The paper uses a new country-level, panel data set to study the effect of public sector wages on corruption. The results show that wage inequality in the public sector is an important determinant of the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies. Increasing the wages of public officials could...

Drawing on various macro- and micro-data sources, the authors present robust evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between female labor force participation and inequality. Overall, female labor force participation is found to have a strong and significant dis-equalizing impact in at...

Regional trade agreements increasingly include provisions that regulate state-owned enterprises. This paper combines new information on the content of “deep” regional trade agreements and data on Chinese firm-level exports during 2000-11 to analyze the spillover effect of rules on...

Healthcare systems are at the frontline of delivering critical care during emergencies. Yet, already before the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries were struggling to meet even routine demands for health care. Climate change, disasters, pandemics, and demographic changes will increase pressures on...

Fragility and conflict pose a critical threat to the global goal of ending extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2015, successful development strategies reduced the proportion of the world’s people living in extreme poverty from 36 to 10 percent. But in many fragile and conflict-affected...

This third edition of the Zimbabwe Economic Update (ZEU) aims to provide both a current and historical background covering the pre-pandemic (2019) and pandemic (2020 to April 2021) period. The 2019-2020 period marked a very difficult time for the country as 2019 was clouded by a prolonged...

This book explores the economic and broader societal rationale for using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or "drone” technologies as acomplement to the current transport and logistics systems in several use cases in East Africa. The specific use cases examined include medical goods deliveries,...

Have teachers mastered the subject matter they are teaching? Can doctors accurately diagnose and treat critical health conditions? Are schools and health facilities sufficiently stocked with needed equipment and supplies? Are they sufficiently supported and staffed to optimize learning and...

In Mashreq, climate change and fragility form a vicious cycle wherein current fragility hinders climate action and climate threats will exacerbate fragility. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought an acute disruption to the global economy, yet its most profound effects have been felt in...