"China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 to improve connectivity and cooperation on a transcontinental scale. This study, by a team of World Bank Group economists led by Michele Ruta, analyzes the economics of the initiative. It assesses the connectivity gaps between economies along...

International Debt Statistics (IDS), a long-standing annual publication of the World Bank, features external debt statistics and analysis for the 120 low- and middle-income countries that report to the World Bank Debtor Reporting System. IDS 2021 includes (1) an overview analyzing global trends...

Pakistan is facing a large deficit in electricity supply. A report published by the Government of Pakistan (GoP) in 2013 showed that the electricity supply-demand gap has continuously grown over the past five years and has reached 4,500 to 5,500 Megawatt (MW) in 2013. Such an enormous gap has...

The Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC) and the World Bank jointly conducted a large-scale video study to gain a better understanding of what takes place in the classroom, particularly in terms of the practices involved in the teaching of mathematics and the relationship of these practices...

This paper aims to provide a very distilled summary of the concepts shaping the discourse around state-building in fragile, conflict-affected situations, and to explore some of the operational implications for international development practitioners working in these settings, drawing on...

In 2015, Indonesia stands as an increasingly divided country, unequal in many ways. There is a growing income divide between the richest 10 percent and the rest of the population, and this gap is driven by many other types of inequality in Indonesia.People are divided into haves and have-nots...