The European Union's Cohesion Policy is its biggest investment instrument. It supports the Europe 2020 strategy of smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. With a budget of EUROS 351.8 billion for 2014-2020, the Cohesion Policy accounts for around one-third of the EU budget. The Cohesion Policy...

News headlines over the last few years have been filled with global scandals involving corruption on an unprecedented scale. They touch virtuallyevery continent, from Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The scale, magnitude, and sophistication of the operations has increasingly risen to...

Limited competition hinders the optimal use of telecommunication services in the Dominican Republic, which lags peer countries in mobile subscriptions and internet penetration. Despite recent reforms designed to enhance competition, the telecommunications sector remains dominated by a small...

This country economic memorandum aims to support Niger's efforts to walk on a path conducive to a resilient and sustainable economic growth. It does so by attempting to answer the following five questions, each of which constitutes a separate chapter: (i) what were the salient structural...

The Ivorian economy needs to sustain its growth momentum. During the last decade, Cote d'Ivoire's growth performance has been impressive. To achieve its ambitious goal of reaching emerging market status within one or two generations, however, it needs to maintain the strong growth for many years...

Global growth is projected to be slightly faster in 2020 than the post-crisis low registered last year. While growth could be stronger if reduced trade tensions lead to a sustained reduction in uncertainty, the balance of risks to the outlook is to the downside. Growth in emerging market and...

A competitive city is a city that successfully facilitates its firms and industries to create jobs, raise productivity, and increase the incomes of citizens over time. Worldwide, improving the competitiveness of cities is a pathway to eliminating extreme poverty and to promoting shared...

Chongqing is at a crossroads where its GDP per capita will reach a level at which cities typically decouple economic growth from energy and resource use, as well as associated carbon emissions and pollution. However, decoupling does not happen automatically. It requires cities to adopt green...

The Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), which consists of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, is one of the oldest regional groupings in Africa. The main objectives for achieving this are: (i) the creation of a...

The Lao PDR sits at the intersection of four critical ecoregions and is home to some of the world's biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and species. The biodiversity endowment is crucial to the Lao economy, as the goods and ecosystem services it provides...