Corporate Flagships

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The current corporate publications that are World Bank Group flagships are: World Development Report (WDR); Global Economic Prospects (GEP), Poverty and Shared Prosperity (PSP), Women, Business and the Law (WBL) and Business Ready. All go through a formal Bank-wide review and are discussed with the Board prior to their release. In terms of branding, the phrase “A World Bank Group Flagship Report” will be used exclusively on the cover of these publications. This label will signal that the institution assumes a higher level of responsibility for the positions held by these reports.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
  • Publication
    Development Economics through the Decades: A Critical Look at 30 Years of the World Development Report
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009) Deaton, Angus; Yusuf, Shahid; Dervis, Kemal; Easterly, William; Ito, Takatoshi; Stiglitz, Joseph E.
    The World Development Report (WDR) has become such a fixture that it is easy to forget the circumstances under which it was born and the Bank's motivation for producing such a report at that time. In the first chapter of this essay, the authors provide a brief background on the circumstances of newly independent developing countries and summarize some of the main strands of the emerging field of development economics. This backdrop to the genesis of the WDR accounts for the orientation of the earlier reports. The thinking on development in the 1960s and 1970s also provides a baseline from which to view the evolution that has occurred since. From the coverage in the second chapter, the authors isolate a number of key issues common to several or all of the WDRs, and the author examine these issues individually at greater length in third chapter. The discussion in third chapter, which builds on the material in the WDRs, presents some views about how far development thinking and, relatedly, policy making have advanced relative to 30 years ago. It asks whether promoting growth, building institutions, tackling inequality and poverty, making aid effective, and defining the role of the state have been rendered more tractable policy wise by the knowledge encapsulated in the WDRs. Chapter four looks ahead and points to some of the big challenges that the Bank might explore through future WDRs and the value it can add through the knowledge acquired from its cross-country operations and research.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects 2007 : Managing the Next Wave of Globalization
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007) World Bank
    Global Economic Prospects (GEP) 2007 explores the next wave of globalization. While the medium-term outlook for the world economy remains fairly bright, demographic trends will be a major driver of future events and the benefits of globalization are likely to be uneven across regions and countries. Looking at a set of growth scenarios covering the years 2006 to 2030, the report analyzes the opportunities and stresses of integration in order to bring into sharper relief the choices facing the world today. Three prominent features in the next wave of globalization are: the growing economic weight of developing countries in the international economy, the potential for increased productivity that is offered by global production chains, and the accelerated diffusion of technology. The GEP also analyzes three possible consequences: growing inequality, pressures in labor markets, and threats to the global commons. All of these developments, along with deepening economic interdependence, place a burden on the collective actions of the international community: to manage globalization or risk being run over by it.
  • Publication
    Doing Business in 2006 : Creating Jobs
    (Washington, DC, 2006) World Bank; International Finance Corporation
    Doing Business in 2006: Creating Jobs is the third in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. New quantitative indicators on business regulations and their enforcement can be compared across 155 countries-from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe-and over time. Doing Business in 2004: Understanding Regulation presented indicators in 5 topics: starting a business, hiring and firing workers, enforcing contracts, getting credit and closing a business. Doing Business in 2005: Removing Obstacles to Growth updated these measures and added another two sets: registering property and protecting investors. Doing Business in 2006 again up-dates all previous measures and adds three more sets: dealing with licenses, paying taxes and trading across borders, to create a total of 10 areas measured. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects 2006 : Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005-11) World Bank
    The themes of the 2006 Global Economic Prospects (GEP) are international remittances and migration, their economic consequences, and how policies can increase their role in reducing poverty. The GEP explores the gains and losses from international migration from the perspective of developing countries, with special attention to the money that migrants send home. The report also considers policy initiatives that could improve the developmental impact of migration, with particular attention to remittances. The first chapter reviews recent developments in and prospects for the global economy and their implications for developing countries. Chapter 2 uses a model-based simulation to evaluate the potential global welfare gains and distributional impact from an increase in high-income countries' labor force caused by migration from developing countries. Chapter 3 surveys the economic literature on the benefits and costs of migration for migrants and their countries of origin. Chapter 4 investigates the size of remittance flows to developing countries, the use of formal and informal channels, the role of government policies in improving the development impact of remittances, and, their macroeconomic impact. Chapter 5 addresses the impact of remittances at the household level. The last chapter investigates policy measures that could lower the cost of remittance transactions for poor households and measures to strengthen the financial infrastructure supporting remittances.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects 2004 : Realizing the Development Promise of the Doha Agenda
    (Washington, DC, 2003-09-01) World Bank
    The international community finds itself at a crossroads as it approaches the last quarter of 2003. Will the Doha Agenda regenerate the multilateral consensus that has been the hallmark of successive rounds of trade liberalization since 1947 and in doing so provide new impetus for global integration? Or will the Doha Agenda collapse in stalemate and perhaps be viewed as the moment when the international community retreated from multilateralism and opened the floodgates for less desirable bilateral and regional arrangements? The round has the opportunity to remove many of the inequities in the global trading system that put developing countries-and poor people in particular-at a disadvantage in their trade. Several issues under discussion are pivotal to development outcomes. They are the focus of this report: First, because most poor people live in rural areas, trade barriers in agriculture are among the most important to poverty reduction. Second, labor-intensive manufactures have been the most dynamic market segment for every major region, including Africa, yet many developing countries find that their exports meet obstacles in foreign markets-high tariffs, quotas, specific duties, and "antidevelopment" tariff structures that discourage adding value in poor countries. Third, in services, the potential for development-promoting reciprocal gains is especially high. Regulations in some developing countries still protect some inefficient state monopolies from competition-a drag on growth. (To be sure, proper regulation in some sectors must precede liberalization to avoid potential disruptions in socially important markets, such as finance or basic services.) Also, access for developing countries' services exports to industrial countries has yet to be fully bound in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) (World Bank 2001). Finally, national laws prevent greater labor mobility that would otherwise contribute to higher standards of living in both receiving and sending countries. Fourth, reducing the costs of trading by improving international transportation services, customs and ports, and logistics management- trade facilitation-requires substantial new investment, additional technical assistance, and coordinated multilateral efforts. Trade facilitation is fundamental to realizing the expanded trade promise of Doha, but the WTO agenda constitutes a small part of the challenge. Finally, the issue of special treatment for developing countries cuts across all of these policy domains and affects trade preferences and exemptions from WTO regulations. The pursuit of trade preferences and exemptions from multilateral rules have not always served developing countries particularly well, both because preferences have not proven reliable and because selective coverage has often left productivity-detracting trade barriers in place. The residual barriers sap growth in the protected economies and in developing-country trading partners that are denied access. Perhaps most important, the majority of the world's poor do not live in the least developed countries (LDCs). Trade preferences targeted at these countries do not benefit the three quarters of the world's poor that live on US$1 per day in other countries. In implementing new WTO rules, new accords will be most effective if they recognize differences among individual countries' capacity to undertake new, resource-intensive rules. These differences require a new approach to special and differential treatment.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2003 : Investing to Unlock Global Opportunities
    (Washington, DC, 2003-01-31) World Bank
    Strong cyclical dynamics, together with an easing of macroeconomic policies in the United States and elsewhere, have boosted large parts of the global economy, into the initial phase of a recovery in 2002. Nonetheless, the global recovery is fragile, because investment spending is insufficient to underpin continuing growth, although long-term prospects remain promising. Although global competition is creating new opportunities for developing countries, harnessing globalization requires reducing barriers to competition, using targeted interventions carefully, but essentially, supported by sound public investments. International agreements on investment, and competition policies can provide benefits through reciprocity, while agreements on investment policy are likely to have strong development effects, only if they deal with the big issues facing developing countries. Consequently, competition agreements should focus on restraints to competition that hurt developing countries: policy barriers in markets abroad; private restraints on competition; and, trade restraints officially sanctioned.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2002
    (Washington, DC, 2002) World Bank
    Realizing the promise of the new global initiatives to expand trade requires concerted effort to move development to center stage in trade policy formulation. This report is dedicated to that agenda. It begins with a review of global prospects and ways globalization links the fates of industrial and developing countries. The report then considers issues in four broad areas that are particularly important to developing countries: merchandise trade, services, transport, and intellectual property rights. A final chapter summarizes the forward-looking policy agenda, and assesses the potential impact of further global integration and more rapid growth for the standards of living in poor countries everywhere.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2001
    (Washington, DC, 2001) World Bank
    Technological innovations and the dismantling of trade barriers over the past decade have contributed to an acceleration of growth in global trade. This acceleration has been associated with faster growth in developing countries as a group. However, many of the poorest countries have not kept pace. This year's report focuses on international trade and discusses policies that are required if developing countries are to benefit from global integration. The report is organized as follows: Chapter 1 examines the prospects for developing countries and world trade and projects that long-term growth has improved and is projected to be higher despite significant vulnerabilities. Chapter 2 analyzes trade policies in the 1990s and discusses reductions in barriers to trade, trends in trade and economic growth, weaknesses in domestic trade-related policies, and trade protection in industrial countries. Chapter 3 explores the relationships between product standards and regulatory barriers to trade, labor standards and trade sanctions, and environmental standards and trade. Finally, Chapter 4 focuses on electronic commerce, the digital divide, and its effects on productivity, international trade, and income distribution, as well as impediments to Internet use, the role of policies, and challenges to regulatory regimes in developing countries.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 1997
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997-09-30) World Bank
    The year’s report projects an increase in the growth rate of global output, with notable contributions from Sub-Saharan Africa, the developing countries of Europe and Central Asian, and East Asian countries. This report places special emphasis on the role of the “Big 5” developing and transition economies – China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia – in the future of the global economy. In addition to assessing the current state of the world economy, this report discusses the expansion of global production and the costs of making the transition to a more open economy