08. Working Papers

12,495 items available

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This collection includes high-quality, informal series and other mixed content collections (typically of article-length items). These are often works in progress disseminated for discussion purposes and some of these papers have not been peer reviewed externally. The book-sized titles in the formally-published World Bank Working Papers series can be found under Books.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 12495
  • Publication
    Empowering Adolescent Girls through Safe Spaces and Accompanying Measures in Côte d’Ivoire
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-13) Boulhane, Othmane; Boxho, Claire; Kanga, Désiré; Koussoube, Estelle; Rouanet, Léa
    This study uses a cluster-randomized controlled trial to investigate the effects of a large-scale women and girls empowerment program on sexual and reproductive health and empowerment outcomes in Côte d’Ivoire. The study assesses and compares the impact of diverse strategies aimed at equipping girls with life skills and sexual and reproductive health knowledge, provided through well-established safe spaces, in isolation or in combination with livelihood support interventions, or with initiatives designed to engage boys and men and community and religious leaders. The findings show that one year after the end of the interventions, safe spaces alone have a moderate impact on girls’ empowerment, while safe spaces combined with husbands’ and future husbands’ clubs are the most impactful. Combining safe spaces with livelihood support interventions leads to improvements in adolescent girls’ employment outcomes, as expected. Finally, the findings show that engaging leaders in the context of safe spaces interventions yields mixed results on girls’ empowerment.
  • Publication
    Egypt - Gender Equality and Climate Change: Background Note to the Climate Change and Development Report
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-12) World Bank Group
    Egypt’s National Climate Change Strategy 2050, launched in May 2022 sets out an ambitious and comprehensive 324-billion-dollar plan to support a stronger, greener Egyptian economy. The Strategy integrates the climate change dimension into the general planning of all sectors in the country, especially in areas such as energy, transportation, agriculture, and water resources. In addition, the climate summit COP27 held in Egypt in November 2022 gave new impetus to Egypt’s path to green transformation when the Government announced a 500 million dollars deal with Germany, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the U.S. to shrink its fossil gas consumption and expand renewable energy. COP27 also underscored the need for countries to secure prosperity and decent jobs while delivering on the goals of greening the economy through a just transition. Egypt has committed to turning climate action into an economic and social development opportunity, for example, by reskilling and skilling workers in many new jobs in the green economy, enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change, and alleviating the associated negative impacts. This policy brief aims to contribute to the discussion on how gender equality can become an integral part of green economy strategies in Egypt and how equal access for women and men to decent green jobs can be enhanced. The brief also aims to discuss and move forward the agenda on delivering a gender transformative and inclusive just transition in climate-related issues. It provides an overview of the gendered impacts of climate change in selected vulnerable sectors in Egypt and highlights women’s role in climate resilience while identifying barriers and opportunities for gender-responsive climate action.
  • Publication
    Right to Education: Forced Migration and Child Education Outcomes
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-12) Vargas, Juan F.; Rozo, Sandra V.
    About a third of the 7.7 million Venezuelans who have left their country due to political and economic turmoil have settled in neighboring Colombia. The extent to which the Colombian schooling system can absorb the massive demand for education of Venezuelan children is key for their future trajectory of human capital accumulation, as well as that of Colombian students in receiving communities. This paper estimates the effect of Venezuelan migration on educational outcomes of children living in settlement municipalities in Colombia, distinguish between the effect of the migration shock on native and migrant students. Specifically, it estimates the effect of the migration shock on school enrollment, dropout/promotion rates and standardized test scores. The identification relies on a plausibly exogenous measure of the predicted migration shock faced by each Colombian municipality every year. The findings show that the migration shock increased the enrollment of Venezuelan students in both public and private schools and in all school grades, but also generated negative spillovers related to failing promotion rates and increasing dropout. This paper documents that these negative effects are explained by the differential enrollment capacity of schools, as well as by the deterioration of key school inputs.
  • Publication
    Heading Towards 1.5ºC - Impacts on Labor Demand in Selected Countries
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-12) Lehr, Ulrike; Politt, Hector
    The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) closed with a statement signaling the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era, a just and equitable transition, deep emissions cuts, and scaled-up finance. Decarbonization and green transition more broadly are recognized as essential to green recovery and will inevitably be implemented, but governments struggle with the how and when and how to pay for policy questions. Often, the green transition is seen more as a challenge than an opportunity for development. One policy instrument to move to a low-carbon pathway is a carbon tax, which would disincentivize carbon-intensive activities, and the revenues generated could be recycled to finance climate actions. When climate actions, such as renewable energy investments and energy efficiency programs, are designed in a way that stimulates job creation, a double dividend can be achieved: lower emissions and more jobs. The paper assesses different policy designs around a carbon tax regime and shows simulation results for direct and indirect implications for jobs using the MINDSET model, a price endogenous MRIO hosted by the World Bank.
  • Publication
    Flood Protection and Land Value Creation: Not All Resilience Investments Are Created Equal
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-11) Avner, Paolo; Viguié, Vincent; Jafino, Bramka Arga; Hallegatte, Stephane
    This paper investigates the land value creation potential from flood mitigation investments in a theoretical and applied setting, using the urban area of Buenos Aires as a case study. It contributes to the literature on the wider economic benefits of government interventions and the dividends of resilience investments. Using a simple urban economics framework that represents land and housing markets, it finds that not all flood mitigation interventions display the same potential for land value creation: where land is more valuable (city centers for example), the benefits of resilience are higher. The paper also provides ranges for land value creation potential from the flood mitigation works in Buenos Aires under various model specifications. Although the estimates vary largely depending on model parameters and specifications, in many cases the land value creation would be sufficient to justify the investments. This result is robust even in the closed city configuration with conservative flood damage estimates, providing that the parameters remain reasonably close to the values obtained from the calibration. Finally, acknowledging that fully calibrating and running an urban simulation model is data greedy and time intensive—even a simple model as proposed here—this research also proposes reduced form expressions that can provide approximations for land value creation from flood mitigation investments and can be used in operational contexts.
  • Publication
    Environmental Policy under Weak Institutions
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-11) Karayalcin, Cem; Onder, Harun
    Developing countries are facing mounting pressures to incorporate environmental concerns into their policy reform agendas. This paper finds that common environmental policies, such as levying taxes to reduce the excessive exploitation of natural assets, can be self-defeating when (i) institutions are weak and (ii) the general equilibrium effects of such policy actions are overlooked. This seemingly paradoxical result is driven by fundamental mechanisms in structural transformation frameworks, without the need for strong assumptions. It also carries a clear policy implication: environmental policies should be considered within a country’s broader development context, rather than in isolation.
  • Publication
    Reviewing Assessment Tools for Measuring Country Statistical Capacity
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-11) Pullinger, John; Serajuddin, Umar; Stacy, Brian; Dang, Hai-Anh H.
    Country statistical capacity is increasingly recognized as crucial for development, but no academic study exists that reviews the available assessment tools. This paper offers the first review study that fills this gap, paying particular attention to data and practical measurement challenges. It compares the World Bank’s recently developed Statistical Performance Indicators and Index with other widely used indexes, such as the Open Data Inventory index, the Global Data Barometer index, and other regional and self-assessment tools. The findings show that each index brings advantages in data sources, number of indicators, measurement focus, coverage of countries and time periods, and correlation with common development indexes. The Open Data Inventory index covers the most countries, the Global Data Barometer index collects data through its surveys, and the Statistical Performance Indicators and Index offer a broader framework for assessing statistical systems. The paper offers further thoughts on the potential mechanisms through which these tools can bring positive impacts on economic activities and some political economy concerns, as well as future directions for development.
  • Publication
    The Quality and Price of Africa’s Imports of Digital Goods
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-08) Bastos, Paulo; Castro, Lucio; Cruz, Marcio
    Imported digital goods are critical for productivity growth in low-income countries. Using detailed data on international trade flows and tariffs, this paper finds that African nations tend to import relatively low quality, low price digital goods. It also finds that digital goods in Africa are subject to relatively higher tariffs, along with other factors that contribute to their higher cost in the domestic market compared to other regions, especially in some low-income countries. The findings show that the African Continental Free Trade Area will do little to reduce this tariff burden, as most digital goods are sourced from higher income nonmembers. In contrast, unilateral tariff liberalization toward all countries would significantly increase the imports of digital goods in Africa.
  • Publication
    Challenges and Opportunities of the Economic Integration of the Venezuelan Population in the Peruvian Labor Market
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-08) World Bank
    This study demonstrates that although Venezuelans are more educated relative to Peruvians and most of them have successfully entered the Peruvian labor market, they are mostly employed in low-quality jobs and with a degree of skills mismatch. Most of them are overqualified and have transitioned to more elementary occupations. Furthermore, four out of five Venezuelan workers are employed informally and their returns to higher education are lower than those perceived by Peruvians despite working more hours per week. In addition, we find that they have a significant participation in the digital economy, mainly in delivery platforms, and that two-thirds of Venezuelan workers send remittances abroad. Finally, the report concludes that whether refugees and migrants have the right to work at the level of his or her qualifications and capabilities depends on: (i) the regulatory process to validate their educational degrees, (ii) the migration policy and status, and (iii) the local attitudes towards Venezuelan migration.
  • Publication
    Reviewing Assessment Tools for Measuring Country Statistical Capacity
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-06) Dang, Hai-Anh H.; Pullinger,John James; Serajuddin,Umar; Stacy,Brian William
    Country statistical capacity is increasingly recognized as crucial for development, but no academic study exists that reviews the available assessment tools. This paper offers the first review study that fills this gap, paying particular attention to data and practical measurement challenges. It compares the World Bank’s recently developed Statistical Performance Indicators and Index with other widely used indexes, such as the Open Data Inventory index, the Global Data Barometer index, and other regional and self-assessment tools. The findings show that each index brings advantages in data sources, number of indicators, measurement focus, coverage of countries and time periods, and correlation with common development indexes. The Open Data Inventory index covers the most countries, the Global Data Barometer index collects data through its surveys, and the Statistical Performance Indicators and Index offer a broader framework for assessing statistical systems. The paper offers further thoughts on the potential mechanisms through which these tools can bring positive impacts on economic activities and some political economy concerns, as well as future directions for development.