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World Bank Group Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence 2020–2025
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-02-27) World Bank Group
By 2030, more than half of the world’s extreme poor will live in countries characterized by fragility, conflict, and violence. Preventing and mitigating fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) is central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Bank Group’s (WBG) twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. The objective of the FCV Strategy is to enhance the WBG’s effectiveness to support countries in addressing the drivers and impacts of FCV and strengthening their resilience, especially for the most vulnerable and marginalized populations.
High-Performance Health Financing for Universal Health Coverage: Driving Sustainable, Inclusive Growth in the 21st Century
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06-27) World Bank Group
The majority of developing countries will fail to achieve their targets for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the health- and poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unless they take urgent steps to strengthen their health financing. The UHC financing agenda fits squarely within the core mission of the G20 to promote sustainable, inclusive growth and to mitigate potential risks to the global economy. Closing the substantial UHC financing gap in 54 low and lower middle-income countries will require a strong mix of domestic and international investment. G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors can help countries seize the opportunities of high-performance health financing by adopting and steering a UHC financing resilience and sustainability agenda.
World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-01-30) World Bank Group
Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? This book addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.
High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05-03) World Bank Group
The impacts of climate change will be channeled primarily through the water cycle, with consequences that could be large and uneven across the globe. Water-related climate risks cascade through food, energy, urban, and environmental systems. Growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding cities will converge upon a world where the demand for water rises exponentially, while supply becomes more erratic and uncertain. They will jeopardize growth prospects in the regions worst affected and in some of the poorest countries. These challenges are not insurmountable, however, and smart policies that induce water-use efficiency, align incentives across regional and trading partners, and invest in adaptive technologies can go a long way toward reducing or eliminating these negative effects.
World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-01-13) World Bank Group
The 2016 World Development Report shows that while the digital revolution has forged ahead, its “analog complements”—the regulations that promote entry and competition, the skills that enable workers to access and then leverage the new economy, and the institutions that are accountable to citizens—have not kept pace. And when these analog complements to digital investments are absent, the development impact can be disappointing.
Global Economic Prospects, January 2016: Spillovers Amid Weak Growth
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-01-06) World Bank Group
The January 2016 edition of Global Economic Prospects discusses current global and regional economic developments and prospects, analyzing key challenges and opportunities confronting developing countries. This volume addresses, among other topics, spillovers from large emerging markets and macroeconomic vulnerabilities during resource development. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report. Semiannually (January and June), it examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on developing countries. The report includes analysis of topical policy challenges faced by developing countries through in-depth research in the January edition and shorter analytical pieces in the June edition.
Principles for Public Credit Guarantee Schemes for SMEs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12) World Bank Group
Access to finance, particularly credit, is widely recognized as problematic for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), hampering their growth and development. To address this challenge, many governments around the world intervene in SME credit markets through credit guarantee schemes (CGSs). A CGS offers risk mitigation to lenders by taking a share of the lenders’ losses on SME loans in case of default. CGSs can contribute to expand access to finance for SMEs. Yet they may bring limited value added and prove costly if they are not designed and implemented well. There have been efforts in recent years to identify good practices for CGSs, but the international community still lacks a common set of principles or standards that can help governments establish, operate, and evaluate CGSs for SMEs. The Principles for Public Credit Guarantees for SMEs are filling this gap. The Principles provide a generally accepted set of good practices, which can serve as a global reference for the design, execution, and evaluation of public CGSs around the world. The Principles propose appropriate governance and risk management arrangements, as well as operational conduct rules for CGSs, which can lead to improved outreach and additionality along with financial sustainability. Developed through extensive consultations with stakeholders, the Principles draw from both the literature on good practices for CGSs and sound practices implemented by a number of successful CGSs around the world.
Improving the Quality of Financial Intermediation in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries
(Washington, DC, 2015-06) World Bank Group
This engagement note provides a snapshot of financial development in the countries of the GulfCooperation Council (GCC), Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and identifies key areas of the financial sector reform agenda where the World Bank Group (WBG) through the Finance Markets Global Practice (FMGP) can provide its support, in particular through the provision of analytical services and advisory (ASA). A key challenge for GCC countries is to diversify their economic structures, increase the role of the private sector, improve the efficiency of the government and reform the educational system and the labor market. This is essential to create employment opportunities for a young and growing domestic population. In this context, the development of an efficient, stable and inclusive financial sector is a policy objective in itself and a necessary conduit to a more diversified and productive economic system. Against this backdrop, this engagement note suggests that improving the quality of financial intermediation in GCC economies is a balancing act between enhancing access and preserving stability. Accordingly, it detects and discusses several areas of engagement for WBG which are consistent with the financial sector reform agenda of the region. In particular, based on the expertise and delivery capacity of WBG, particularly of FMGP, this engagement note suggests that WBG target ASA in the following areas: (i) financial infrastructure, particularly insolvency regimes, creditor rights and payment and settlement systems; (ii) banking competition; (iii) government debt capital market development, including sukuk; (iv) credit guarantee schemes for SMEs; and (v) macro prudential supervision.
Global Economic Prospects, January 2015 : Having Fiscal Space and Using It
(Washington, DC, 2015-01-13) World Bank Group
Global growth again disappointed in 2014 but a lackluster recovery is underway, with increasingly divergent prospects in major economies. Looking ahead, growth is expected to rise slowly, supported by continued recovery in high-income countries and receding domestic headwinds in developing economies. Weak global trade growth and lower commodity prices are projected to persist while financial conditions will likely tighten gradually. Risks to the outlook are still tilted to the downside. The stability of remittances may help some of the lowest-income countries weather shocks. In some developing economies, monetary policy challenges may be attenuated if falling commodity prices reduce inflationary pressures. Fiscal stimulus could effectively support growth if there is sufficient fiscal space. Some developing countries, however, have to rebuild fiscal space to preserve their ability to implement countercyclical fiscal policy, which has served them well over the decade. Both high-income and developing countries need to undertake structural reforms that promote growth and job creation and help achieve poverty reduction goals. The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report. On a twice yearly basis (January and June), it examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on developing countries. The report includes analysis of topical policy challenges faced by developing countries through extensive research in the January edition and shorter pieces in the June edition.
World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015) World Bank Group
Every policy relies on explicit or implicit assumptions about how people make choices. Those assumptions typically rest on an idealized model of how people think, rather than an understanding of how everyday thinking actually works. This year’s World Development Report argues that a more realistic account of decision-making and behavior will make development policy more effective. The Report emphasizes what it calls 'the three marks of everyday thinking.' In everyday thinking, people use intuition much more than careful analysis. They employ concepts and tools that prior experience in their cultural world has made familiar. And social emotions and social norms motivate much of what they do. These insights together explain the extraordinary persistence of some social practices, and rapid change in others. They also offer new targets for development policy. A richer understanding of why people save, use preventive health care, work hard, learn, and conserve energy provides a basis for innovative and inexpensive interventions. The insights reveal that poverty not only deprives people of resources but is an environment that shapes decision making, a fact that development projects across the board need to recognize. The insights show that the psychological foundations of decision making emerge at a young age and require social support. The Report applies insights from modern behavioral and social sciences to development policies for addressing poverty, finance, productivity, health, children, and climate change. It demonstrates that new policy ideas based on a richer view of decision-making can yield high economic returns. These new policy targets include: the choice architecture (for example, the default option); the scope for social rewards; frames that influence whether or not a norm is activated; information in the form of rules of thumb; opportunities for experiences that change mental models or social norms. Finally, the Report shows that small changes in context have large effects on behavior. As a result, discovering which interventions are most effective, and with which contexts and populations, inherently requires an experimental approach. Rigor is needed for testing the processes for delivering interventions, not just the products that are delivered.