While adoption of new technologies is understood to enhance long-term growth and average per-capita incomes, its impact on lower-skilled workers is more complex and merits clarification. Concerns abound that advanced technologies developed in high-income countries would inexorably lead to job...

Urbanization is occurring at a rapid pace in Bangladesh, accompanied by the proliferation of slum settlements, whose residents have special health needs given the adverse social, economic, and public environmental conditions they face. Over the past 45 years, the country's health and nutrition...

Government strategies for setting energy prices are not uniform across the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region—or even across fuels. Instead, they cover a full spectrum, ranging from discretionary price-fixing at one end to pure market-based approaches at the other. In between is a...

Named peril index insurance has great potential to address unmet risk management needs for agricultural insurance in developing economies, potentially contributing to increased agricultural sustainability and improved food security. However, the development and appraisal of index insurance...

Subsidies for utility services are widespread in the water supply, sanitation, and electricity sectors. One motivation is to improve social welfare of the poor by facilitating their access to and use of such services, as well as by redistributing resources to augment their purchasing power. At...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is becoming increasingly critical to the economies of developing countries, in part due to a major expansion in the scope of global value chains (GVCs), whereby lead firms outsource parts of their production and services activities across complex international...

Crime and violence inflict high costs on the private sector???costs that are rising globally, according to the World Bank???s Enterprise Surveys, discussions with chambers and associations, and the Bank???s Country Partnership Strategies, which reference the losses in terms of gross domestic...

This book looks back both at how the Great Recession affected employment outcomes in developing countries and at how governments responded. The chapters bring together a unique compilation of data and analysis from very different sources, including an inventory of policies implemented during the...

The Latin American and Caribbean region has been undergoing a rapid demographic and epidemiological transition, which has had important health and economic consequences. Not only is the population aging rapidly, it is also experiencing major lifestyle changes. These changes, in turn, have...

Problem-driven political economy analysis holds considerable promise to help development practitioners identify what policies and strategies are most likely to succeed in addressing difficult and persistent development challenges. This volume is the result of a systematic effort to take stock of...