The purpose of this report is to raise awareness and initiate a discussion on the need for sovereign sustainability reporting. The proposed sovereign climate and nature reporting framework would assist sovereigns looking to attract investment by enabling them to produce comprehensive, regular,...

Since early 2020, an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has spread rapidly across the world. Latin America and the Caribbean remains an epicenter of the pandemic, with some of the world's highest death rates. All countries in the...

Policymakers in developing countries face multiple challenges related to climate change. To provide policymakers with reliable recommendations on a variety of climate related policies, the WBG has a diverse and complementary set of models. The analytics range from evaluating the aggregate,...

In every mining region across the globe, there are a multitude of entities primarilyfocused on progressing the interests of women in mining. At the national level,the most notable interest group is that of Women in Mining (WIM) organizations.Although WIM organizations share a common vision,...

This paper examines whether and how climatic shocks influence individual migration decisions. The authors use census microdata across 64 countries over the period 1960 to 2012, covering 442 million individual records, combined with geo-referenced temperature and precipitation data summarized for...

The increasing role of the financial sector in the move toward a more sustainable economic model continues apace. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) shock shone a light on the need for all society to correct course, and the financial sector is responding. The pace of environmental, social, and...

The organisation of global value chains via supplier links and within business groups shapes global trade and forms a major channel through which knowledge is disseminated between countries. Global value chains are also an important channel through which economic shocks propagate. At the same...

As the economic disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic increased in March 2020, there was a global dash-for-cash by investors. This selling pressure occurred across advanced sovereign bond markets and caused a deterioration in market functioning, leading to central bank interventions....

Digital transformation is provoking a real revolution in the payment's landscape of many economies in the last few years. New technologies and the change in public's habits are transforming not only the way payments are processed but the very modes of registering, storing and transferring value...

The present note raises the issue of how best to interpret the World Bank's (WB) much used "constant USD per capita income" concept and similar series. We find that the guide to its construction appearing on the WB data portal to be sketchy. The procedures essentially convert all host-country...

Climate change policies have been rising to the top of the global political agenda, but how should governments finance them? Public economists propose solutions based on economic theory, but their political feasibility depends on voters' support, and ordinary households often neglect economic...

We construct several measures for the global financial cycle using dynamic factor models and data for 25 advanced and emerging countries over 1980-2019. Our results suggest that global cycles in asset prices and capital flows are highly similar and synchronized, especially during crisis...

Why did some countries vote not to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the United National General Assembly's first emergency session since 1997? Our study examines different economic, political, geographic and historical reasons behind the voting behaviour of several countries in favour of...

Over the past few years it has become increasingly clear that the physical consequences of climate change and the transition to a carbon-neutral economy are posing risks to companies and must be managed accordingly. At the same time, around half a million sites belonging to companies and other...

Easterlin's relative income hypothesis refers to the current income of young adults compared to the level of material aspirations acquired during childhood. The hypothesis implies that young individuals are expected to reduce fertility if their material aspirations grow at a higher rate than...

This paper provides a household-level perspective on the rise of global saving and wealth since the 1980s. We calculate asset-specific saving flows and capital gains across the wealth distribution for the G3 economies – the U.S., Europe, and China. In the past four decades, global saving...

This paper analyses the impact of supply technology choices and costs on structures and prices on the emerging low-carbon hydrogen market using a novel, integrated natural gas and hydrogen market model. It shows that natural gas-based low-carbon hydrogen production pathways predominate in...

We derive a novel estimation approach to quantify three-party relocation effects in a dyadic framework. Applied to the effects of civil conflicts on trade, we find robust evidence that importers substitute away from exporters that are engaged in conflict. This trade relocation persists after the...

There are diverging results in the literature on whether engaging in ESG related activities increases or decreases the financial and systemic risks of firms. In this study, we explore whether maintaining higher ESG ratings reduces the systemic risks of firms in a stock market context. For this...