Stand alone books

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An Investment Perspective on Global Value Chains
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-05-13) Qiang, Christine Zhenwei; Liu, Yan; Steenbergen, Victor; Heher, Ulla; Paganini, Monica; Eltgen, Maximilian Philip; Chong, Yew Keat
This book examines the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in global value chains (GVCs). To stimulate economic transformation through GVCs, policy makers in developing countries need to better understand the business strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs), internationalization pathways for domestic firms, and how policies can create a favorable environment for both types of firms. Part I brings together the latest theories and empirical evidence to illustrate the mutually reinforcing relationship between FDI and GVC participation. It argues that MNCs have driven the phenomenal rise of GVCs in the past three decades as they have unbundled production processes and spread their networks on a global scale. Domestic firms benefit considerably from their participation in GVCs as they learn from MNCs through investment, partnerships, or trade. Part II includes six case studies examining the approaches of developing countries to leveraging FDI to stimulate and facilitate GVC participation and upgrading. The cases include Kenya (horticulture), Honduras (apparel), Malaysia (electronics), and Mauritius (tourism). Another case focuses on the digital economy for the Republic of Korea, India, and China. Each case study presents a different approach by which policy makers have leveraged FDI to stimulate and facilitate GVC participation and upgrading. A quantitative case study on Rwanda and West Bengal, India, uses firm- and transaction-level data to provide new insights into the dynamics between MNCs and domestic firms in selected value chains. The report also discusses the recent COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its potential impact on FDI and GVCs. The outbreak has triggered new questions about GVCs and accelerated precrisis global trends such as digitalization and economic nationalism. How MNCs and their supplier firms respond to the supply and demand shocks as well as policy uncertainties will play a critical role in crisis responses and recovery.
The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021: The Potential to Scale
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-01-19) Andrews, Colin; de Montesquiou, Aude; Arevalo Sanchez, Ines; Dutta, Puja Vasudeva; Paul, Boban Varghese; Samaranayake, Sadna; Heisey, Janet; Clay, Timothy; Chaudhary, Sarang; Archibald, Edward; Bossuroy, Thomas; Premand, Patrick; Samaranayake, Sadna; Singh, Paramveer; Ranjan, Ajit; Guha, Kshovan; Patel, Gautam; Whisson, Isabel; Haque, Rozina; Kedroske, Julie; Sulaiman, Munshi; Matin, Imran; Das, Narayan; Hashemi, Syed; Asensio, Raul
The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 sheds light on one of the most intractable challenges faced by development policy makers and practitioners: transforming the economic lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Economic inclusion programs are a bundle of coordinated, multidimensional interventions that support individuals, households, and communities so they can raise their incomes and build their assets. Programs targeting the extreme poor and vulnerable groups are now under way in 75 countries. This report presents data and evidence from 219 of these programs, which are reaching over 90 million beneficiaries. Governments now lead the scale-up of economic inclusion interventions, often building on pre-existing national programs such as safety nets, livelihoods and jobs, and financial inclusion, and 93 percent of the total beneficiaries are covered by government programs. The report offers four important contributions: • A detailed analysis of the nature of these programs, the people living in extreme poverty and vulnerability who they support, and the organizational challenges and opportunities inherent in designing and leading them. • An evidence review of 80 quantitative and qualitative evaluations of economic inclusion programs in 37 countries. • The first multicountry costing study including both government-led and other economic inclusion programs, indicating that programs show potential for cost efficiencies when integrated into national systems. • Four detailed case studies featuring programs underway in Bangladesh, India, Peru, and the Sahel, which highlight the programmatic and institutional adaptations required to scale in quite diverse contexts. Data from the report are available on the PEI Data Portal (http://www.peiglobal.org) where users can explore and submit data to build on this baseline.
The WEB of Transport Corridors in South Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-07-10) Asian Development Bank; UKAID; JICA; World Bank Group
This book develops a holistic appraisal methodology to ensure that economic benefits of investments in transport corridors are amplified and more widely spread, and possible negative impacts such as congestion, environmental degradation, and other unintended consequences are minimized. It focuses on South Asia—not only as one of the world’s most populous and poorest regions—but as a hinge between East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The book is aimed at politicians, technocrats, civil society organizations, and businesses. It presents case studies of past and recent corridor initiatives, provides rigorous analysis of the literature on the spatial impact of corridors, and offers assessments of corridor investment projects supported by international development organizations. A series of spotlights examines such issues as private sector co-investment; the impacts of corridors on small enterprises and women; and issues with implementing cross-border corridors. The 'WEB' in the title stands for both the wider economic benefits (WEB) that transport corridors are expected to generate and the complex web of transport corridors that has been proposed. The appraisal methodology introduced in this book shows how the web of interconnected elements around corridors can be disentangled and the most promising corridor proposals—the ones with the greatest wider economic benefits—can be selected.
The 1.5 Billion People Question: Food, Vouchers, or Cash Transfers?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018) Alderman, Harold; Gentilini, Ugo; Yemtsov, Ruslan; Alderman, Harold; Gentilini, Ugo; Yemtsov, Ruslan; Abdalla, Moustafa; Al-Shawarby, Sherine; Bhattacharya, Shrayana; Falcao, Vanita Leah; Hastuti; Hernández, Citlalli; Oliveira, Victor; Prell, Mark; Puri, Raghav; Scott, John; Smallwood, David; Sooriyamudali, Chinthani; Sumarto, Sudarno; Tiehen, Laura; Tilakaratna, Ganga; Timmer, Peter
Most of the people in low and middle-income countries covered by social protection receive assistance in the form of in-kind food. The origin of such support is rooted in countries’ historical pursuit of three interconnected objectives, namely attaining self-sufficiency in food, managing domestic food prices, and providing income support to the poor. This volume sheds light on the complex, bumpy and non-linear process of how some flagship food-based social protection programs have evolved over time, and how they currently work. In particular, it lays out the broad trends in reforms, including a growing move from in-kind modalities to cash transfers, from universality to targeting, and from agriculture to social protection. Case studies from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and United States document the specific experiences of managing the process of reform and implementation, including enhancing our understanding of the opportunities and challenges with different social protection transfer modalities.
Tales from the Development Frontier : How China and Other Countries Harness Light Manufacturing to Create Jobs and Prosperity
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-09) Dinh, Hinh T.; Zafar, Ali; Wang, Lihong; Mavroeidi, Eleonora
Despite widespread agreement among economists that labor-intensive manufacturing has contributed mightily to rapid development in China and other fast-growing economies, most developing countries have had little success in raising the share of manufacturing in production, employment, or exports. Tales from the Development Frontier recounts efforts to establish light manufacturing clusters in several Asian and African countries, looking in particular at China. A companion volume to Light Manufacturing in Africa—which laid out a strategy for injecting new industrial growth nodes into African economies—Tales from the Development Frontier focuses on the six main binding constraints to competitiveness that nascent light manufacturing industries must overcome in developing countries: the availability, cost, and quality of inputs; access to industrial land; access to finance; trade logistics; entrepreneurial capabilities, both technical and managerial; and worker skills. The volume systematically explores potential growth opportunities in light manufacturing in a carefully selected subset of industries: agribusiness, apparel, leather goods, wood-working, and metal products. It specifies the constraints that need to be addressed before local and international entrepreneurs can take advantage of the latent comparative advantage available to many low-income economies in the target industries. It also proposes policies to ease the constraints—policies that can open the door to rapid increases in industrial output, employment, productivity, and exports. The outcomes described in this volume include both inspiring successes and miserable failures in addressing the binding constraints in the identified sectors. These examples reveal how and why industrial development efforts in poor countries—where, by definition, underlying conditions are far from ideal—can accelerate growth. Most of the firms described in a series of case studies started from a very simple and modest base in an environment full of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. With its rich array of new material, this book will support the ongoing research of policy analysts focused on China and other developing countries. Above all, the volume aims to embolden business entrepreneurs and government officials in low-income countries to pursue newly emerging opportunities to expand and accelerate the growth of light manufacturing in their home economies.
Until Debt Do Us Part : Subnational Debt, Insolvency, and Markets
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-02-13) Canuto, Otaviano; Canuto, Otaviano; Liu, Lili
With decentralization and urbanization, the debts of state and local governments and of quasi-public agencies have grown in importance. Rapid urbanization in developing countries requires large-scale infrastructure financing to help absorb influxes of rural populations. Borrowing enables state and local governments to capture the benefits of major capital investments immediately and to finance infrastructure more equitably across multiple generations of service users. With debt comes the risk of insolvency. Subnational debt crises have reoccurred in both developed and developing countries. Restructuring debt and ensuring its sustainability confront moral hazard and fiscal incentives in a multilevel government system; individual subnational governments might free-ride common resources, and public officials at all levels might shift the cost of excessive borrowing to future generations. This book brings together the reform experiences of emerging economies and developed countries. Written by leading practitioners and experts in public finance in the context of multilevel government systems, the book examines the interaction of markets, regulators, subnational borrowers, creditors, national governments, taxpayers, ex-ante rules, and ex-post insolvency systems in the quest for subnational fiscal discipline. Such a quest is intertwined with a country’s historical, political, and economic context. The formal legal framework interacts with political reality to influence the dynamics of and incentives for reform. Often, the resolution of a subnational debt crisis unfolds in the context of macroeconomic stabilization and structural reforms. The book includes reforms that have not been covered by previous literature, such as those of China, Colombia, France, Hungary, Mexico, and South Africa. The book also presents a comprehensive review of how the United States developed its debt market for state and local local governments through a series of reforms that are path dependent, including the reforms and lessons learned following state defaults in the 1840s and the debates that shaped the enactment of Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code in 1937. Looking forward, pressures on subnational finance are likely to continue—from the fragility of global recovery, the potentially higher cost of capital, refinancing risks, and sovereign risks. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to know the challenges and reform options in debt restructuring, insolvency frameworks, and public debt market development.
Matching Contributions for Pensions : A Review of International Experience
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013) Hinz, Richard; Holzmann, Robert; Tuesta, David; Takayama, Noriyuki; Hinz, Richard; Holzmann, Robert; Tuesta, David; Takayama, Noriyuki
Establishing robust, equitable, and effective social protection is essential to reducing poverty and boosting prosperity at all levels of development. The demographic transition that has already transformed most high-income societies will exert similar and growing pressures on others, reinforcing the role of pensions and savings for old age as a central pillar of social protection systems. One possible solution that has emerged in recent years that offers the potential to overcome this challenge is the provision of contribution matches to provide an immediate and powerful incentive for participation in pension saving systems. Originating in several high-income settings there are now a number of innovations and substantial experience in low-income countries in using this design to stimulate coverage and savings. This experience now provides a rich opportunity for learning, not just from the longer experience of a few high-income countries but also the more meaningful South-South learning across developing countries.This volume, which reviews the experience with matching pension contributions across the range of countries that have used the design, makes an initial, but critically important investment in this learning process. The description and analysis of this experience which is the product of partnership and collaboration across many public and private institutions provide an invaluable early assessment of the design to inform policy makers and practitioners as well as serve as a model for the kind of cooperation that will be required to address this difficult challenge. At the World Bank, we look forward to being part of this learning process of how to best provide old-age security for all.
Cleaner Hearths, Better Homes : New Stoves for India and the Developing World
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press and World Bank, 2012) Barnes, Douglas F.; Kumar, Priti; Openshaw, Keith
For people in developed countries, burning fuel wood in an open hearth evokes nostalgia and romance. But in developing countries, the harsh reality is that several billion people, mainly women and children, face long hours collecting fuel wood, which is burned inefficiently in traditional biomass stoves. The smoke emitted into their homes exposes them to pollution levels 10-20 times higher than the maximum standards considered safe in developed countries. And the problem is not out of the ordinary. The majority of people in developing countries at present cannot afford the transition to modern fuels. Today, close to one half of the world's people still depend on biomass energy to meet their cooking and heating needs. This book should be of interest to policymakers and scientists across a broad spectrum of disciplines from health, environment, and economics to sociology, anthropology, and physics. Indeed, the hands of many specialists are required to ensure successful stove programs, which call for social marketing, stove engineering, development of standards, promotion of private and commercial enterprises, and appropriate subsidy schemes. That the book's authors represent diverse disciplines sociology, physics, and forest economics underscores the range of perspectives needed to tackle the issues involved in the commercial promotion of improved stoves. The impetus for writing this book started at the end of a World Bank project on the health implications of indoor air pollution, which coincided with the Government of India's (GoI) cancellation of its 20-year program on improved stoves. The government's decision came as no surprise, given the program's mixed results.
Inclusive Green Growth : The Pathway to Sustainable Development
(Washington, DC, 2012) World Bank
As the global population heads toward 9 billion by 2050, decisions made today will lock countries into growth patterns that may or may not be sustainable in the future. Care must be taken to ensure that cities and roads, factories and farms are designed, managed, and regulated as efficiently as possible to wisely use natural resources while supporting the robust growth developing countries still need. Economic development during the next two decades cannot mirror the previous two: poverty reduction remains urgent but growth and equity can be pursued without relying on policies and practices that foul the air, water, and land. Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development makes the case that greening growth is necessary, efficient, and affordable. Yet spurring growth without ensuring equity will thwart efforts to reduce poverty and improve access to health, education, and infrastructure services. Countries must make strategic investments and farsighted policy changes that acknowledge natural resource constraints and enable the world's poorest and most vulnerable to benefit from efficient, clean, and resilient growth. Like other forms of capital, natural assets are limited and require accounting, investment, and maintenance in order to be properly harnessed and deployed. By maximizing co-benefits and avoiding lock-in, by promoting smarter decisions in industry and society, and by developing innovative financing tools for green investment, we can afford to do the things we must.
Changing the Industrial Geography in Asia : The Impact of China and India
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010) Yusuf, Shahid; Nabeshima, Kaoru
The focus of this volume is on China and India. The authors see them as the principal beneficiaries of the first upheaval, roughly bookended by the crises of 1997-98 and of 2008-09, and as being among the prime movers whose economic footprints will expand most rapidly in the coming decades. If these two countries do come close to realizing their considerable ambitions, their neighbors in Asia and their trading partners throughout the world must be ready for major adjustments. The changes in industrial geography and in the pattern of trade since the mid-1990s have already been far-reaching. Nothing on a comparable scale occurred during the preceding two decades of the 20th century. These developments offer instructive clues concerning the possible direction of changes in the future. However, in the interest of manageability, the author analysis is centered on the dynamics of industrialization, as these have a large bearing on the course of development. Within this context, reference is made to trade, foreign direct investment, and the building of technological capabilities, which together constitute a major subset of the factors responsible for the shape not only of the industrial geography of the past but also of the industrial geography yet to come. The striking feature of development in South and East Asia in the second half of the 20th century is the degree to which Japan dominated the industrial landscape and how the Japanese model triggered the first wave of industrialization in four East Asian economies-the Republic of Korea; Taiwan, China; Hong Kong, China; and Singapore. These four so-called tiger economies were the early starters, and each has become a mature industrial economy. Indeed, Hong Kong, having transferred almost all of its manufacturing activities to the Pearl River Delta, has morphed into a postindustrial economy.