17 minute read
Annual Flagship Titles
WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2022
Finance for an Equitable Recovery
By the World Bank
The World Development Report 2022 is a practical guide to help low-and-middle-income countries develop strategies to strengthen financial markets for a more equitable recovery from the COVID-19 economic crisis. Grounded in research and real-world experience, the report assesses the financial and economic impacts of COVID-19 on households, businesses, banks, and governments, and provides recommendations for addressing fragilities as nations rebuild. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on households and small- and medium-sized businesses and documents the governmental actions taken early in the crisis to contain the economic fallout. It highlights the impact of the crisis on preexisting fragilities that will require structural reforms and investments in the financial sector to enable recovery. Chapters 2 and 3 provide blueprints for action to facilitate recovery and address structural gaps in legal and governance rules. Chapter 2 focuses on the policies needed to support banks and avoid a credit crunch that could derail recovery, as financial support programs are scaled back and loan defaults increase. Chapter 3 addresses the critical role of formal and informal bankruptcy provisions in helping households and small businesses reduce their debt burdens and pursue debt workouts in an orderly manner, mitigating the risks that excessive debt levels pose for recovery. Chapter 4 explores the WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT role of technology as both a component of the recovery and as a April 2022. 240 pages. Stock no. C211730 tool that must be actively managed to ensure it serves to expand (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1730-4). US$48.50 access, opportunity, and transparency in the crisis recovery. The report concludes with insights on unwinding government supports and addressing accumulated sovereign debts, while highlighting the questions that will require ongoing, targeted research.
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April 2022, 240 pages, Stock no. C211759, (ISBN 978-1-4648-1759-5-1). US$65.00
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June 2021, 346 pages, Stock no. C211600, (ISBN 978-1-4648-1600-0). US$53.95 Paperback August 2021, 346 pages, Stock no. C211607, (ISBN 978-1-4648-1607-9). US$72.00 Hardcover
GLOBAL ECONOMIC PROSPECTS, JANUARY 2022
By the World Bank
A World Bank Group Flagship Report
JANUARY 2022 Global Economic Prospects
GLOBAL ECONOMIC PROSPECTS
January 2022. 234 pages. Stock no. C211758 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1758-8). US$48.50
Although the global economy is emerging from the collapse triggered by COVID-19, the recovery is likely to be subdued, and global GDP is projected to remain well below its prepandemic trend for a prolonged period. Several risks cloud the outlook, including those related to the pandemic and to rapidly rising debt. The pandemic has further diminished already-weak growth prospects for the next decade. Decisive policy actions will be critical in raising the likelihood of better growth outcomes while warding off worse ones. Immediate priorities include supporting vulnerable groups and ensuring a prompt and widespread vaccination process to bring the pandemic under control. Although macroeconomic policy support will continue to be important, limited fiscal policy space amid high debt highlights the need for an ambitious reform agenda that bolsters growth prospects. To address many of these challenges, global cooperation will be key. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). The January edition includes in-depth analyses of topical policy challenges faced by these economies, while the June edition contains shorter analytical pieces.
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GLOBAL ECONOMIC PROSPECTS, JUNE 2022
June 2022, 194 pages, Stock no. C211843, (ISBN 978-1-4648-1843-1). US$48.50
MAKING CITIES GREEN, RESILIENT, AND INCLUSIVE
By the World Bank
The world needs urgent action to confront the challenges of human-induced climate change. Climate change is impacting developing countries hard, and these impacts are only expected to get worse. The past few decades have witnessed big demographic shifts, including ageing and migration, and turbulent social changes—trends that are partly related to and have implications for climate change. The challenges posed by climate change have been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, further exacerbating rising inequality and poverty. Cities are increasingly central to the war against extreme poverty and climate change, because this is where most people live and work. Cities also face a wide variety of stresses that arise from the congestion and crowding associated with urbanization. Within any given country, a city is part of a wider system of cities that is interlinked through flows of trade, labor, capital, and ideas. Stresses felt by one city can therefore be expected to have impacts on other cities. When poorly managed, the stresses that cities face may also feed back to further exacerbate climate change and the erosion of natural capital. This report informs policies for green, resilient, and inclusive urban development. The objective of this report is to help cities not merely survive, but to thrive under the changing climate stressors.
April 2022. 300 pages. Stock no. C211832 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1832-5). US$54.95
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HIDDEN WEALTH OF CITIES: CREATING, FINANCING, AND MANAGING PUBLIC SPACES
February 2020, 450 pages, Stock no. C211449, (ISBN 978-1-4648-4648-5). US$55.00
THE ECONOMICS OF WATER SCARCITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Institutional Solutions
By Dominick Revell de Waal
June 2022. 150 pages. Stock no. C211739 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1739-7). US$43.00
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the most water scarce region in the world. The region is home to 6 percent of the world's population but has just 1 percent of the world's freshwater resources. In 2011, over 60 percent of the region's population lived in areas with high or very high surface water stress, compared with a global average of about 35 percent. Over 70 percent of the region's gross domestic product is generated in areas with high to very high surface water stress, compared with a global average of about 22 percent. Accelerating economic and population growth, combined with climate impacts, call for a new burst of innovation to solve the problem of water scarcity. Unsustainable volumes of water are being withdrawn, degrading ecosystems and aquifers. Weakening trust in social and political institutions has become a constraint to pursuing reforms to address the problem of unsustainability. The challenge of coping with water shortages is fueling further distrust and social frustration that boils over onto the streets, which is particularly the case in the countries affected by conflict and fragility. The unprecedented global economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic is posing challenges to the water sector in MENA. The pandemic-induced disruption of global supply chains and the need to create jobs in rural areas may also create incentives for countries to move away from trade to self-sufficiency in food production, with implications for water use in agriculture. This report uses an economics lens to understand the institutions through which scarce resources are allocated and managed across competing needs. The lessons learned from this analysis will enable external partners to help policy makers and their societies strengthen legitimacy and trust for judicious management of the complex trade-offs involved in defining water policy.
THE FIFTH GENERATION OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGY
5G as an Opportunity to Leapfrog Development
By Rami Amin, Niccolo Comini, Vivien Foster, Natalija Gelvanovska-Garcia, Kay Kim, Hyea Won Lee, Maria Claudia Pachon, Je Myung Ryu, and Zhijun William Zhang The global race for 5G has seen countries riding a new wave of wireless technology. 5G is the next-generation mobile communication technology that enables a different level of performance and innovative applications from the 4G mobile communication that is currently in use by most people in the world. For some countries, 5G services may seem to be in a distant future, for others, it's the initiation into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. With estimated impact of 5G on global GDP in the trillions of US dollars and global job additions in the millions in the next decade, 5G has the potential for immense impact on job creation, productivity, and competitiveness. When fully implemented, the disruptive potential of 5G threatens to make irreversible the digital divide between early and late adopters. Should countries that have yet to turn off 3G services be concerned? Emerging markets have unique characteristics that set them apart from frontier economies: rapid growth in mobile connectivity, nascent markets for fixed infrastructure, and a younger population. These factors are poised to increase adoption of mobile broadband and demand for better connection and services. In other words, 5G may be a powerful force that will help countries leapfrog technologies and accelerate towards meeting their Sustainable Development Goals.
SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE
April 2022. 200 pages. Stock no. C211604 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1604-8). US$48.50
SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE
The Sustainable Infrastructure series covers a wide range of policy topics related to network infrastructure services, including energy, multimodal transportation, information and communication technologies and development, water and sanitation, and urban and rural infrastructure, as well as irrigation and flood management
AMBIENT AIR POLLUTION AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN SOUTH ASIA
By Mani S. Muthukumara
SOUTH ASIA DEVELOPMENT MATTERS
April 2022. 200 pages. Stock no. C211831 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1831-8). US$49.50
Air pollution exposure is the second-most important risk factor for ill health in South Asia, contributing to between 13–22 percent percent of all deaths. Also, approximately 58 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs) are lost through chronic and acute respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses. Of the top 30 cities in the world with the poorest air quality in 2016, 17 are in South Asia. The impact of air pollution transcends boundaries. While countries have introduced promising initiatives in recent years, comprehensive health-centered strategies are lacking. Multiplicity of sources and modes of exposure add complexity to the problem of air pollution in South Asia. In addition to a rapidly growing road transport sector, factories and power plants, as well as agricultural and solid waste contribute to air pollution. Many measures are often discussed to deal with air pollution, including transitioning to a low emissions fleet, increasing public transportation, updating fuel emissions standards and improving traffic flow management, closing old inefficient plants or retrofitting existing coal fired plants, a switch to cleaner fuel and more efficient production in industries, and better management of landfills and agricultural waste. The challenge is that implementation of these measures require a better understanding of the spatial dimensions of pollution and underlying sources, as well as costs and benefits associated with deployment of several instruments.
Governments are often confronted with these difficult questions: Which interventions are warranted? Up to what cost? Where? When?
Attaining better information and managing risks effectively will help policy makers deal with the host of uncertainties without compromising on their broader objectives of economic growth and poverty reduction. This report aims to identify and map air pollution hotspots in South Asia in terms of concentration and exposure, understand the various sources of pollution in hotspot areas (from Kabul to Dhaka), and help categorize policy actions and interventions based on a systematic analysis of costs and benefits.
JOBS UNDONE
How the Middle East and North Africa Region Can Recover its Lost Decades
By Asif Islam, Dalal Moosa, and Federica Saliola
The report aims to stimulate structural reforms in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that allow the region to spur sufficient and decent job creation as well as to leapfrog into the new industrial revolution.
Job creation is one of the most important, if not existential, issues facing the MENA region. Much of the frustrations that have boiled over to become the Arab Spring were sparked by scant job opportunities, meager incomes, and limited future prospects for the region's youth. At the heart of this job creation issue is a labor market that suffers from deficiencies on all fronts: labor supply is limited in both in quantity and quality; labor demand is slow, uncompetitive, and widely informal; and the channels of matching supply and demand are fragmented and at times inexistent. These challenges surface at a time when the region should be primed to seize its demographic boom and transform it into a demographic dividend, like its neighbors to the east. They come at a time when the large numbers of youth, more educated and better trained than their parents and grandparents, enter the labor force in pursuit of productive jobs and income. They come at a time when the public sector can no longer be the primary provider of jobs in light of its fiscal constraints. For the MENA region to move past its current state of turbulence, jobs must be created in sufficient numbers and with decent quality. These jobs cannot be created without structural reforms that allow for firm creation and firm growth.
February 2022. 176 pages. Stock no. C211735 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1735-9). US$48.50
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CONVERGENCE: FIVE CRITICAL STEPS TOWARD INTEGRATING LAGGING AND LEADING AREAS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
February 2020, 438 pages, Stock no. C211450, (ISBN 978-1-4648-1398-6). US$26.65
THE UPSIDE OF DIGITAL FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
How Digital Technology Adoption Can Accelerate Growth and Create Jobs
By Ana Paula Cusolito, Clément Gévaudan, Daniel Lederman, and Christina A. Wood
February 2022. 94 pages. Stock no. C211663 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1663-5). US$48.50
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. This book 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. 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.
A DIGITAL ECONOMY FOR AFRICA
Opportunities and Challenges for More Productive and Inclusive Growth
By the World Bank
Africa is characterized by an urgent need to boost productivity and more inclusive growth. Low digital access and use, combined with affordability challenges and limited competition, prevent digital technology (DT) adoption from playing its role in addressing Africa's productivity and inclusion challenges. This report highlights characteristics specific to the region: (1) Africa has a “youth bulge” phenomenon—it is the region with the fastest growing labor force yet the lowest levels of human capital; (2) Africa has a large number of countries afflicted by fragility, conflict, violence, and climate shocks; (3) emerging DT innovations are starting to address some of Africa’s specific challenges; and (4) Africa is home to all 10 economies worldwide where more adults have a mobile money account than a financial institution account. These specific features of the African continent motivate this report. This report is intended to provide conceptual and empirical findings to help support the ongoing implementation of a continentwide “Digital Transformation for Africa” initiative that will span to 2030. The continentwide initiative seeks to support policies and investments across five pillars of the digital economy: (1) digital infrastructure, (2) digital skills and literacy, (3) digital entrepreneurship, (4) digital financial services, and (5) digital platforms.
April 2022. 200 pages. Stock no. C211737 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1737-3). US$48.50
LAND MATTERS
Toward Efficiency of Use and Equity of Access in the Middle East and North Africa
By the World Bank
April 2022. 220 pages. Stock no. C211661 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1661-1). US$48.50
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the vast majority of land is desert. Only 4.7 percent of its total land area is arable, making MENA the region in the world where land is most scarce. There are only 0.12 hectares of arable land per person in the region, a ratio that is between four and five times smaller than in North America. These figures are the result of a continuous and intensifying pattern of land degradation in the region, which is being caused by a variety of factors. Factors include climate change but also overgrazing, urbanization, the exploitation of natural resources, and the failure of resource management policies. While land in MENA is becoming more scarce, the region’s population is projected to grow at a fast pace over the next three decades, with an expected 40 percent increase between 2020 and 2050. By then, the region will host at least 660 million people. Because of this massive population growth and possible rise in incomes, the demand for food and derived agricultural land will increase tremendously. A manifestation of how tense the issue of agricultural land scarcity has become is the global rush for agricultural land that followed the 2008 world food price crisis. This led investors from land-scarce countries concerned with food insecurity to search abroad for large tracts of land suitable for cultivation. A much less discussed issue, however, is that the demand for urban land is also poised to significantly increase to accommodate projected urbanization and urban expansion in MENA countries.
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EXPECTATIONS AND ASPIRATIONS: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR EDUCATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
October 2019, 584 pages, Stock no. C211234, (ISBN 978-1-4648-1234-7). US$29.65
BOOSTING PRODUCTIVITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Policies and Institutions to Promote Efficiency
By César Calderón
The rising concentration of extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past quarter century can be attributed to the fact that economic growth has been slow, productivity levels are still low, and growth has not been inclusive enough to put a big dent in poverty. What explains the dismal performance on labor productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa compared with the rest of the developing world? This report argues that first, physical capital is scarce and economic activities in the region have low capital intensity relative to other regions. Second, although human capital levels were relatively similar in Sub-Saharan Africa relative to a group of East Asian Pacific countries in 1960, insufficient investment and poor outcomes led not only to relatively lower levels but also to low quality of human capital. Finally, scarce resources, compounded by the inefficiencies in their allocation across productive units (with different levels of productivity), translated into low aggregate labor productivity. Sub-Saharan Africa needs policies to boost productivity across all sectors of economic activity, especially in those sectors in which most poor people make their living. The region needs policies that improve productivity in the agriculture sector, foster rural development, and create jobs for youth who are joining the labor force.
December 2021. 174 pages. Stock no. C211550 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1550-8). US$39.95
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ACCELERATING POVERTY REDUCTION IN AFRICA
June 2019, 3088 pages, Stock no. C211232, (ISBN 978-1-4648-1232-3). US$45.00
