This Public Expenditure Review (PER) was prepared at the request of Peru's Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF).The PER offers analysis, options for reform, and measures in selected areas and sectors to achieve efficiency gains and fiscal savings (where possible), while improving (at least not...

Zimbabwe is at a critical juncture. After dollarization and favorable economic factors fueled arecovery during 2009-12, Zimbabwe today faces slowing growth, a financial crisis, increasingly erratic weather patterns and rising poverty and inequality. To help respond to these issues, the...

In this first working paper the authors present and compare systems of indicators of regulatory quality, analyzing their conceptual underpinnings, technical properties, and usage by governments, stakeholders and academics. After having discussed the datasets and the types of data available, they...

The COVID-19 pandemic has, with alarming speed, dealt a heavy blow to an already-weak global economy, which is expected to slide into its deepest recession since the second world war, despite unprecedented policy support. The global recession would be deeper if countries take longer to bring the...

The objectives of this note are identifying the fiscal implications and the shortcomings of the corporate governance of the SOE sector through an initial stock taking of the sector. This policy note first presents a description of the SOE sector in Lesotho, analyzing its scope, size, performance...

The last few years have seen a growing commitment worldwide to universal health coverage (UHC). Yet there is a lack of clarity on how to measure progress towards UHC. This paper proposes a 'mashup' index that captures both aspects of UHC: that everyone-irrespective of their ability-to-pay-gets...

This report is an output of the Better Regulation for Growth Program between the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and IC, the Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group. The reports identifies a set of minimum...

The purpose of this report is to introduce and present key components of the regulatory governance agenda, and to discuss its relevance for developing countries. The paper identifies failings and knowledge gaps relevant to the implementation of regulatory governance initiatives, and it discusses...

Over the last few years the Standard Cost Model (SCM) has become the regulatory reform tool of choice in European Union (EU) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for identifying and reducing regulatory compliance costs. SCM provides a relatively simple...

What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...