Air pollution is a major cause of death and disease. 'Ambient air pollution' refers to contamination of outdoor air; 'household air pollution' refers to contamination of indoor air. Ambient (or outdoor) air pollution is the world's leading environmental risk to health and the cause of morbidity...

This paper introduces a global database that contains inflation series: (i) for a wide range of inflation measures (headline, food, energy, and core consumer price inflation; producer price inflation; and gross domestic product deflator changes); (ii) at multiple frequencies (monthly, quarterly...

This study aims to explore ways in which key competencies of the oil and gas industry could be leveraged to support the diversification of the Chadian economy. The analysis focused on identifying opportunities and prioritizing core competencies in specific segments of the oil and gas value chain...

The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past 50 years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging market and developing economies. During the current wave, which started in 2010, the increase in debt in these economies has...

Production of goods and services has increasingly globalized since the 1970s but is hard to measure. Standard approaches either overstate the degree of backward integration or underestimate the involvement of some industries, especially services, in Global Value Chain (GVC) activity. To correct...

The pace at which markets are evolving, thanks to the accelerated adoption of digital technologies, poses important challenges to competition law and its enforcement. This work aims to support this process by building an understanding of the experiences of competition authorities in deciding on...

This paper examines the extent to which countries have succeeded in decoupling transport emissions from economic growth, and how changes in emissions intensity, economic growth, and population growth have contributed to changes in transportation-related emissions. The paper employs a modified...

This paper evaluates different methods for nowcasting country-level poverty rates, including methods that apply statistical learning to large-scale country-level data obtained from the World Development Indicators and Google Earth Engine. The methods are evaluated by withholding measured poverty...

This paper analyzes the initial impact and recovery of globally engaged firms from the COVID-19 crisis. It uses rich survey data of nearly 65,000 firm-year observations in 45 countries spanning three waves of data collection. The findings are organized in a series of stylized facts, which...