Donors support many community-managed loan funds (CMLFs) often designed as components of larger projects. Unlike microfinance institutions (MFIs) with professional staff, CMLFs rely on group members themselves to manage the funds. CMLFs can be attractive alternatives for areas and populations...

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is quickly becoming ordre du jour in sovereign debt investing. There remains, however, lack of clarity around frameworks for scoring sovereign ESG performance, industry practices, and the definition of sustainability itself. This World Bank...

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is quickly becoming ordre du jour in sovereign debt investing. There remains, however, lack of clarity around frameworks for scoring sovereign ESG performance, industry practices, and the definition of sustainability itself. This World Bank...

To many, reducing water losses is seen as key to more sustainable water management. The arguments to reduce water losses are compelling, but reducing water losses has turned out to be challenging. This paper applies a panel data analysis with fixed effects to determine the major drivers of...

Aid is good for the poor. This paper uses detailed aid data spanning 60 developing countries over the past two decades to show that social aid significantly and directly benefits the poorest in society, while economic aid increases the income of the poor through growth. This new and unequivocal...

This paper uses the gravity model to analyze whether the varying export performance of Croatian counties can be explained by their proximity to border gates, ports, and other county-specific characteristics. The analysis finds that longer distances to border gates increase trade frictions...

Extension services are a keystone of information diffusion in agriculture. This paper exploits a large randomized controlled trial to track diffusion of a new technique in the classic Training and Visit (T&V) extension model, relative to a more direct training model. In both control and...