Key Regional/Sectoral Publications

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2120
These are the top-level publications coming out of the regional and sector network vice presidencies of the World Bank.

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    Fixing the Foundation: Teachers and Basic Education in East Asia and Pacific
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-20) Afkar, Rythia ; Béteille, Tara ; Breeding, Mary E. ; Linden, Toby ; Mason, Andrew D. ; Mattoo, Aaditya ; Pfutze, Tobias ; Sondergaard, Lars M. ; Yarrow, Noah
    Countries in middle-income East Asia and the Pacific were already experiencing serious learning deficits prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-related school disruptions have only made things worse. Learning poverty -- defined as the percentage of 10-year-olds who cannot read and understand an age-appropriate text -- is as high as 90 percent in several countries. Several large Southeast Asian countries consistently perform well below expectations on adolescent learning assessments. This report examines key factors affecting student learning in the region, with emphasis on the central role of teachers and teaching quality. It also analyzes the role education technologies, which came into widespread use during the pandemic, and examines the political economy of education reform. The report presents recommendations on how countries can strengthen teaching to improve learning and, in doing so, can enhance productivity, growth, and future development in the region.
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    Striving for Clean Air: Air Pollution and Public Health in South Asia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-12) World Bank
    South Asia is home to 9 of the world's 10 cities with the worst air pollution. Concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in some of the region's most densely populated and poor areas are up to 20 times higher than what the World Health Organization considers healthy (5 micrograms per cubic meter). This pollution causes an estimated 2 million premature deaths in the region each year and results in significant economic costs. Controlling air pollution is difficult without a better understanding of the activities that cause emissions of particulate matter. Air pollution travels long distances in South Asia and gets trapped in large 'airsheds' that are shaped by climatology and geography. 'Striving for Clean Air' identifies six major airsheds in the region and analyzes four scenarios for reducing air pollution with varying degrees of policy implementation and cooperation among countries. The analysis shows that cooperation between different jurisdictions within an airshed is crucial, and a schematic road map with three phases is proposed. The phases in the road map may overlap when the rate of progress differs, depending on local circumstances. Phase 1 would improve monitoring and institutions; Phase 2 would introduce additional and joint targets for cost-effective abatement; and Phase 3 would mainstream air quality in the economy.
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    The Economics of Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa: Institutional Solutions
    (Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-26) de Waal, Dominick ; Khemani, Stuti ; Barone, Andrea ; Borgomeo, Edoardo
    Despite massive infrastructure investments, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continue to face unprecedented water scarcity due to climate change, population growth, and socioeconomic development. Current policy regimes for managing water across competing needs are primarily determined by state control of large infrastructure. Policy makers across the region understand the unsustainability of water allocations and that increasing investments in new infrastructure and technologies to increase water supply place a growing financial burden on governments. However, standard solutions for demand management—reallocating water to higher value uses, reducing waste, and increasing tariffs—pose difficult political dilemmas that, more often than not, are left unresolved. Without institutional reform, the region will likely remain in water distress even with increased financing for water sector infrastructure.The Economics of Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa: Institutional Solutions confronts the persistence and severity of water scarcity in MENA. The report draws on the tools of public economics to address two crucial challenges facing states in MENA: lack of legitimacy and trust. Evidence from the World Values Survey shows that people in the region believe that a key role of government is to keep prices down and that governments are reluctant to raise tariffs because of the risk of widespread protests. Instead of avoiding the “politically sensitive” issue of water scarcity, this report argues that reform leaders and their external partners can reform national water institutions and draw on local political contestation to establish a new social contract. The crisis and emotive power of water in the region can be used to bolster legitimacy and trust and build a sustainable, inclusive, thriving economy that is resilient to climate change.
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    Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania ; Dutz, Mark Andrew ; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
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    Land Matters: Can Better Governance and Management of Scarcity Prevent a Looming Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa?
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023) Corsi, Anna ; Selod, Harris
    Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, land is a scarce and valuable resource. The projected increase in land demand due to demographic trends, coupled with decreasing land supply due to climatic and governance factors, indicate a looming crisis happening at a time when the region is also facing dramatic social and political transformation. Reserves for land cultivation are almost exhausted, while total built-up area will need to expand to accommodate high demographic growth. Yet, land remains inefficiently, inequitably, and unsustainably used. There are strong barriers to land access for both firms and individuals. Firms resort to political connections to access land, resulting in land misallocation. Women are 2 to 3 times more likely to fear losing their property in the case of spousal death or divorce, and their rights are not sufficiently supported by institutions and gender-imbalanced social norms. Refugees also face difficulties in accessing land; conflict in the region is causing the displacement of millions of people who lack necessary housing, land, and property rights. This report identifies and analyzes the economic, environmental, and social challenges associated with land in MENA countries, shedding light on policy options to address them. It focuses on two main constraints—scarcity of land and weak land governance—and how they affect land use and access, the resulting inefficiencies and inequities, and associated economic and social costs. It highlights the need for MENA countries to think about land more holistically and to reassess the strategic trade-offs involving land, while minimizing land distortions and serving economic development. It is also an attempt to fill major data gaps and promote a culture of open data, transparency, and inclusive dialogue on land. These efforts are important steps that will contribute to renewing the social contract, accompany economic and digital transformation, and facilitate recovery and reconstruction in the region.
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    Building Resilient Migration Systems in the Mediterranean Region: Lessons from COVID-19
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-06-14) Testaverde, Mauro ; Pavilon, Jacquelyn
    For thousands of years, migration has been a source of social and economic well-being for people living on different shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Whether through higher earnings for migrants, access to labor for receiving countries, or remittances for sending communities, migration has been an important driver of development in the Mediterranean region. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has severely disrupted this complex web of movements, raising questions about whether migration will continue to be an important driver of the region’s well-being. As time passed, it became clear that the drivers of migration are so strong that mobility restrictions can only reduce movements, not halt them entirely. Building Resilient Migration Systems in the Mediterranean Region: Lessons from COVID-19 presents evidence on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on mobility in the region to inform policy responses that can help countries restart migration safely and better respond to future shocks. While some of the challenges that emerged during the pandemic are specific to public health crises, others are common to different types of shocks, including those related to economic, conflict, or climate-related factors. To inform this reform process, this book suggests a set of actions that can help Mediterranean countries to maximize the benefits of migration for all people living in the region, while at the same time ensuring the sustainability of migration flows. As a whole, these proposed policy actions point to a vision of migration resilience that, even during crises, can address key labor shortages, keep both migrant and native populations safer, sustain household incomes, and ameliorate blows to economic growth. The COVID-19 pandemic has created momentum for policy reforms. Whether this crisis can illuminate the way toward better adapting migration systems to future crises will depend on learning its lessons.
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    Jobs Undone: Reshaping the Role of Governments toward Markets and Workers in the Middle East and North Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-05-16) World Bank
    A decade since the spark of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to suffer from limited creation of more and better jobs. Youth face idleness and unemployment. For those who find jobs, informality awaits. Few women attempt to enter the world of work at all. Meanwhile, the available jobs are not those of the future. These labor market outcomes are being worsened by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Jobs Undone: Reshaping the Role of Governments toward Markets and Workers in the Middle East and North Africa explores ways to break these impasses, drawing on original research, survey data, wide-ranging literature, and young entrepreneurial voices from the region. The report finds that a prominent reason behind MENA’s unmet jobs challenge is a lack of market contestability in the formal private sector. Few firms in the region enter the market, few grow, and those that exit are not necessarily less productive. Moreover, firms in the region invest little in physical capital, human capital, or research and development, and they tend to be politically connected. At the macro level, economic growth has been mediocre, labor productivity is not being driven by structural change, and the growth of the stock of capital per capita has declined. New evidence generated for this report shows that the lack of dynamism is due to the prevalence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). They operate in sectors where there is little economic rationale for public activity and they enjoy favorable treatment—flouting the principles of competitive neutrality. Meanwhile, labor regulations add to market rigidity, while gendered laws restrict women’s potential. To change this reality, the state must reshape its relationship toward markets, toward workers, and toward women. The region must create a level playing field between SOEs and the private sector, replace labor rigidities with appropriate social protection and labor market programs, and remove barriers to women’s economic participation. Governments can also foster new sectors and occupations, gradually propelling market contestability and job creation. All reforms will have to rely on improved data capacity and transparency to create a new social contract between governments and the people of the region.
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    The Upside of Digital for the Middle East and North Africa: How Digital Technology Adoption Can Accelerate Growth and Create Jobs
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-16) Cusolito, Ana Paula ; Gévaudan, Clément ; Lederman, Daniel ; Wood, Christina A.
    The argument that digitalization fosters economic activity has been strengthened by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Because digital technologies are general-purpose technologies that are usable across a wide variety of economic activities, the gains from achieving universal coverage of digital services are likely to be large and shared throughout each economy. However, the Middle East and North Africa region suffers from a “digital paradox”: the region’s population uses social media more than expected for its level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita but uses the internet or other digital tools to make payments less than expected. The Upside of Digital for the Middle East and North Africa: How Digital Technology Adoption Can Accelerate Growth and Create Jobs presents evidence that the socioeconomic gains of digitalizing the economies of the region are huge: GDP per capita could rise by more than 40 percent; manufacturing revenue per unit of factors of production could increase by 37 percent; employment in manufacturing could rise by 7 percent; tourist arrivals could rise by 70 percent, creating jobs in the hospitality sector; long-term unemployment rates could fall to negligible levels; and female labor force participation could double to more than 40 percent. To reap these gains, universal access to digital services is crucial, as is their widespread use for economic purposes. The book explores how fast the region could approach universal coverage, whether targeting the rollout of digital infrastructure services makes a difference, and what is needed to increase the use of digital payment tools. The authors find that targeting underserved populations and areas can accelerate the achievement of universal access, while fostering competition and improving the functioning of financial and telecommunications sectors can encourage the adoption of digital technologies. In addition, building societal trust in the government and in related institutions such as banks and financial services is critical for fostering the increased use of digital payment tools.
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    Boosting Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies and Institutions to Promote Efficiency
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-01-03) Calderon, Cesar
    This book documents the productivity trends in Sub-Saharan Africa in three different dimensions, assessing productivity at the aggregate level, the sectoral level, and the establishment level. It characterizes the evolution of productivity in the region relative to other countries and regions, as well as country groups in Africa, classified by their degree of natural resource abundance and condition of fragility. The volume suggests that the persistence of the productivity gap in Africa vis-à-vis the technological frontier can be attributed to the slow accumulation of physical and human capital relative to the region’s growing population, as well as the poor allocation of these resources. These allocative inefficiencies are the outcome of policies and institutions that introduce distortions in the decision-making process of individuals. Hence, the volume assesses the implications of production decisions across agricultural farms and manufacturing firms. It presents evidence on aggregate productivity from the perspective of production units, using recent household surveys for farmers and firm-level surveys for select countries, as well as frontier estimation techniques. It documents the extent of severe resource misallocation across agricultural and manufacturing production units. These distortions decelerate the growth of the production units, disincentivize their adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies, and reduce the ability of their peers to learn new techniques. Boosting Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa highlights the adoption of digital technologies to reduce some of these market frictions. Mobile money has increased financial inclusion in several countries, and digital financial technologies have given individuals access to savings instruments and loan products. Enhancing access to credit can help individuals invest in schooling and overcome the costs of formality. The volume discusses further avenues of research that may provide additional insights on the productivity dynamics across countries in the region, and it identifies the different channels of policy transmission to enhance productivity. The empirical work presented can help to guide the design of policy in the region.
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    Hidden Debt: Solutions to Avert the Next Financial Crisis in South Asia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-06-29) Melecky, Martin
    The COVID-19 crisis, which has sent economies in South Asia and around the world into a deep recession, has highlighted South Asia’s rising debt levels and sizable hidden liabilities. State-owned enterprises, state-owned commercial banks, and public-private partnerships have been at the center of the rising debt wave and the latest pandemic response. Historically, South Asia has relied on these direct public interventions more than other regions. The interventions have helped governments tackle key development challenges and rapidly deliver relief measures during crises. However, because of their inefficiencies and weak governance, the interventions are also a significant source of public indebtedness and macrofinancial risks. Hidden Debt examines the trade-off between tackling development challenges through direct state presence in the market and avoiding unsustainable debt due to economic inefficiencies of such off–balance sheet operations, which greatly leverage public capital. The study recommends a reform agenda based on the four interrelated principles of purpose, incentives, transparency, and accountability (PITA). The reforms can mitigate the risks that off–balance sheet operations will become the source of the next financial crisis in South Asia.