Moldova, like many other countries in the region, is facing rapid economic and demographic transitions. Employers report that inadequate levels of workforce skills hamper their productivity. Recognizing the importance of workforce development to improve the country's socioeconomic prospects, the...

Escalating in March 2015, the conflict spanning across Yemen has resulted in massive casualties, a wave of internally displaced persons, substantial infrastructure damage, and hampered service delivery across both the economy and society. The business climate across Yemen has dramatically...

By improving their skills, health, knowledge, and resilience-their human capital-people can be more productive, flexible, and innovative. Human capital is a central driver of sustainable growth and poverty reduction. Investments in human capital have become more important as the nature of work...

Appropriate and effective regulatory frameworks remain crucial for ensuring that investments in infrastructure are done strategically and efficiently. Benchmarking infrastructure development 2020 assesses the regulatory quality for preparation, procurement, and management of large infrastructure...

Since 2000, there have been three major global slowdowns, with the latest and most pronounced episode triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, many countries have faced major adverse events including natural disasters, wars, and financial crises, all of which can lead to...

The downgrading of projects at the closing from moderately satisfactory to moderately unsatisfactory has been a persistent problem in the World Bank and a particular problem in the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific region since 2012. Through analysis of the projects that exited the East Asia...

For more than 20 years, the development community has claimed that monitoring and evaluation helps projects achieve their objectives. This study uses data from 1,300 World Bank projects evaluated between 2008 and 2014 to investigate this suggested link between the quality of monitoring and...

Governments must decide how to allocate limited resources for infrastructure development, particularly since financing gaps have been projected for the coming decades. Social cost-benefit analysis provides sound project appraisal and, when systematically applied, a basis for prioritization. In...

Does research add value to aid? Specifically, does impact evaluation research help or hinder the delivery of development projects? This paper analyzes the question by constructing a new data set of 100 impact evaluations and 1,135 projects appro

This Note systematizes the economic evaluation of Jobs Investment Projects. It explains the limitations of past approaches that have regarded jobs only as a by-product of growth. It focuses on market failures that create a gap between the social and private return on investments and reduce the...