Sector/Thematic Studies

6,525 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2110

Economic and Sectoral Work are original analytic reports authored by the World Bank and intended to influence programs and policy in client countries. They convey Bank-endorsed recommendations and represent the formal opinion of a World Bank unit on the topic. This set includes the sectoral and thematic studies which are not Core Diagnostic Studies. Other analytic and advisory activities (AAA), including technical assistance studies, are included in these sectoral/thematic collections.

Sub-collections of this Collection

Equitable Growth, Finance & Institutions Insight

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 3760

Return on Investment of Public Support to SMEs and Innovation in Poland

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-31) World Bank

A Smarter Europe is a top priority of the European Union (EU), the core of which is innovation, economic transformation, and more competitive small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These themes account for a huge part of EU spending in the past, present, and future programming periods. Despite high expenditures, impacts on the economy often appear modest or are not well understood. EU, national, and regional policymakers want to know where and how to invest to get the highest return on investment (ROI). Poland was selected as the pilot country, since it is the largest recipient of EU funding, and has a rich set of support measures and implementing bodies. The remainder of the document is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes the assessment of the needs of the Polish ecosystem, along with the portfolio mapping and policy mix analysis. Section 3 summarizes the functional analysis methodology and findings. Section 4 describes the ROI/effectiveness methodology and findings. And Section 5 offers conclusions and recommendations based on the combined analyses.
Myanmar Economic Monitor, December 2019: Resilience Amidst Risk

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-31) World Bank

Myanmar’s economy continues to show resilience despite the global slowdown and domestic uncertainties. Its economy is estimated to have grown at 6.3 percent in 2018/191, marginally higher than 6.2 percent in 2017/18, supported by better performance in the manufacturing and services sectors. Macroeconomic volatility has increased since the June 2019 Myanmar Economic Monitor, with inflation reaching double digits in July 2019. Economic growth is expected to reach 6.4 percent in 2019/20, helped by growing investment in the transport and telecommunication sectors and government’s planned infrastructure spending before the 2020 elections. Risks to the economic outlook are tilted to the downside due to slowing global and regional growth, and continued uncertainty about investor perceptions triggered by the Rakhine crisis and the pace of reforms prior to the 2020 general elections, although the pace has thus far been strong.
Uzbek Population Risk and Vulnerability Assessment

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-27) World Bank

As part of the collaboration between the Government of Uzbekistan and the World Bank in improving the effectiveness of social protection, the Bank conducted a diagnostic study on the main risk’s households face and the main strategies adopted to reduce vulnerability and cope with such risks. The main objective of the study is to determine the extent to which social protection is addressing such risks and in which areas gaps remain. This could inform areas of potential further work and collaboration between the Government of Uzbekistan and the World Bank.
Uzbekistan Social Assistance Targeting Assessment

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-27) World Bank

This report presents the results of a diagnostic study on the targeting of social protection programs in Uzbekistan with a specific focus on low-income family allowances. The objective is to determine the extent to which current programs are reaching the poor and can reduce poverty, and consequently to identify ways to improve the current design features and implementation processes. The study is part of the collaboration between the Government of Uzbekistan and the World Bank in improving the effectiveness of social protection. Targeting is the overall process that enables the administration to inform potential beneficiaries through outreach activities, facilitate application procedures, and assess needs and eligibility to finally enroll beneficiaries. Therefore, targeting involves the delicate process of identifying and selecting beneficiaries. Key findings are that: 1) no common standards exist for outreach activities, and 2) there is a need to better define who belongs to the same household and for procedures to impute income, as well as to standardize the way living conditions are assessed and verified. Moreover, one of the main reasons for exclusion errors is the use of caps in budgeting and in the number of beneficiaries at the local level.
Insurance that Works: What Drives Insurance Sector Development in the Republic of Rwanda, and What are the Opportunities Ahead?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-26) World Bank Group

The study examines a range of data sets to develop the analytical basis for the review, conclusions and recommendations. Insurance development is driven by a large range of factors, some of which can be better observed than others. Data is important but understanding what it means is also important. Benchmarking results, including cross country analysis and other research to understand the meaning of calculated values, is one element that is under‐represented in industry analysis. Demand and potential demand for insurance are also considered considering the nature and level of risk being faced as the basis for the examination of insurance markets effectively assuming individuals and entities should and would take out insurance if they were offered it against these risks. Other dimensions examine perceptions of risk, insurance as a solution, and then other barriers to access that may limit the extent that a risk that can be insured coverts into a risk that is insured. In this section, we approach both a range of potential risks and their trends along with data about clients. Through the report, elements of the regulatory and supervisory arrangements are addressed as they are relevant. For those that are not specifically raised in these sections, a further section covers the remaining review of regulatory arrangements as needed. The diagnostic review has also been conducted through an extensive set of fact‐finding stakeholder meetings to gather input, validate and supplement the data‐based analysis.
The Demand Side of Jobs in Indonesia: Plant-level Analysis in the Medium and Large Manufacturing Industry

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-24) Wihardja, Maria Monica ; Alatas, Hamidah

This study is motivated by the lack of demand-side jobs study in Indonesia. Workers do not create jobs; they only fill job openings. However, most of the jobs studies in Indonesia are focused on the supply side of jobs (workers), including skills development, workers protection and unemployment insurance, as well as international migration. To gain insights into the job-creation side of the puzzle, this study proposes to explore the demand side of jobs (employers or firms). Specifically, it aims to contribute to the Indonesia Jobs Strategy by providing new (and perhaps the only) evidence on the demand side of jobs in Indonesia. This report is not exhaustive of all demand side of jobs. It is part of the bigger report on demand-side jobs, which will include the macroeconomic analysis (growth and productivity decomposition, projected sectoral employment growth, etc.), HH enterprises (including those in the agriculture sector), and the emerging economic sectors such as the digital economy.
Anticorruption Initiatives: Reaffirming Commitment to a Development Priority

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-20) World Bank Group

Corruption continues to have a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable, increasing the cost of, and reducing access to, health, education, justice, electricity and other basic services, thereby exacerbating inequality. It reduces private investment as it increases risks for investors, with consequent effects on growth and jobs. It distorts public spending decisions and weakens the quality of public investments as substandard infrastructure gets built and the regulatory systems for quality control and safety are bypassed. It erodes public trust in governments, undermining their legitimacy and posing a threat to peace and stability. This paper draws on these lessons and proposes a new approach, both in terms of what we work on and how we work, focusing on initiatives to be led by the Bank’s EFI vice presidency to reaffirm the Bank’s commitment to anticorruption. The initiatives refresh approaches that are showing results, scale up those that are emerging and show promise, or experiment and innovate where fresh thinking is needed in our support to client countries to help them control corruption. In this note, corruption is seen as both a symptom of underlying governance challenges and a problem in and of itself. For practical purposes, and to keep the focus on corruption, the initiatives do not expound on the many aspects of governance that influence corruption. The paper also does not focus on efforts to control corruption risk in World Bank operations, but rather focus on the support that the EFI Vice Presidency will provide to countries in their efforts to control corruption.
Togo: Future Sources of Growth

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-19) World Bank

The objective of this report is to analyze sources of growth in Togo and required reforms in selected sectors (agriculture, manufacturing, transport and logistics, mining, and tourism) to allow the country to accelerate gross domestic product (GDP) growth, therefore creating a basis to move towards reaching the World Bank Group (WBG) twin goals. A first part of the study will provide a macroeconomic analysis of growth in the country as well as cross- cutting constraints in the business environment. The structural trends of the economy were analyzed, concentrating on the performance of key sectors and the main exports. The analysis then explored transversal constraints to growth which typically include investment and operating regulations, including but not limited to the tax burden. Logistics, access to finance or electricity are some of the other issues covered. A second part of this report covered selected sectors that support growth for an in-depth analysis.
Finance in Transition: Unlocking Capital Markets for Vietnam’s Future Development

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-17) World Bank

The Vietnamese economy has done well in 2019. In the context of increasing global uncertainty,Vietnam will most certainly be among the fastest growing economies in the world, with a GDP growth rate of approximately 6.8 percent. This rate is almost three times faster than the world average (2.6 percent) and 1.2 percentage points higher than the average in East Asia and Pacific, according to the latest estimates from the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects. This robust growth performance was attained thanks to the contribution of two key factors: export growth and domestic demand from households and firms. The first factor reflects the performance of the exports sector, growing by about 8.4 percent between January and September 2019, which is lower than in the recent past (15.8 percent in the same period in 2018), but three times higher than the global average. However, this expansion can be short-lived as it captures to some extent the diversion of Chinese exports toward Vietnam due to the trade tensions between China and the UnitedStates. As a matter of fact, the value of exports toward non-U.S. markets increased by only 3.8percent in 2019. The second contributing factor reflects the rapid expansion of the middle class, as the number of people living on more than US 15 Dollars per day increases by about 1 million every year. The demand of the burgeoning middle class has been met to a great extent by purchases of foreign products, as the imports of consumption goods have been rising by about 15 percent per year since 2015. The contribution of exports and private demand to GDP growth has allowed the government to maintain its prudent fiscal and monetary policies. On the fiscal front, the authorities have managed to reduce their fiscal deficit (down by 0.1 percent of GDP) due to higher-than-expected revenues and a very low execution of capital investment expenditures; the latter has been persistently low since 2015. As a result, the debt-to-GDP ratio (the Ministry of Finance’s definition) is estimated to have declined from 58.4 to 56.1 percent from 2018 and 2019. The authorities have thus been able to rebuild additional fiscal space by reducing public borrowing by almost 8 percentage points of GDP since 2016, though lower capital spending has also depressed potential growth.
China/Russia 2030: Implications for the Horticulture Sector in Central Asia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-16) World Bank

In China, changing demographics, rising incomes and shifting consumer preferences have resulted in an ever-growing demand for food that is more varied, healthier and of higher quality and this demand is set to persist well into the future. According to International Monetary Fund projections (2019), by 2024, Chinese per capita gross domestic product (GDP, in current prices) will increase to dollar 28,450, from dollar 13,130 in 2019, and the population will increase to 1.5 billion people (United Nations, 2019). The projected urbanization rate will reach 67 percent by 2030, compared to 56 percent in 2015 (Goh et al., 2014). The growing number of consumers in China, that are increasingly more affluent and educated, will continue shifting their dietary preferences to include more protein, fruits and vegetables. Central Asian countries are well placed to be more competitive in satisfying fruit import demand in the growing Chinese markets and will reap economic and social development benefits along the way. For centuries, Central Asia has occupied a position of strategic importance in trade between the East and the West. The region’s geographic location, natural resources, untapped yield potential, and the possibility of greater private sector investment through policy reform create the necessary preconditions for the Central Asian countries to increase their agricultural exports to China. As China places an important role on meeting its growing food needs on dynamic agricultural trade and investment cooperation with the Central Asian countries, this results in significant opportunities for the region to increase its presence in the Chinese fruit markets brought by improved infrastructure and higher cross-border investment. For example, according to the recent World Bank report (World Bank, 2019), Belt and Road Initiative transport projects are estimated to increase trade by up to 9.7 percent. Countries that have a comparative advantage in time-sensitive sectors, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, are expected to be the biggest winners.