Flagship Titles

By the World Bank

Mobility is an integral part of the development process. It is a mechanism for reallocating labor across economic sectors and geographical areas. It enables adaptation to shocks, stresses, and imbalances. Cross-border mobility inevitably comes with economic and social consequences for those who move, their communities of origin, and their destinations. How can we manage cross-border mobility in a manner that is beneficial to all? This question is key to achieving the development mandate of the World Bank Group, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals. The World Development Report 2023 takes a fresh look at these issues. It shifts from a narrow focus on labor markets for migrants and legal protection for refugees to a more holistic perspective—one that recognizes the humanity of migrants and the complexity of the societies of origin and destination. The Report focuses on three main themes: drivers of mobility and the role of development; impacts and policy responses; and the need for collective action to strengthen the nexus between international protection and development. While recognizing that situations are very diverse and that there can be no one-size-fits-all approach, it seeks to identify policy options for each group of stakeholders—migrants' origin and destination countries, refugee-hosting countries, the international community, and development actors, as well as the private sector and civil society—to deliver a system of better mobility in a transforming world.

March 2023. 280 pages. Stock no. C211963 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1964-3). US$66

By the World Bank

Global growth is expected to decelerate sharply, reflecting synchronous policy tightening aimed at containing very high inflation, worsening financial conditions, and continued disruptions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Investment growth in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is expected to remain below its average rate of the past two decades. Further adverse shocks could push the global economy into recession. Small states are especially vulnerable to such shocks because of the reliance on external trade and financing, limited economic diversification, elevated debt, and susceptibility to natural disasters. Against this backdrop, it is critical that EMDE policy makers ensure that any fiscal support is focused on vulnerable groups, that inflation expectations remain well anchored, and that financial systems continue to be resilient. Urgent global and national efforts are also needed to mitigate the risks of global recession and debt distress in EMDEs and to support a major increase in EMDE investment. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on EMDEs, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.

June 2023. 194 pages. Stock no. C211951 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1951-3). US$49.50

By Norbert Schady, Alaka Holla, Shwetlena Sabarwal, Joana Silva, and Andres Yi Chang

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a severe blow to human capital. This report presents new evidence and analysis to provide a comprehensive diagnostic of the effects of the pandemic on human capital outcomes and identify promising policy responses for governments faced with the task of rebuilding human capital in the wake of the pandemic. The report identifies the mechanisms through which COVID-19 affected the human capital of people at different points in the life cycle and provides estimates of the magnitude of these losses. This analysis underlines differences in impact across countries and groups within countries to understand the nature and extent of the inequitable impact on human capital, and how it has exacerbated existing gaps and created new ones. Grounded in the diagnostic, the report discusses policy responses that target the short-term needs of afflicted groups, as well as the medium- to long-term agenda to build back better human capital and make systems more resilient. The long-term policy discussion recognizes COVID-19 as an inflection point, using the opportunity to reimagine systems and institutions, thinking in a completely different way about some key issues. In conclusion, the report reflects on what we have learned from failed policy responses. It further analyzes the innovations that proved successful across sectors in preventing or mitigating human capital losses associated with the COVID-19 crisis, and it explores how these lessons can be incorporated across sectors going forward.

By Richard Damania, Esteban Balseca, Charlotte De Fontaubert, Joshua Gill, Kichan Kim, Jun Rentschler, Jason Russ, and Esha Zaveri

This report examines the impacts of subsidies on the world's stock of foundational natural capital—clean air, land, and oceans. These natural assets are critical for human health and nutrition. They underpin much of the economy, but they suffer from degradation, poor management, and overutilization due to government subsidies. Explicit and implicit subsidies—estimated to be at least US$7 trillion—not only promote inefficiencies but also cause much environmental harm. Poor air quality is responsible for approximately 1 in 5 deaths globally. And as the new analyses in this report show, a significant amount of these deaths can be attributed to fossil fuel subsides. The largest user of land worldwide is agriculture, which feeds the world and employs 1 billion people, including 78 percent of the world's poor. But it is subsidized in ways that promote inefficiency, inequity, and unsustainability. Subsidies are shown to drive the deterioration of water quality and increase water scarcity by incentivizing overextraction. In addition, they are responsible for 14 percent of annual deforestation, by incentivizing the production of crops that are cultivated near forests. These subsidies are also implicated in the spread of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases, especially malaria. Finally, oceans that support the world's fisheries and supply about 3 billion people with almost 20 percent of their protein intake from animals are in a collective state of crisis; more than 34 percent of fisheries are overfished, a practice that is exacerbated by open access regimes and capacity increasing subsidies. Although the literature on subsidies is large, this report fills significant knowledge gaps using new data and methods. In doing so, it enhances the understanding of the scale and impact of subsidies, and it offers solutions to reform or repurpose them in efficient and equitable ways. The aim is to enhance the understanding of the magnitudes, consequences, and drivers of policy success and failures to render reforms more achievable.

By Megha Mukim and Mark Roberts, Editors

Between 1970 and 2021, the number of people living in cities increased from 1.19 billion to 4.46 billion, while the Earth's surface temperature climbed by 1.19 degrees Celsius above its preindustrial levels. Because of the prosperity they helped generate, cities have been a major cause of this climate change. However, it is also in cities that many of the solutions to the climate crisis—in terms of both adaptation and mitigation—will be found, not least because by 2050, almost 70 percent of the world's population will call cities home. As such, cities are the key to arguably the greatest public policy challenge of our times.

To take stock of how green, how resilient, and how inclusive cities globally are today, Thriving: Making Cities Green, Resilient, and Inclusive in a Changing Climate defines a global typology of more than 10,000 cities. It finds that there is wide variation in how green, resilient, and inclusive cities are around the world. It asks how climate change impacts cities and, conversely, how cities affect climate. Vicious cycles in development could occur as cities become more vulnerable to extreme events and the challenges compound and cascade. Finally, this report provides a compass for policy makers on policies that can help cities not only survive but also thrive in the face of the perils of climate change. Policy makers can and must act now to chart a more sustainable trajectory.

By Matías Herrera Dappe, Vivien Foster, Aldo Musacchio, Teresa Ter-Minassian, and Burak Turkgulu

Understanding and Mitigating the Fiscal Risks of Infrastructure

Developing countries face massive infrastructure needs, but public spending on infrastructure is inadequate, and public investment has declined in recent years. Rising debt levels and tightening fiscal and monetary conditions are putting further pressure on the funds available for infrastructure, heightening the importance of increasing the efficiency of infrastructure spending. Off the Books: Understanding and Mitigating the Fiscal Risks of Infrastructure shows that however governments deliver infrastructure—through direct public provision, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), or public-private partnerships (PPPs)—the risk of fiscal surprises is high, in both good times and bad. As a result, infrastructure service delivery often ends up costing significantly more than expected, eroding limited fiscal space for productive spending. This book makes a unique contribution by quantifying the magnitude and prevalence of fiscal risks from electricity and transport infrastructure and identifying their root causes across a range of low- and middle-income countries. Drawing on important new sources of evidence and compiling many others, the analysis sheds lights on just how much is at stake in the good governance of infrastructure sectors. It allows policy makers to weigh the magnitudes of different types of risks and examine how they vary across contexts.

Off the Books shows how a deeper understanding of the fiscal risks of infrastructure can help policy makers target reforms to areas where they can be expected to have the greatest impact. It lays out a reform agenda for mitigating the fiscal risks associated with infrastructure based on building government capacity; adopting integrated public investment management and integrated fiscal risk management; improving fiscal and corporate governance of SOEs; and ensuring robust PPP preparation, procurement, and contract management. The book will be of enormous value to policy makers, practitioners, and academics with an interest in infrastructure and fiscal policy.

By Cecilia Briceno-Garmendia, Wenxin Qiao, and Vivien Foster

Electric mobility has garnered growing interest and significant momentum across several major global markets, often motivated by transport sector decarbonization. Together, Europe, China, and the United States account for more than 90 percent of the world's electric vehicle fleet. For many OECD countries, electric mobility is seen primarily as a lever for transport sector decarbonization, given that many of the other relevant policy options have already been exhausted. This report finds that electric mobility is also increasingly relevant for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). As of today, electric mobility for passengers is a comparative rarity across LMICs. In some of the leading markets, such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia, electric vehicles account for less than 0.5 percent of total sales. There are signs that this situation is changing. India, Chile, and Brazil are leading the way in electrifying their bus fleets in their largest cities by introducing innovative financing practices and improved procurement practices. Batteryswapping schemes are taking off in Asian and East African countries to lower the upfront cost of two-and three-wheelers. Original modeling for this report suggests that established global policy targets, such as 30 percent of new passenger vehicles to be electric by 2030, will make economic sense for many LMICs under a wide range of possible scenarios.

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, with the capacity to enable a significantly higher level of performance over 4G mobile communications. It provides a new layer of connectivity to support innovative, data-intense applications. With the estimated impact of 5G on global GDP in the trillions of US dollars, 5G will drive innovation, job creation, productivity, and competitiveness across a range of sectors, with many new use cases currently being tested. For some countries, 5G services may seem a distant future prospect, given the costs of infrastructure deployment and expensive handsets; for others, it is an onramp to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and has been folded into national strategy planning. 5G trials, pilots, and commercial deployments have been progressing across the world, but most deployments are in higherincome countries. Significant barriers remain for developing countries—many of which pertain to challenges faced by the broader telecommunications sector—that threaten to further widen the digital divide and limit access to the economic opportunities that 5G connectivity enables. What does this mean for developing countries, and how can governments prepare? This flagship report surveys the technical capabilities of 5G and explores how it can help countries reach connectivity goals by using 5G as a layer of connectivity alongside 4G and other modalities of connectivity. It also provides a guide for policy makers to better understand the opportunities, challenges, and risks posed by 5G so that they can plan for an enabling policy and regulatory ecosystem that supports the path to advanced mobile network deployment, access, and adoption.

By Tania Begazo, Moussa Blimpo, and Mark Dutz

African countries need more jobs and better jobs for their growing populations. The main message of Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs is that broader use of productivity-enhancing technologies by enterprises can generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. The adoption of better technologies can support countries' short-term objective of economic recovery, as well as their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. But this process is not automatic. Although mobile internet availability has increased in recent years, Africa's uptake gap is the highest in the world. While 83 percent of Africa's population now live in areas with some level of 3G mobile internet services, only 27 percent of these people are using such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers, as well as more sophisticated digital technologies, relative to the rest of the world. Affordability explains part of the usage gap: with 40 percent of Africans still falling below the extreme poverty line, expenses in mobile data plans alone would constitute one-third of their low incomes. Small- and medium-sized businesses have more expensive data plans than in other regions. In addition to people's ability to pay, shortcomings—in the quality of internet services and in the entrepreneurship supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that could raise people's earnings—dampen their willingness to use these new technologies. The development payoffs to those already using these technologies are significant. The book offers robust evidence that internet availability has a positive impact on increasing jobs and reducing poverty in African countries. New empirical studies undertaken for this report have added to the rapidly growing literature on the direct impact of mobile internet availability on jobs and welfare.

For these and other benefits to be realized more widely, two sets of complementary and mutually reinforcing policies are required. Policies must address potential users' ability to pay for them, as well as their willingness to use them.

By Anna Corsi and Harris Selod

Can Better Governance and Management of Scarcity Avoid a Looming Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa?

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.

January 2023. 114 pages. Stock no. C 211889 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1889-9). US$43.95

By Dominick de Waal, Stuti Khemani, Andrea Barone, and Edoardo Borgomeo

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 that allocations are unsustainable 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 can be used to bolster legitimacy and trust in the region and build a sustainable, inclusive, thriving economy that is resilient to climate change.

By Elena Ianchovichina

The problem of low economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean has puzzled economists for decades. Numerous explanations have been provided over the years, yet none focuses on the inefficiencies in the region’s spatial development model. This study adopts a spatial lens to shed light on weaknesses in competitiveness that have left the region unprepared to fully realize the potential of its mostly urban workforce and to take advantage of opportunities in a post-pandemic economy reshaped by geopolitical shifts. Productivity through a Spatial Lens first reviews territorial productivity trends. It discusses the forces that reduced spatial income disparities but also dampened urban productivity in the years leading to the pandemic. The investigation then explores the reasons for the puzzle of low urban productivity in a region of dense cities. The report concludes with ideas on how to improve competitiveness and prospects for sustainable and inclusive growth.

October 2021. 156 pages. Stock no. C 211672 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1672-7). US$43

By Muthukumara S. Mani

Air pollution exposure is the second-most important risk factor for ill health in South Asia, contributing to between 13 percent and 22 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. Although countries have introduced promising initiatives in recent years, comprehensive healthcentered strategies are lacking. The 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 would require a better understanding of the spatial dimensions of pollution and underlying sources, as well as the costs and benefits associated with the deployment of several instruments. Governments are often confronted with these difficult questions: Which interventions are warranted? Up to what cost? Where? When? Obtaining better information and managing risks more effectively will help policy makers deal with the host of uncertainties without compromising 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.

By Asif M. Islam, Dalal Moosa, and Federica Saliola

A decade after 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. 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.

September 2022. 156 pages. Stock no. C 211863 (ISBN: 978-1-4648-1863-9). US$48.50