This study evaluates a randomized trial in Côte d’Ivoire, implemented by the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), which tested whether varying the content and recipient of SMS reminders can increase enrollment among young people who had pre-registered for a skills training program. Messages...

This Focus Note explores why this remains the case— even after significant efforts to narrow the financial inclusion gender gap—and what can be done to achieve equality in this sphere. Since closing the gap will require contextually adapted solutions, Ghana and Tanzania were selected as two...

This Focus Note includes illustrative examples from successful initiatives around the world that demonstrate the potential of these strategies—from digital financial solutions that respect privacy concerns to data-driven approaches that challenge institutional biases. Development actors,...

Thailand’s economy showed signs of mild improvement in November supported by stronger exports and retail trade. Government stimulus measures, including the co-payment scheme and travel incentives, helped lift activity in hotels and restaurants, though overall household consumption remained...

Climate change is widely recognized as a driver of violent conflict, but its broader social effects remain less understood. Ignoring these dimensions risks a vicious cycle where climate policies might undermine socially just adaptation. Evidence is still limited on how climate shocks influence...

This WBG study examines what makes distressed asset markets work — and how governments can create the right conditions for private sector engagement. It provides policymakers, regulators, and financial institutions with a practical framework to assess market readiness, identify policy and...

This background paper highlights the urgent need for climate‑resilient sanitation systems as cities face increasing climate‑related pressures. The growing impacts of extreme weather events expose the deep interconnections between sanitation and other essential urban systems, including water...

A randomized experiment tested the effectiveness of individual and small group–based consulting services on firms in the Colombian auto parts industry, finding improvements in management and firm performance over three to four years. This paper uses administrative data to track these firms for...

Using world commodity prices as an instrument, this paper proposes a novel method for decomposing channels of international risk sharing for commodity-exporting countries. The method identifies the commodity “sector”' as the projection of gross national product growth on commodity-price...

This paper proposes a new resilience index, CLARE (Causal machine Learning Approach to Resilience Estimation), which is rooted in an impact evaluation framework and causal machine learning algorithms applied to longitudinal household survey data. The indicator is model-agnostic, data-driven,...