Other ESW Reports

303 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/2209

This includes miscellaneous ESW types and pre-2003 ESW type reports that are subsequently completed and released.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 19

State-Owned Enterprises (SOES) in Oman: Review of SOE Governance Practices
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-08) World Bank
This report is part of a World Bank review of State-owned Enterprise (SOE) governance practices in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. The review is responding to the scarcity of data about such practices in the MENA region. It initially covers six countries, including: Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, and Tunisia. The objective of the reviews is to develop and disseminate knowledge about SOE governance in the interests of promoting continued SOE reforms in the region. This report provides an overview of the SOE landscape and history in Oman, followed by a review of key dimensions of SOE governance practices. This includes a review of the following dimensions: (i) The legal and regulatory frameworks for SOEs; (ii) State ownership arrangements; (iii) Performance management frameworks; (iv) SOE board structures and functioning; (v) Transparency and disclosure practices; (vi) Procurement policies and practices; and (vii) Climate reporting practices. The framework for the review is based on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for SOE Corporate Governance and the World Bank’s Integrated SOE Framework (iSOEF).
The Effects of Regulating Platfom-based Work on Employment Outcomes: A Review of the Empirical Evidence
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-31) Alzate, David
This brief is developed as part of a series and provides an overview of the empirical evidence on the impacts of regulatory and worker protection interventions related to digital work platforms. The theoretical and economic rationales for protecting workers against the market failures that surround digital platform work are discussed in Stoterau (2024). Another brief describes the experiences in various countries in adopting labor regulations or legal classifications from the legal standpoint (Hatayama and Swistak 2024). We bring complementary evidence and guidance to policy makers by reviewing the empirical evidence on the effects of introducing regulations.
Better Results through Learning and Adaptation for a Better World Bank Group: The FY24 Management Action Record
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-25) World Bank
Following the 2020 Management Action Record (MAR) reforms, World Bank Group (WBG) Management prepares an annual self-assessment of its progress toward implementing the full range of outstanding Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluation recommendations. The purpose of the Management Action Record (MAR) assessment system is to support accountability, learning, and adaptation for the WBG’s implementation of recommendations from IEG evaluations. This report is built on information gathering and sharing with IEG. In turn, IEG reviews Management’s self-assessment to judge progress toward achieving the outcomes of active recommendations. The recommendations involve, among other things, actions to enhance operational modalities, inform risk taking, improve guidance for staff, and improve results measurement systems. As part of the accountability function of the MAR, both Management’s self-assessment and IEG’s review are discussed with the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) annually. The 2024 Fiscal Year (FY24) MAR reports on progress in implementing 77 recommendations from 28 evaluations, with 32 new recommendations in the FY24 cycle.
Defueling Conflict Environment and Natural Resource Management as a Pathway to Peace: Executive Summary
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-20) World Bank
Fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), environmental degradation, and natural disasters are on the rise and threaten to reverse development gains. In the past decade, violent civil conflicts have tripled and the number of people living in proximity to conflict has nearly doubled, with forced displacement at a record high. The World Bank Group (WBG) Strategy for Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) 2020–2025 marks a shift in the World Bank’s work in fragile and conflict situations, as it adopts a more holistic approach to prevention. The Strategy seeks to enhance the World Bank Group’s effectiveness in supporting countries’ efforts to address the drivers and impacts of FCV and strengthen their resilience, especially for their most vulnerable and marginalized populations. The FCV Strategy explicitly recognizes the importance of climate change as a driver of FCV and as a threat multiplier, as well as the need to address the environmental impacts and drivers of FCV. Delivering on this shift toward preventing conflict underscores the importance of understanding the role the environment and natural resources can have. This report seeks to build a strong narrative on the need for the World Bank Group to engage and invest in environment, natural resource management, and climate change resilience in FCV-affected situations. It further aims at facilitating the integration of a conflict-sensitive lens into World Bank operations and programs addressing natural resource degradation and climate change. The report is divided in six sections: Section 1 sets the Background, Context, and Approach; Section 2 describes the risks associated with the interplay between natural resources, climate change, fragility, and conflict across the conflict cycle; Section 3 connects those causal chains to the delivery of the FCV Strategy across its four pillars; Section 4 showcases a suite of options to improve conflict-sensitive project design and implementation; and Section 5 presents an annotated questionnaire that serves as a complementary tool to the report.
Early Warning Systems in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence-affected Settings: Shielding Communities from Natural Hazards Amid Compounded Crises - World Bank White Paper for EWS Implementation in FCV Settings, 2024
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-26) World Bank; GFDRR
This study, led by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) teams working on the Disaster-FCV Nexus thematic area and the Hydromet Services and Early Warning Systems thematic area, aims to contribute to GFDRR’s overarching objective: to help low- and middle income countries understand and reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change. More specifically, the purpose of this report is to provide valuable insights into the nuances of early warning systems (EWS) implementation within fragile, conflict, and violence (FCV)-affected contexts against growing natural hazards, offering practical recommendations and identifying entry points for enhancing stakeholder coordination, optimizing resource allocation, and fostering community resilience. It is aimed at development practitioners, especially World Bank staff, who work with communities and governments to enhance the scaling-up of EWS coverage to populations living in contexts affected by FCV.
Tax Expenditure Manual
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-15) World Bank
This manual is a contribution to the rich body of literature on tax expenditures and aim to inform policymakers and policy debates on tax expenditures reform. In doing so, it builds on the existing knowledge and endeavors to provide a comprehensive guidance on key aspects of tax expenditure analysis. Considering that cross-country comparability of tax expenditure estimates is challenging due to differences in benchmarking, this manual specifically aims to provide guidance on how to benchmark some of the most common features of a tax system. This manual should be seen as a contribution to the vast ocean of knowledge on tax expenditures, rather than an exhaustive guide to all their complexities. This guidance endeavors to assist policy practitioners, especially in developing countries, in navigating and understandingtax expenditure issues.
The Knowledge Compact for Action: Transforming Ideas Into Development Impact - For a World Free of Poverty on a Livable Planet
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-07) World Bank
Today’s global challenges are bigger, more complex, and more intertwined than ever before, from the relentless grip of poverty and stubborn persistence of inequality to the devastations caused by climate disasters, fragility, pandemics, and conflicts. Financing and investments alone cannot solve these problems in a global context of higher debt and scarce resources. Now more than ever, clients are demanding innovative ideas and successful experiences from other countries to tackle the ongoing and emerging global crises, regain the development progress of past decades and move faster towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, recent breakthroughs in technology, including the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, offer enormous potential to revolutionize development work. Policymakers and practitioners across the globe are poised to benefit from new tools to innovate, act based on evidence and accelerate the transformation of new ideas into development outcomes that improve lives of the poor. This paper articulates the strategic direction of the Knowledge Compact for Action, which seeks to empower all WBG clients, public and private, by systematically making the latest development knowledge available to respond more effectively to increasingly complex development challenges. The Compact seizes the opportunity of the digital revolution, bringing together the wealth of data analytics, research and best practices accumulated by the WBG over decades and combining this knowledge with the WBG’s proven mix of public-private finance to power learning and innovative solutions. This includes capturing the tacit knowledge embedded in operations for policymakers and development practitioners to easily access lessons of development successes and failures in other countries. Ultimately, the Compact aims to take knowledge to a new level, placing it front and center of the WBG’s work to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet.
Local Governments Climate Finance Instruments - Global Experiences and Prospects in Developing Countries
(World Bank and UNCDF, 2024-04-15) World Bank; United Nations Capital Development Fund
Local governments—especially cities and municipalities—in developing countries will be at the forefront of confronting and mitigating the impacts of climate change, and they need substantial financing to address this challenge. However, they often lack the fiscal resources for such investments. To address this financing gap, they will need to utilize a variety of financing sources and instruments. This joint publication of the World Bank and the UN Capital Development Fund aims to help cities and local governments better understand the various climate finance instruments and sources available to them, including intergovernmental fiscal transfers, own-source revenues, municipal borrowing (loans and bonds), public-private partnerships and credit-enhancement instruments such as guarantees. It provides information on each of these instruments - organized in a conceptual framework – and highlights international experience and 18 case studies on their use from around the world. The report also recommends various actions that cities, local and national governments and development partners can take to increase access to these instruments to help meet climate investment needs in cities.
Timor-Leste and WTO Accession: Harnessing Momentum to Support Development Outcomes
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-27) Sauvé, Pierre; Lacey, Simon; Lakatos, Csilla
World Trade Organization (WTO) accession is a challenging process typically commanding a heavy price in terms of resources and time expended while also calling for the expense of non-trivial political capital by an acceding country’s policymakers. Nevertheless, gaining membership of the world trade body represents a once in a generation opportunity for acceding countries to embark upon and sustain a set of deep structural reforms seldom possible in the absence of binding policy commitments. Timor-Leste is a young nation facing a set of unique challenges as it nears the completion of its WTO accession process. While WTO and subsequently Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) accession can help Timor-Leste address and overcome many of the above challenges, neither of these outcomes can - nor should be expected to - produce miracles by themselves. This report considers the case for Timor-Leste to bring its quest for WTO accession to a successful conclusion. It advances a set of arguments designed to help the country’s policymakers in their dialogue with domestic stakeholders and constituents of the benefits that the Timorese economy and its citizens stand to derive from placing the country’s trade ties to the world market on a stable and predictable global footing. This report is divided into three parts. Part 1 offers a brief overview of Timor-Leste’s recent trade performance and the overall macro-economic context within which the country’s quest for WTO accession takes place. Part 2 provides an overview of the WTO accession process and its legal and institutional implications for Timor-Leste. Part 3 of the report focuses on WTO accession and how it can be leveraged to achieve long-run economic growth. The report concludes with a call for Timor-Leste to maintain the strong existing momentum of its accession journey while also managing expectations of the short-term impacts of WTO accession.
Partnering with the World Bank through Trust Funds and Umbrella 2.0 Programs: A Guide for Development Partners
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-14) World Bank
This Guide provides a brief overview of World Bank Trust Funds—what they are, what they fund, and the operating environment in which they are managed. It also describes the Umbrella 2.0 Program, an approach to organizing and managing trust funds for greater development impact. In addition, it highlights and provides links to key policies underpinning implementation of activities carried out by the World Bank or by recipients of its funds—policies that apply equally to activities funded by trust fund contributions.