The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a worldwide statistical initiative led by the World Bank under the auspices of the United Nations Statistical Commission. It produces comparable price and volume measures of gross domestic product (GDP) and its expenditure aggregates across...

Offshore wind holds tremendous promise for many emerging markets as a large-scale, clean, reliable form of new electricity generation with the potential to stimulate valuable economic benefits. However, developing a new offshore wind sector in an emerging market is no easy task. Decision makers...

In this report, the authors investigate state-owned enterprise (SOE) listings as a solution to promote local capital markets development. Thus, SOE listings can offer governments an enormous opportunity to kick-start the development of their local capital markets while achieving other divestment...

Physical cash and commercial bank money are dominant vehicles for retail payments around the world, including in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Yet payments in EMDEs are marked by several key deficiencies, such as lack of universal access to transaction accounts, widespread...

Outdoor air pollution accounts for an estimated 4.2 million deaths worldwide, the majority of which are caused by exposure to fine particulate matter (or PM2.5) air pollution. Most of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Reducing PM2.5 air pollution is thus crucial for...

This Good Practice Handbook is designed to provide guidance to practitioners on taking rigorous and consistent approaches to assess hydropower project impacts on downstream river ecosystems and people, and determine their Environmental Flows (EFlows) commitments. The Handbook outlines a good...

This Note provides guidance to securities markets regulators in emerging market economies (EMEs) about key regulatory issues that could affect the issuance of debt instruments for infrastructure financing over which they have some control. The Note focuses on three areas (placement regime,...

This Policy Note focuses on distribution channels, the role they play in product diversification and costs, and how regulation can promote competition in mutual funds (MFs) distribution. In many emerging market economics (EMEs) where both the capital markets and the MFs have reached certain...

This note discusses emerging international approaches for regulating design and distribution of retail banking products. Such products include deposit, credit, and payment products, being the products that new financial consumers typically acquire first. Policy makers are finding that financial...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) face significant financing gaps that stifle innovation and economic growth. The credit gap alone is estimated at dollar 4.5 trillion as of 2017 for emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) only. Bank financing has been the traditional source of...