The cost of official corruption is high: it degrades public trust, impedes economic development, and undermines the rule of law. Countries around the world are increasingly using asset recovery measures to pursue justice in official corruption cases and restore funds to public use. Successful...

Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, is inspired by Belt and Road Initiative, which will improve trade, infrastructure, investment, and people-to-people connectivity - not just across borders, but on a trans-continental scale. It has the potential to lower trade costs, increase...

Special economic zones can be an effective instrument to promote industrialization if implemented properly in the right context. In China, starting in the 1980s, special economic zones were used as a testing ground for the country's transition from a planned to a market economy, and they are a...

The purpose of this review is to canvas policies and, to the extent possible, practices of major multilateral and bilateral development agencies, aimed at including disability in development. Development that includes disability, as referenced in this review, is understood as development in...

Transboundary river basins cover 62 percent of Africa's total area and, with the exception of island states, every African country has at least one international river in its territory. Thus, transboundary water governance in Africa is central to any national or regional water strategy and any...

This paper shows that the increased policy-selectivity of aid allocations observed in recent years provides recipient countries an incentive to improve policies. The paper estimates that a change in the World Banks Country Policy and Institutional Assessment policy index from 1.5 to 2 for a...

This paper investigates the impact of World Bank development policy operations on the quality of economic policy during the period 1998-2015. A new theoretical framework distinguishes among three effects that have been conflated hitherto: (a) marginal impacts of additional policy actions within...

This paper compiles project-level data from the World Bank's lending history to describe patterns and the composition of its portfolio. The paper focuses particularly on the effect of countries' transition from International Development Association to International Bank for Reconstruction and...

This study investigates the World Bank's use of lending and non-lending instruments to affect the policy priorities of developing countries. In a typical year, the World Bank lends more than USD 30 billion to its client countries. It also spends approximately USD 200 million on the provision of...