The purpose of this policy note is to present reform options on cabotage liberalization. The goal of cabotage liberalization is to help i) foster more competition in the domestic shipping industry, ii) reduce shipping cost, and iii) improve efficiency, maritime services, and safety standards....

This note will examine the distributional and efficiency issues associated with the fiscal response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis in Da Nang city and nationally in Vietnam. More specifically, we look at the social assistance (cash transfer) programs. Did these programs efficiently reach...

The objective of this Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) is to identify the priority constraints Bolivia faces in sustaining its gains on reducing poverty and enhancing shared prosperity over the next years. It will analyze the dynamics behind the progress achieved in the past decade on...

This retrospective examines how the World Bank's strategic use of climate-related trust funds has enabled it to play an outsized role in catalyzing climate action worldwide for nearly 30 years. By looking back at the history of climate and carbon finance, with a focus on the pioneering role of...

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the development context for the world is fundamentally challenged in many ways. The pandemic has taken a drastic human toll, and its global-scale economic and social impacts affected rural development work focused on the most poor and vulnerable populations. It has...

Mining dominates the Mongolian economy, already accounting for some 80 percent of exports and contributing a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP). In July 2020, the newly elected government reaffirmed its commitment to bring into production more of Mongolia's mineral deposits and to process...

Policy makers across the Middle East and North Africa have for many years articulated plans to integrate their people spatially and economically. Wishing to bring communities together and narrow economic gaps, governments have made large capital investments in transport corridors and "new...

Worldwide, Vocational Education and Training (VET) is receiving increasing attention, particularly as a potentially useful instrument to address high unemployment rates among youth. In 2016, the World Bank started providing technical assistance to the self government of Poland's Swietokrzyskie...

Addressing regional disparities is key to unlocking Russia's potential to achieve stronger gains in growth and equity outcomes as well as to improve its institutional environment. While spatial disparities have been an important policy concern in Russia for a long time, inequalities across its...

Though the European Union (EU) is a development conversion machine for national economies, it is less so for subnational regions. EU accession countries have been catching up to regional averages in terms of economic development since they joined the union. The economic success of the accession...