In its report to the September 22, 2008 meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), the World Bank noted that the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel, and the international donor community made some progress on the three parallel conditions for Palestinian economic revival, albeit to...

The Israeli health system provides universal coverage of a broad benefits package in a highly efficient manner. At the same time, the Israeli health system faces significant challenges, including lack of universal coverage for long-term care and adult dental care, center-periphery gaps,...

The Palestinian territories face significant and growing shortfalls in the water supply available for domestic use. With population of approximately 4.8 million growing at an average annual rate of 2.8 percent, the domestic supply gap is projected to dramatically increase unless supply and...

This paper uses a global general equilibrium simulation model to quantify the effects of lifting economic sanctions on Iran with and without strategic responses. Iran benefits the most, with average per capita welfare gains ranging from close to 3 percent, in the case when Iran's crude oil...

Despite being one of the most water scarce countries in the world, Israel has achieved water security and full cost recovery through tariffs through a series of ambitious reforms. This involved nine key innovations, namely (1) putting in place a national water conveyance system to connect all...

This paper combines remote-sensed data and individual child-, mother-, and household-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) to design a prototype drought-contingent targeting framework that...

The long-term effects of Mexico's conditional cash transfer program, PROSPERA, on poor households are of great interest to policy makers and academics alike. This paper analyzes the long-term effects on the welfare of the original participant households and their offspring, about 20 years after...

The growing economic fissures in the societies of Europe and Central Asia between generations, between insiders and outsiders in the labor market, between rural and urban communities, and between the super-rich and everyone else, are threatening the sustainability of the social contract. The...