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: 38,898
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Publication AI Revolution in Higher Education: What you need to know(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05) Molina, E.; Medina, E.Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing Higher Education (HE), transforming how students learn, faculty teach, and institutions operate. Across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), AI-powered tools are being integrated into classrooms, research, and administrative processes, offering scalable and personalized solutions to improve educational access, efficiency, and equity. However, despite its vast potential, AI adoption in the region remains fragmented, hindered by infrastructure gaps, limited AI innovation, and challenges in faculty upskilling and talent retention. This report examines the transformative potential of AI in HE, focusing on key applications, challenges, and strategic recommendations for ethical integration. AI tools are already making a significant impact in student support, faculty research, and institutional management. Recent studies of well-designed Generative AI systems demonstrate promising results. For instance, AI-powered assignment platforms have increased student placement efficiency by 20% and improved options for under-assigned students by 38% (Larroucau et al., 2024). New studies of carefully implemented Generative AI tools demonstrate meaningful improvements in learning outcomes - a Harvard study found students using AI tutors learned more than twice as much in less time compared to active learning classrooms (Kestin et al., 2024), while a Stanford study demonstrated how AI-enhanced tutoring could effectively scale expert teaching practices, leading tutors to employ more effective pedagogical strategies while achieving improvements at a modest cost of $20 per tutor annually (Wang et al., 2025). These technologies are helping to close learning gaps and expand access to quality education, addressing Bloom’s “2 Sigma Problem” (Bloom, 1984) by offering personalized, 24/7 learning support that complements traditional teaching methods.Publication Industrial Policy under Constraints: Evidence from Pakistan’s Export Subsidy Schemes(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05) Lovo, Stefania; Varela, Gonzalo J.This paper investigates the impact of an export promotion policy consisting of ad-valorem subsidies for a set of targeted products, on the performance of Pakistani exports in the textile sector. The findings show that the policy had a small overall impact on exports, while it induced substantial reallocation of exports across products. The policy induced an increase in exports of traditional products, mostly garments, which were eligible for the highest rebate rates, at the expense of non-eligible or lower-rated products. The paper presents suggestive evidence indicating that the observed effects are partially attributed to shifts in the composition of exporters, through exits and entries alongside capacity constraints. Finally, the evidence shows that the scheme induced strategic misreporting at the border, which contributed marginally to the overall effects.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05) Foster, Elizabeth; Jolliffe, Dean Mitchell; Ibarra, Gabriel Lara; Lakner, Christoph; Tettah-Baah, SamuelRecent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication Tunisia Economic Monitor, Spring 2025: Better Connectivity to Grow(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-04) World BankThe Tunisian economy grew by 1.4 percent in 2024 after the zero growth in 2023 and it is diverging from its neighbors in North Africa, with a gross domestic product (GDP) below its pre-Covid level in 2024. The economy continues to operate in a challenging policy and financing environment, including regulatory barriers to investment, which is not conducive to robust and sustained growth. The limited recovery of agriculture - with rising rainfall levels but still below historical averages - along with the moderate performance of oil and gas, manufacturing and construction sectors dragged the growth of the economy in 2024. This modest recovery continued to weigh on the labor market. The unemployment rate in 2024 was almost a percentage point above its pre-Covid, and the labor force participation rate hovered 1.2 percentage point below the pre-Covid rate. Expanding affordable and quality childcare services and strengthening parental leaves can raise labor force participation, particularly for women in Tunisia, with potentially significant impacts on economic growth. The current account deficit continued to moderate, easing some of the pressure on external financing. The trade deficit widened by 10.9 percent in 2024, remaining stable as a share of GDP at 11.4 percent. The deficit deteriorated further in the first quarter of 2025, as it increased by two thirds compared to the same period in 2024, driven by a 5.9 percent decline in exports. The surge in agricultural exports compensated for the deterioration of the trade balance of garments and mechanic industries in 2024. The energy deficit widened further on the back of rising import prices, continuing to account for the bulk of the merchandise trade deficit. The stability of the trade deficit and the increase in the services surplus reduced the current account deficit (CAD) to 1.7 percent of GDP in 2024, compared with 2.3 per cent of GDP in 2023 and 8.8 per cent in 2022. While the lower CAD eases the pressure on external financing needs, the latter remains significant especially due to the burdensome debt service.Publication Power More with Less: Scaling Up Energy Efficiency for Growth and Energy Security(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-04) World BankThis approach paper advocates for energy efficiency (EE) to be prioritized and scaled up—necessitating its elevation in energy sector policies, targets and programs, for both low- and middle-income countries (LICs and MICs). It draws on the lessons learned through the World Bank Group’s (WBG’s) EE engagements since 2010 and offers guiding parameters for policymakers, development partners, and the private sector to use in scaling up demand-side EE globally in end-use sectors including public facilities, households, and industry—and the role the WBG can play to enable this.