The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) is The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products.
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Total publications: 38,766
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Publication Innovative Financial Instruments and Their Role in the Development of Jurisdictional REDD+(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-08) Golub, Alexander; Hanusch, Marek; Bardal, Diogo; Keith, Bruce Ian; Simon, Daniel Navia; Fleischhaker, CorneliusAchieving global net zero carbon emissions requires stopping deforestation and making full use of tropical forests as carbon sinks. Market instruments for the sale and purchase of emission outcomes coming from Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation framework programs could play a very significant role in achieving this goal. The development of these markets has been insufficient so far: their scale as of today is much lower than what would be required to generate meaningful resources for the countries that host tropical forests, and the quality of existing instruments is generally insufficient to allow a scaling up in demand. However, efforts to improve the transparency and integrity of these instruments are accelerating, particularly around jurisdictional Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation framework programs. In parallel with these efforts, innovations in financial instruments suited for the framework’s carbon markets are also taking place, but their scale is limited so far. This paper looks beyond the current state of the framework’s carbon markets to consider a set of innovative financial instruments that would allow completing the infrastructure of emissions trading, enhancing its utility for both issuers and buyers of carbon credits in the framework’s jurisdictional programs. The paper shows how a combination of forest carbon bonds, where countries sell forward (or commit) their emission reduction outcomes, as well as call and put options can be used to de-risk and encourage early investment in jurisdictional Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation framework programs. To quantify the value of these innovations, the paper evaluates the potential scale of these instruments for the case of Brazil. The estimates suggest that the amounts that could be mobilized would represent a critical contribution to effective forest conservation. The proposed instruments and methods can be used by other tropical nations that are prepared to implement a large-scale jurisdictional program. Although the paper acknowledges that the current state of carbon markets would still not allow their deployment in the short term, the conclusion is that these instruments have significant potential, and their future development could be an important contribution to the establishment of successful markets for the conservation of tropical forests.Publication Labor Market Scarring in a Developing Economy: Stigma versus Lost Human Capital from Plant Closings in Mexico(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-08) Arias, Francisco J.; Lederman, DanielThis paper estimates the magnitude of labor market scarring in a developing economy, a setting that has been understudied by the labor scarring literature dominated by advanced economies. The paper assesses the contributions of “stigma” versus “lost human capital,” which cause earnings losses among displaced workers relative to non-displaced workers. The findings indicate that job separations caused by plant closings result in sizable and long-lasting reductions in earnings, with an average decline of 7.5 percent in hourly wages over a nine-year period. The estimate for one year after a plant closing is larger, at a decline of 10.8 percent. In a common sample, after controlling for unobserved, time-invariant individual characteristics, the impact of a plant closing declines from 11.9 to 8.2 percent. These results imply that stigma in the labor market due to imperfect information about workers (captured by unobservable worker characteristics) accounts for 30.8 percent of the average earnings losses, whereas lost employer-specific human capital explains the remaining 69.2 percent. The paper explores the effects of job separations due to plant closings on other labor market outcomes, including hours worked and informality, and provides estimates across genders and levels of education.Publication Building and Managing Local Databases from Google Earth Engine with the geeLite R Package(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-08) Kurbucz, Marcell T.; Andrée, Bo Pieter JohannesGoogle Earth Engine has transformed geospatial analysis by providing access to petabytes of satellite imagery and geospatial data, coupled with the substantial computational power required for in-depth analysis. This accessibility empowers scientists, researchers, and non-experts alike to address critical global challenges on an unprecedented scale. In recent years, numerous R packages have emerged to leverage Google Earth Engine’s functionalities. However, constructing and managing complex spatio-temporal databases for monitoring changes in remotely sensed data remains a challenging task that often necessitates advanced coding skills. To bridge this gap, geeLite, a novel R package, is introduced to facilitate the construction, management, and updating of local databases for Google Earth Engine-computed geospatial features, which enables users to monitor their evolution over time. By storing geospatial features in SQLite format—a serverless and self-contained database solution requiring no additional setup or administration—geeLite simplifies the data collection process. Furthermore, it streamlines the conversion of stored data into native R formats and provides functions for aggregating and processing created databases to meet specific user needs.Publication Supporting Access to Justice in South Sudan - A 2025 JUPITER Assessment(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-07) Bosio, Erica; Upegui Caro, VirginiaThis report assesses the state and performance of the justice system of South Sudan through the JUPITER methodology. JUPITER uses qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate both de jure and de facto justice delivery metrics, identifying gaps in the legal framework and its implementation and creating comparable metrics to benchmark against similar indicators and other economies. The study focuses on the system’s effectiveness in service delivery across three areas: Access to Justice, Efficiency, and Quality. JUPITER aims to identify strengths and areas of improvement in these key areas, serving as a basis for policy dialogue.Publication Cash Is Queen: Local Economy Effects of Cash Transfers to Women in West Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-06) Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Gonzalez, Paula; Goldstein, Markus; Friedman, JedThis paper examines the direct and spillover effects of cash transfers paid in a rural and low-income setting. In the short run, an unconditional cash transfer program for ultra-poor households in Northern Nigeria led to a 12 percentage point increase in micro-enterprise formation for program recipients. Moreover, benefits continued to increase in magnitude after program cessation and also extended to nearby non-beneficiary households when compared to counterparts in other villages where no cash transfers were paid. One year after program cessation, beneficiary women increased their enterprise ownership rate by 20 percentage points, while the rate for non-beneficiary women increased by 13 percentage points. Both groups of households enjoyed higher consumption and food security, and shifted away from husband-centered toward joint intrahousehold decision-making. One mechanism for this growth spillover is a boost to aggregate demand for local goods, in part identified by the positive link between the (randomly determined) neighborhood density of cash transfer households and enterprise creation. The increase in local female entrepreneurial activity translates to a partial income multiplier of at least 0.32. Women face restrictive social norms around work in this context and the slack productive resource brought into activity by the cash transfer is female labor, specifically female-led entrepreneurship near the home.