International trade in higher education services in the form of international student mobility has increased sharply since the 1960s and especially from Eastern Europe and Central Asia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Many international students, especially those with graduate degrees, stay...

The Belt and Road Initiative, due to its diverse and extensive infrastructure investments, poses a wide range of environmental risks. Some projects have easily identifiable and measurable impacts, such as energy projects' greenhouse gas emissions. Others, such as transportation infrastructure,...

For many years, offshore wind was the expensive cousin of onshore wind with generation costs in the range of USD 150 to USD 200 per megawatt hour (MWh). This changed dramatically between 2016 and 2017 when a series of competitive tenders in Europe witnessed strike prices fall below USD 100/MWh,...

This paper provides insights to inform government efforts to attract and retain foreign direct investment, by analyzing the results of a survey of more than 2,400 affiliates of multinational enterprises across 10 middle-income countries. The paper explores corporate perspectives and...

As globalization has intensified, multinational enterprises' investments have become a sophisticated set of financial transactions that are difficult to monitor and classify by the home and host countries. In some cases, what is classified as foreign direct investment is rather "indirect foreign...

This paper explores the benefits and the costs of strengthening infrastructure assets to make them more resilient, reducing the repair costs and infrastructure disruptions caused by natural hazards. Strengthening infrastructure assets in low- and middle-income countries would increase investment...

This paper analyzes the welfare and distributional impacts of increasing taxes on cigarettes in Georgia. Increasing taxes on tobacco is an effective measure to reduce smoking. According to some estimates, increasing tobacco taxes could save more than GEL 3.6 billion and 53 thousand lives over a...

This paper discusses an example of an early childhood development facility intervention in the Khanty-Mansyisk region of the Russian Federation and its potential to produce efficiency gains in the region and the country overall. The government of the region is introducing changes to the built...