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: 39,073
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Publication From Theory to Practice: A Strategic AI Integration Model for Revenue Administrations(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-18) Junquera, Raúl; Krsul, Ivan; Calderón, Vladimir; Ghaleb, Joey; Lucas, CristianThis paper presents a comprehensive strategic framework for integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into revenue administrations. The framework addresses the challenges of implementing AI without a structured approach and emphasizes the importance of human-AI collaboration. It proposes a three-phase implementation strategy, inception, consolidation, and optimization, designed to incrementally build capacity, establish governance structures, and optimize AI systems over time. By following this framework, revenue administrations can effectively harness the power of AI to enhance efficiency, improve taxpayer services, and strengthen compliance efforts while maintaining public trust and transparency.Publication Refugees and Social Assistance in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Review of Operational Experiences(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-18) Manfredini Böhm, Alfredo; Acosta, Pablo; Lebow, Jeremy; Migliaccio, EmanuelaThis paper gathers lessons from major development investments and reviews the broader evidence base on the inclusion of refugees and their host communities in national social protection programs in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs). L&MICs host the global majority of refugees, who often live below the poverty line and in impoverished host communities with inadequate access to basic services. International institutions such as the World Bank and the European Union have invested several billions of dollars to reverse this situation through social assistance programs. Growing evidence suggests cautious optimism about the results of such interventions. Although L&MICs are rolling out safety nets to refugees and their host communities, these initiatives face unique operational challenges. Policy makers should allocate adequate time and resources to build the capacity of government mechanisms for social assistance delivery in the often-peripheral areas hosting refugees, strengthen collaboration with government and humanitarian refugee agencies, and foster host governments’ buy-in to this critical agenda.Publication The Global Findex Database 2025: Connectivity and Financial Inclusion in the Digital Economy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-16) Klapper, Leora; Singer, Dorothe; Starita, Laura; Norris, AlexandraThe Global Findex 2025 reveals how mobile technology is equipping more adults around the world to own and use financial accounts to save formally, access credit, make and receive digital payments, and pursue opportunities. Including the inaugural Global Findex Digital Connectivity Tracker, this fifth edition of Global Findex presents new insights on the interactions among mobile phone ownership, internet use, and financial inclusion. The Global Findex is the world’s most comprehensive database on digital and financial inclusion. It is also the only global source of comparable demand-side data, allowing cross-country analysis of how adults access and use mobile phones, the internet, and financial accounts to reach digital information and resources, save, borrow, make payments, and manage their financial health. Data for the Global Findex 2025 were collected from nationally representative surveys of about 145,000 adults in 141 economies. The latest edition follows the 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2021 editions and includes new series measuring mobile phone ownership and internet use, digital safety, and frequency of transactions using financial services. The Global Findex 2025 is an indispensable resource for policy makers in the fields of digital connectivity and financial inclusion, as well as for practitioners, researchers, and development professionals.Publication Democratic Republic of the Congo Budget Execution in Health: From Bottlenecks to Solutions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-15) Cros, Marion Jane; El Kadiri El Yamani, Fatima; Muvudi, Michel; Nana, Aminata TOUThe Democratic Republic of Congo is committed to achieving Universal Health Care by 2030. Progress toward this goal faces challenges due to limitations in the execution and allocation of the country's health budget. This contributes to health spending being predominantly financed by households and donors rather than the government. The only part of the government health budget that is consistently executed in line with allocations is for health worker payments. Execution rates for other spending categories are volatile and generally low. Many parts of the budget are not executed at all, while some activities are implemented without having been included in the budget. Budget execution within the Ministry of Health is influenced by both internal and external factors. Inconsistencies between strategic planning, budget preparation, and execution processes hinder effective financial management; inaccurate cost estimations; heavy reliance on exceptional procedures for spending and over-execution of specific budget lines to the detriment of otherwise planned activities. External challenges include a systematic over-estimation of national revenue; the highly centralized nature of budget execution processes; the dominance of health worker payments in budget allocations; the non-respect of budget management rules and cumbersome procurement and expenditure execution procedures.Publication The Future of Poverty: Projecting the Impact of Climate Change on Global Poverty through 2050(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-15) Fajardo-Gonzalez, Johanna; Nguyen, Minh C.; Corral, PaulClimate change is increasingly acknowledged as a critical issue with far-reaching socioeconomic implications that extend well beyond environmental concerns. Among the most pressing challenges is its impact on global poverty. This paper projects the potential impacts of unmitigated climate change on global poverty rates between 2023 and 2050. Building on a study that provided a detailed analysis of how temperature changes affect economic productivity, this paper integrates those findings with binned data from 217 countries, sourced from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform. By simulating poverty rates and the number of poor under two climate change scenarios, the paper uncovers some alarming trends. One of the primary findings is that the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide could be nearly doubled due to climate change. In all scenarios, Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to bear the brunt, contributing the largest number of poor people, with estimates ranging between 40.5 million and 73.5 million by 2050. Another significant finding is the disproportionate impact of inequality on poverty. Even small increases in inequality can lead to substantial rises in poverty levels. For instance, if every country’s Gini coefficient increases by just 1 percent between 2022 and 2050, an additional 8.8 million people could be pushed below the international poverty line by 2050. In a more extreme scenario, where every country’s Gini coefficient increases by 10 percent between 2022 and 2050, the number of people falling into poverty could rise by an additional 148.8 million relative to the baseline scenario. These findings underscore the urgent need for comprehensive climate policies that not only mitigate environmental impacts but also address socioeconomic vulnerabilities.