Handbooks and Training Manuals
131 items available
Permanent URI for this community
This collection displays handbooks, sourcebooks, and training manuals. It includes formal books displayed in other series collections, as well as many stand alone publications both formal and informal, including eLearning products.
Sub-collections of this Collection
131 results
Items in this collection
Publication Developing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Digital Businesses and Beyond: A Diagnostic Toolkit(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-18) Cruz, MarcioAn entrepreneurial ecosystem is characterized by the structure and interactions of organizations, firms, institutions, and individuals in a specific locale that is conducive to entrepreneurship. It can be defined as a set of interdependent actors and factors that are governed in such a way that they enable productive entrepreneurship in a particular territory. The World Bank has developed a new toolkit, Developing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Digital Businesses and Beyond, for entrepreneurial ecosystem assessments, including dedicated methodologies and data sets, to nurture digital entrepreneurship. This toolkit builds on the World Bank’s expertise in collecting and analyzing firm-level data, assessing the quality and efficiency of policies that support innovation and small and medium enterprises, and deriving insights from spatial economics to inform subnational analysis. The toolkit consists of six modules: cross-country context analysis, assessing local entrepreneurial ecosystems, digital entrepreneurship and tech start-ups, mapping public programs and intermediary organizations, digital market regulations, and policy options to support entrepreneurial ecosystems.Item Planning National Telemedicine and Health Hotline Services: A Toolkit for Governments(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023) World BankFor many low- and middle-income countries, telemedicine and health hotlines are the best way to increase community access to health information and health care. This became even more apparent during the coronavirus pandemic, when countries with low health-care-worker-to-population ratios--and large populations that do not live close to a health center--needed better ways for their citizens to access health information and care. These services have played an important role in filling access gaps for decades, but to ensure they sustain impact at a national scale, the government must be brought in from the beginning with a longer-term plan for the government to steward the solution. For a solution to be sustainable, it must be incorporated into country strategies and budgets, and the government must have ownership of the solution, even if all or parts of the operation are outsourced. This toolkit focuses on health hotlines and telemedicine, specifically on the telemedicine systems used for primary care services, rather than those for specialized care such as tele-dermatology, tele-oncology, and others. This toolkit will outline the multi-phased approach needed to set up a health hotline or telemedicine service at a national scale while providing tools that can be used to, for example, cost out and design the system, contract service providers, or engage mobile network operators.Item Planning National Telemedicine and Health Hotline Services: A Toolkit for Service Providers Working with Governments(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023) World BankFor many low- and middle-income countries, digital health solutions are the best way to increase community access to health information and health care. This became even more apparent during the coronavirus pandemic, when countries with low health-care-worker-to-population ratios--and large populations that do not live close to a health center--needed better ways for their citizens to access health services. In many countries, telemedicine and health hotline services have played an important role in filling access gaps, which can present private sector providers with opportunities for growth. When the private sector and government work together it can lead to major advances in health services that reach more communities. However, just because a solution is impactful does not mean it will be sustainable. To ensure any solution sustains impact at scale, it is important for the government to lead it from the beginning, and eventually regulate, and perhaps own, the solution even if it outsources all, or parts, of it to service providers. This toolkit is designed for software or call center service providers interested in working with government to establish nationwide telemedicine or health hotline services.Publication A Guiding Framework for Nutrition Public Expenditure Reviews(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-05-04) Wang, Huihui; Winoto Subandoro, Ali; Tanimichi Hoberg, Yurie; Qureshy, Lubina Fatimah; Ghimire, MamataNutrition investments affect human capital formation, which in turn affects economic growth. Malnutrition is intrinsically connected to human capital—undernutrition contributes to nearly half of child mortality, and stunting reduces productivity and earnings in adulthood. Improving nutrition requires a multisectoral effort, but it is difficult to identify and quantify the basic financing parameters as used in traditional sectors. What is being spent and by whom and on what? To address these questions, nutrition public expenditure reviews (NPERs) determine the level of a country’s overall nutrition public spending and assess whether its expenditure profile will enable the country to realize its nutrition goals and objectives. When done well, NPERs go beyond simply quantifying how much is spent on nutrition; they measure how well money is being spent to achieve nutrition outcomes and identify specific recommendations for improvement. A Guiding Framework for Nutrition Public Expenditure Reviews presents the key elements of an NPER and offers guidance, practical steps, and examples for carrying out an NPER. The book draws upon good practices from past NPERs as well as common practices and expertise from public expenditure reviews in other sectors. This handbook is intended for practitioners who are tasked with carrying out NPERs. Other target audiences include country nutrition policy makers, development partner officials, government technical staff, and nutrition advocates. The book presents data and analytical challenges faced by previous NPER teams and lays out the kinds of analyses that past NPERs have been able to carry out and those that they were unable to perform because of data or capacity constraints. It concludes with further work needed at the global and country levels to create the conditions necessary to conduct more comprehensive NPERs.Publication Impact Evaluation in International Development: Theory, Methods and Practice(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-17) Glewwe, Paul; Todd, PetraImpact evaluations are studies that attempt to measure the causal impact of a project, program, or policy on one or more outcomes. This book provides a comprehensive exposition of how to conduct impact evaluations. Part I provides an overview of impact evaluations and comprises five chapters which are accessible to readers who have few or none of the technical (statistical and econometric) skills that are needed to conduct impact evaluations. Parts II and III make use of statistical and econometric methods and are at a level similar to a graduate-student course but written to make them accessible to the ambitious reader whose skills are not at that level. Part II presents, in Chapters 6-10, a comprehensive discussion of the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to conduct impact evaluations, including a general discussion of the ethical issues involved in conducting impact evaluations. Part III presents the main nonexperimental methods that are used to implement impact evaluations when RCTs are not feasible or not recommended for other reasons. Chapters 11 and 12 present regression methods, including difference-in-differences estimation. Matching methods are described in Chapter 13, after which regression discontinuity methods are covered in Chapter 14. Instrumental variable methods, including the estimation of local average treatment effects (LATE), are discussed in detail in Chapter 15. Chapters 16 and 17 cover more advanced topics: quantile treatment effects and control function methods, respectively. Part IV then considers more practical issues when conducting impact evaluations, including designing questionnaires (Chapter 18), data collection methods and survey management (Chapters 19 and 20), and disseminating results to policymakers (Chapter 21). Finally, Part V addresses two topics in impact evaluation: qualitative methods for conducting impact evaluations (Chapter 22), and cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis (Chapter 23).Publication Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing: A Practical Guide for Bank Supervisors(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022) Chatain, Pierre-Laurent; Van der Does de Willebois, Emile; Bökkerink, MaudThe COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis was a reminder, if any were needed, that criminal creativity thrives in times of chaos, exploiting people’s fears. Unsafe face masks, counterfeit drugs, and suspect medical equipment flooded the market, touted as miracle cures against the coronavirus by unscrupulous actors wanting to turn a quick profit. Companies with no record in health won big government contracts and, as people’s situation deteriorated, organized crime stepped in to lend a “helping hand” to those suffering financial distress. Where most people saw a global public health and economic crisis, criminals saw an opportunity. What this criminal behavior, indeed almost all financial economic crime, has in common is that the funds involved move through the formal financial system. The service providers that execute those transactions are in a good position to gather firsthand intelligence on what is happening. For this reason, banks and other financial institutions have anti-money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations to find out who is paying whom and why and, if necessary, to alert the authorities. Financial institutions are the first line of defense against this criminal behavior; they are the gatekeepers to the international financial system.Publication Development Research in Practice: The DIME Analytics Data Handbook(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-06-16) Bjarkefur, Kristoffer; Cardoso de Andrade, Luiza; Daniels, Benjamin; Jones, Maria RuthDevelopment Research in Practice leads the reader through a complete empirical research project, providing links to continuously updated resources on the DIME Wiki as well as illustrative examples from the Demand for Safe Spaces study. The handbook is intended to train users of development data how to handle data effectively, efficiently, and ethically.Publication Guidance Note for Developing Government Local Currency Bond Markets(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2021) Hashimoto, Hideo; Mooi, Yen; Pedras, Guilherme; Roy, Arindam; Chung, Kay; Galeza, Tadeusz; Papaioannou, Michael G.; Katz, Peter; Bango, Zsolt; Gragnani, Jose Antonio; Gurhy, Bryan; Paladines, CindyThis guidance note was prepared by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group staff under a project undertaken with the support of grants from the Financial Sector Reform and Strengthening Initiative, (FIRST). The aim of the project was to deliver a report that provides emerging market and developing economies with guidance and a roadmap in developing their local currency bond markets (LCBMs). This note will also inform technical assistance missions in advising authorities on the formulation of policies to deepen LCBMs. The guidance note discusses commonly faced challenges and bottlenecks in the journey to efficient and deep LCBMs. In particular, the guidance note explores how to overcome difficulties in implementing some existing best practices. Experience points to the interdependent nature of the required development actions and the need for supportive actions outside the narrow field of LCBM agents. The challenges discussed and accompanying policy guidance draw from the IMF and World Bank’s extensive technical assistance (TA) provision in this area, cross-country experience in LCBM development, and results from a recent survey of country authorities. The guidance note intends to be a resource for a wide range of stakeholders interested in government bond market development. Country authorities and TA providers can use the diagnostic on the level of LCBM development to design a proper sequence of policy actions to further improve the functioning of the domestic government debt market. Country authorities and IMF and World Bank country teams can use the guidance note to identify key macroeconomic and financial issues linked to LCBM development and integrate it into their policy analysis and advice. The diagnostic findings regarding weaknesses in LCBMs also can be used to help identify financial vulnerabilities and their remedies, in the authorities’ ongoing financial sector surveillance and in the context of Financial Sector Assessment Programs and Financial Sector Stability Reviews.Publication Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-07-08) Mattoo, Aaditya; Rocha, Nadia; Ruta, Michele; Mattoo, Aaditya; Mattoo, Aaditya; Rocha, Nadia; Ruta, MicheleDeep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as the international flows of investment and labor, and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade, or deep integration. DTA rules influence how countries transact, invest, work, and, ultimately, develop. The rules and commitments in DTAs should be informed by evidence and shaped by development priorities rather than international power or domestic politics. An impediment to this goal is that data and analysis on trade agreements have not captured the new dimensions of integration. Little effort has been made to identify the content and consequences of DTAs. This Handbook takes a step towards filling this gap in our understanding of international economic law and policy. It presents detailed data and analysis on the content of the policy areas most frequently covered in DTAs, focusing on the stated objectives, substantive commitments, and other aspects such as transparency, procedures, and enforcement. Each chapter, authored by lead experts in their respective fields, explains in detail the methodology used to collect the information and provides a first look at the evidence by policy area.Publication Food Safety Handbook: A Practical Guide for Building a Robust Food Safety Management System(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-04-08) International Finance CorporationThe Food Safety Handbook: A Practical Guide for Building a Robust Food Safety Management System, contains detailed information on food safety systems and what large and small food industry companies can do to establish, maintain, and enhance food safety in their operations. This new edition updates the guidelines and regulations since the previous 2016 edition, drawing on best practices and the knowledge IFC has gained in supporting food business operators around the world. The Food Safety Handbook is indispensable for all food business operators -- anywhere along the food production and processing value chain -- who want to develop a new food safety system or strengthen an existing one.