Recognizing that this agenda spans virtually all of the World Bank's policy areas, this brief focuses on policies under the purview of the World Bank's Social Protection and Jobs (SPJ) agenda, especially those related to employment and skills development. Within the Bank, the productive...

To achieve high-income status by 2045, Vietnam must accelerate regulatory reforms to boost productivity. Vietnam's stellar economic success story over the last 30 years relied on export-oriented foreign direct investment (FDI), but reaching high-income status requires accelerating productivity...

COVID-19 has devastated the ASEAN region, threatening two decades of human and economic development gains. With a population of more than 600 million, the region has reported more than 13 million COVID-19 cases as of October 2021, with Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand leading...

Women farmers produce 30 percent less per hectare than their male counterparts. Among various factors, there are three key drivers of gender gaps in agriculture productivity in Nigeria: women use fewer inputs and have limited participation in extension services, farm less-valuable crops, and...

This book presents qualitative and quantitative analyses on Bolivia's informal sector, the reasons why firms are informal, and the impact of normalization on their profitability. The analysis finds that the impact of tax registration on profitability depends on firm size and the ability to issue...

Bolivia's informal economic sector is the largest in Latin America, and women-owned businesses tend to be overrepresented in the informal sector and to be less profitable than firms in the formal sector. This study seeks to better understand gender-based differences in firms' tendencies toward...