Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, discusses setting a clear target for growth. He is pleased with the focus on infrastructure. The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank plus others, together will supply about USD...

This paper investigates to what extent media impacts political decisions. A viable practical approach to test the relationship between mass media and political actions is through the use of the World Bank's Doing Business data, specifically, by assessing local media coverage of Doing Business...

This engagement note provides education sector policymakers with an overview of the status of education across the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and offers insight into the World Bank's strategies and approaches to supporting education reform in the GCC region. While the Gulf...

The report is structured as follows. The next section introduces the theoretical notion of a 'virtual economy' and explains how it is distinct from other Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-related economic activities. The following sections describe in detail the main areas of the...

James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank Group, discussed the global knowledge partnership, which is central to the Bank's work. The digital revolution brings opportunity. Knowledge can be transferred from developed to developing countries, but also that developing countries can exchange...

Integration into global markets can improve the efficiency of the Argentinian economy, providing opportunities for private investment to flourish and for the associated benefits to accrue to consumers. Among many policies that are important for integrating into the global economy, particularly...

"Over a decade has passed since the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers marked the onset of the largest global economic crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis revealed major shortcomings in market discipline, regulation, and supervision, and reopened important policy...

"Global value chains (GVCs) powered the surge of international trade after 1990 and now account for almost half of all trade. This shift enabled an unprecedented economic convergence: poor countries grew rapidly and began to catch up with richer countries. Since the 2008 global financial crisis,...

"Obesity is a global ticking time-bomb with huge potential negative economic and health impacts, especially for the poor. Countries and global partners need to act urgently to address this ensuing epidemic with emphasis highlighting interventions that require corrective public action rather than...