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...

The Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), which consists of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, is one of the oldest regional groupings in Africa. The main objectives for achieving this are: (i) the creation of a...

Slavonia's economy is now amongst the poorest in the European Union (EU) and has been growing more slowly than comparable regions. Some Polish and Romanian counties were less advanced until 2013 but have now overtaken Slavonia. Achieving a turnaround is difficult: only 9 percent of lagging...

Latin America and the Caribbean suffered the largest death toll from Covid?19 across developing regions and the sharpest decline in economic activity. With fewer school days and lower employment rates, with higher public debt and more firms under stress, the effects could be long?lasting. The...

The City of Yokohama offers useful lessons for other cities seeking to achieve sustainable urban development. It simultaneously managed rapid economic growth and a sharp rise in population through a series of thoughtfully conceived and well" integrated development projects and regulative...

This note analyzes the evolution of Credit Information Systems, including the emergence of new technologies that use alternative data in credit decisioning and the opportunities and risks associated with these trends. This paper also predicts the potential development effect of these disruptive...

Access to finance is an essential component of economic development and job creation. A host of studies have shown a positive correlation between financial development and economic growth. Access to finance is also critical for larger corporations and conglomerates, which, given their size,...

This document presents an incentive framework aiming to improve knowledge sharing (KS) and reusing behaviors at the World Bank. Given the nature of the Bank's work, evidence suggests that effective and efficient knowledge sharing might be the biggest predictor of success. To approach KS in a...

The transition to a more innovation-based growth model is even more urgent in the current uncertain global context[1]. While the GDP growth rate has proven resilient in recent years, declining oil and gas output, coupled with economic shocks, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic, havedented...

This report presents the results of various experimental studies that try to address, from different perspectives, the challenges of supporting the growth and profitability of women entrepreneurs. In Mexico, women tend to be overrepresented in the category of microentrepreneurs, who often have...