The district of Cox's Bazar, in southeastern Bangladesh, is an instructive context to understand how long-standing and newer growth opportunities and constraints manifest at the local level, remote from Bangladesh's major growth poles of Dhaka and Chittagong. Potentially exacerbating Cox's...

Mexico needs to broaden and deepen its financial system without compromising the financial stability gains of the last decade. Much more private investment is needed to transform the economy to boost productivity, and despite improvements in recent years, many households and firms still lack...

This policy note outlines short, and medium-term policy options for addressing critical challenges affecting labor markets in Mexico, and in particular labor productivity. As labor is the main source of income for most of the population, poverty is closely linked to underemployment and low...

The Philippines quarterly update provides an update on key economic developments and policies over the past three months. It also presents findings from recent World Bank work on the Philippines. It places them in a longer-term and global context, and assesses the implications of these...

The main report is organized into three parts: part one provides the overall context by describing the level and evolution of poverty and inequality in the Philippines and by analyzing the factors that could be weakening the link between economic growth and poverty reduction. It also provides a...

Inclusive innovation seeks to expand access to essential goods and services, thereby improving quality of life, and enhancing economic empowerment through knowledge creation, acquisition, adaption, absorption, and deployment efforts targeted directly at the needs of excluded populations....

Liberia aims to achieve middle-income status by 2030 through broad participation and inclusive growth. The Government's growth strategy aims to accelerate growth through the exploitation of natural resources, while maintaining sound macroeconomic policies, improving the business environment, and...

The Republic of Congo is the third-largest crude oil producer in Sub–Saharan Africa after Nigeria and Angola and is heavily dependent on oil production and oil exports. With a population of 5.5 million, Congo is a lower middle-income economy, endowed with abundant natural resources. The...

Following a strong recovery after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, growth in the European Union (EU) is expected to sharply decelerate in 2023 as high inflation and increasingly tight monetary policy dampen economic activity. Despite considerable resilience, the EU economy is in a weakened...

"Are natural resources a blessing or a curse? Bravo-Ortega and De Gregorio present a model in which natural resources have a positive effect on the level of income and a negative effect on its growth rate. The positive and permanent effect on income implies a welfare gain. There is a growth...