied by complementary research on labor market and geospatial socioeconomic trends, as well as by a review of the thin literature on economic development across the region. In addition to presenting the main results of the technical papers, the report positions the findings in the broader context of an analytical framework depicting the feedback mechanisms between the region’s territorial development gaps and the self-reinforcing link to shocks, namely, violent conflict and climate change. This analytical framework is presented in Section 1.2. The rest of the report is structured as follows. Section 1.3 describes the main social and economic trajectories in the region. It reviews long-term demographic trends, suggesting. Section 1.4 argues that the low-growth, high-poverty equilibrium observed in the region is closely linked to the region’s economic geography. Section 1.5 discusses how the impact of climatic variation and violent conflict experienced in the region interlink with and exacerbate the territorial development challenges. Section 1.6 presents policy directions structured around four crosscutting themes: infrastructure, trade, governance, and natural resource management. The crosscutting nature of these themes encourages the exploration of potential synergies across challenge areas. The discussion in the section aims to inform policy-making efforts to strengthen territorial development and mitigate the impacts of conflict and climate change. Such endeavors can increase the likelihood of breaking free from the self-reinforcing negative mechanisms and boost the potential return of the region to a path of stability and inclusive economic development. -
Publication
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Technical Paper 6. Building Rural Development in the Lake Chad Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09)This paper examines the relationship between access to markets and land cultivation following Berg et al. (2018) using panel methods. Then, author contextualize these results within the broader recent development challenges of the Lake Chad region. The results provide evidence that an increase in market access is associated with an increase in cultivated land and is positively associated with an increase in local agricultural GDP. Even so, conflict from the rise of Boko Haram in the past decade can attenuate gains whereby the proximity to conflict events in the previous year is associated with less cropland across the entire region and less night time lights from over a hundred local markets nearby Lake Chad. This paper makes two contributions. First, the importance of market access as part of economic development is well known, yet advancements in measurement of agricultural activity derived from satellite data and recent data are necessary to gain current insight given developments in the region. Second, this paper contextualizes the findings of market access with local conditions given the numerous conflict events in the past decade from Boko Haram. The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section two describes the data sources while section three presents the empirical framework, section four presents the results, and section five concludes. -
Publication
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Technical Paper 2. Climate Change, Rural Livelihoods, and Urbanization - Evidence from the Permanent Shrinking of Lake Chad
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09)There is a vast economic literature studying the effects of climate change on long-run growth, migration, urbanization, and human capital, among several other outcomes. The paper is structured as follows: Section 3.2 dives into some of the physical characteristics of Lake Chad and its water sources. Section 3.3 introduces our novel data. Section 3.4 presents the hypothesis and empirical strategy behind our analysis. Sections 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 present results on total population, cities and roads, respectively. Finally, section 3.8 concludes. -
Publication
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Technical Paper 5. Conflict and Climate Change in the Lake Chad Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09)Peace and security are basic conditions for economic and social development. Conflict, on the other hand, can reverse years of economic growth and induce long-term harm on almost all aspects of development. For the past decade, the Lake Chad region has been the setting of conflicts between government forces and armed groups, most notably the Boko Haram. Although the intensity of fighting has petered off in recent years, the conflict has spread from Northern Nigeria and now affects all four countries of the region. Due to the paramount importance of avoiding armed conflict, a large economic literature exists that seeks to find explanations for the onset and prevalence of conflict in developing countries. Blattman and Miguel [2010] list some of the most common theories of conflict including competition for resources, economic grievances, and the possibility of looting. This paper attempts to shed light on the geographical distribution of conflict and its climatic determinants in the Lake Chad region following a sub-national approach where readily available spatial data is employed at two different units of aggregation: Firstly, 90 second level administrative areas, and secondly, around 5,318 grid cells covering the same region. Exposure to conflict is here defined as the intensity (for districts) or incidence (for cells) of conflict in a given unit each year. Parts of the population may not be directly exposed by this definition, but since the units of analysis are relatively small, most will be affected in some ways, for instance by safety concerns when visiting the nearest towns to trade or by the general economic consequences. -
Publication
Republic of the Marshall Islands Country Economic Memorandum and Public Expenditure Review: Maximizing Opportunities, Enhancing Sustainability
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-20)This joint Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) and Public Expenditure Review (PER) aims to support the Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (GoRMI) to identify a prioritized and sequenced set of reforms to drive increased economic growth, resilience, and fiscal sustainability. The study has two objectives. First, to improve understanding of the challenges, opportunities, and risks to achieving sustainable economic growth and job creation in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). Second, to improve the management of public resources to support long-term economic development, fiscal sustainability, and service delivery. The assessment aims to balance the need for reform to drive higher prosperity and resilience with GoRMI’s limited capacity to design and implement reforms and provide public goods and services. The reform priorities identified are also consistent with the RMI’s National Strategic Plan 2020-30, which articulates the nation’s vision to build a resilient, productive, and self-supportive RMI. This Executive Summary is structured in three sections. The first section provides a brief background to RMI and the structure of the economy. The second section summarizes the key issues and challenges to achieving GoRMI’s long-term development objectives under five themes: (i) the management of public finances; (ii) public service delivery; (iii) the fisheries sector; (iv) the labor market and labor mobility; and (v) disaster resilience and climate change. The final section outlines key recommendations under the same five themes. -
Publication
Mines and Minds: Leveraging Natural Wealth to Invest in People and Institutions
(World Bank, Ulaanbaatar, 2020-09)Mines represent Mongolia’s present, while minds - broadly defined to include people and institutions - are its future. Current policies are excessively focused on preserving the mining-driven prosperity at the risk of future stagnation. Such complacency is ill-timed when climate change concerns and the COVID-19 shock require an acceleration of structural transformation. Mongolia faces deep-rooted, interrelated challenges: macroeconomic policy mistakes have amplified external shocks, an oligopolistic ownership structure and limited competition have led firms to become more inward-looking and less inclined to innovate, and gross underutilization of human capital - evident by an unprecedented exodus of young and educated workers to foreign countries - has eroded the foundation of a diversified economy. -
Publication
Vibrant Vietnam: Forging the Foundation of a High-Income Economy
(World Bank, Hanoi, 2020-05)Vietnam’s development strategy requires an urgent upgrade. Past growth has been impressive. But as a favorable domestic and international environment changes, future growth must be productivity-driven—obtaining more and higher quality output from firms, infrastructure, workers and natural resources. The World Bank’s Vibrant Vietnam report discusses priorities for an upgraded growth model based on extensive consultations, international experience and academic findings.