The outbreak was declared a pandemic by the WHO on March 11 and the epicenter of the crisis has moved from China and Korea to the US and Western Europe. Infections are also increasing at a rapid pace in WBG client countries, with large uncertainty about the extent to which many countries are...

The speed, reach, and magnitude of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic sent a shockwave around the globe that tested the capacity of Public Finance Management (PFM) systems to support governments' responses to crises. Fiscal transparency was not a foremost priority for decisionmakers during the...

A small open economy, Benin has seen growth that is above average for the region. The volatility of high growth spells combined with low productivity growth has translated into limited gains in income per capita. Following its transition from low-income country to lower middle income country...

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...

A large number of studies in recent years have attempted to analyze and quantify the myriad of restrictions holding back economic development in the West Bank and Gaza, but the full picture remains blurred. The main value proposition of this study is to assess and quantify the overall prospects...

Partnership for growth: linking large firms and agro-processing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) presents lessons learned from various models utilized by public and private sector programs to stimulate the growth of agro-processing SMEs through linkages to larger firms in developing...

This study seeks to understand the structure and workings of the labyrinth to propose a concrete escape. It attempts to answer the following questions. (1) Why is it that Chad could not translate the discovery of oil into structural development, economic diversification and sustainable growth?...

This World Bank publication provides an overview of mutual funds in developing countries, outlining their role in the financial sector; the different types of mutual funds; the structure of the mutual fund industry; and the industry's interdependency with other sectors such as pension funds and...

This report stems from the work initiated in the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) forUzbekistan in May 2016, which identified the quality of job creation as a central, cross-cuttingtheme. The SCD emphasized that "over the medium term, creating high-productivity, high-paying jobs for...