The war in Syria, now in its eighth year, continues to take its toll on the Syrian people. More than half of the population of Syria remains displaced; 5.6 million persons are registered as refugees outside of the country and another 6.2 million are displaced within Syria’s borders.
... See More + The internally displaced persons include 2 million school-age children; of these, less than half attend school. Another 739,000 Syrian children are out of school in the five neighborhood countries that host Syria’s refugees. The loss of human capital is staggering, and it will create permanent hardships for generations of Syrians going forward. Despite the tragic prospects for renewed fighting in certain parts of the country, an overall reduction in armed conflict is possible going forward. However, international experience shows that the absence of fighting is rarely a singular trigger for the return of displaced people. Numerous other factors—including improved security and socioeconomic conditions in origin states, access to property and assets, the availability of key services, and restitution in home areas—play important roles in shaping the scale and composition of the returns. Overall, refugees have their own calculus of return that considers all these factors and assesses available options. The Mobility of Displaced Syrians: An Economic and Social Analysis sheds light on the “mobility calculus” of Syrian refugees. While dismissing any policies that imply wrongful practices involving forced repatriation, the study analyzes factors that may be considered by refugees in their own decisions to relocate. It provides a conceptual framework, supported by data and analysis, to facilitate an impartial conversation about refugees and their mobility choices. It also explores the diversified policy toolkit that the international community has available—and the most effective ways in which the toolkit can be adapted—to maximize the well-being of refugees, host countries, and the people in Syria.
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The increasing growth of forced displacement worldwide has led to the stronger interest of various stakeholders in measuring poverty among refugee populations.
... See More + However, refugee data remain scarce, particularly in relation to the measurement of income, consumption, or expenditure. This paper offers a first attempt to measure poverty among refugees using cross-survey imputations and administrative and survey data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Jordan. Employing a small number of predictors currently available in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees registration system, the proposed methodology offers out-of-sample predicted poverty rates. These estimates are not statistically different from the actual poverty rates. The estimates are robust to different poverty lines, they are more accurate than those based on asset indexes or proxy means tests, and they perform well according to targeting indicators. They can also be obtained with relatively small samples. Despite these preliminary encouraging results, it is essential to replicate this experiment across countries using different data sets and welfare aggregates before validating the proposed method.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS9076 DEC 03, 2019
Doing business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... See More + Doing business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - and over time. Regulations affecting 12 areas of the life of a business are covered: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency, employing workers, and contracting with the government. The employing workers and contracting with the government indicator sets are not included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business. Data in doing business 2020 are current as of May 1, 2019. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where, and why. This economy profile presents indicators for Syrian Arab Republic for 2020, Syrian Arab Republic ranks 176.
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This paper addresses three questions: 1) what would have been the growth and income trajectory of Syria in the absence of war; 2) given the war, what explains the reduction in economic growth in terms physical capital, labor force, human capital, and productivity; and 3) what potential growth scenarios for Syria there could be in the aftermath of war.
... See More + Estimates of the impact of conflict point to negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth of -12 percent on average over 2011-18, resulting in a GDP contraction to about one-third of the 2010 level. In post-conflict simulation scenarios, the growth drivers are affected by the assumed levels of reconstruction assistance, repatriation of refugees, and productivity improvements associated with three plausible political settlement outcomes: a baseline (Sochi-plus) moderate scenario, an optimistic (robust political settlement) scenario, and a pessimistic (de facto balance of power) scenario. Respectively for these scenarios, GDP per capita average growth in the next two decades is projected to be 6.1, 8.2, or 3.1 percent, assuming that a final and stable resolution of the conflict is achieved.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8967 AUG 06, 2019
The Mashreq countries must fully leverage digital infrastructure as well as their relative strengths in transforming their economies. The report lays out the strategic importance of digital infrastructure for countries in the region, takes stock of its status, and provides recommendations.
... See More + Countries studied are: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria. Digital infrastructure covers the broadband value chain: international connectivity, Internet exchange points (IXPs), backbone networks, and access networks. It identifies the main elements of broadband networks in the Mashreq, assesses the potential of data centers and regional IXPs, and provides benchmarks on key sector indicators for the region. The second part of the report looks in detail at the importance of regional digital infrastructure for key sectors of the Mashreq economy, relates digital infrastructure to the overall development program of the Mashreq, and presents emerging research in private sector digital platforms in the region. It concludes that there is a substantial cross-infrastructure agenda both at the national, but more importantly, at the regional level, as energy and transport networks can be effectively used to expand broadband access in the region both across and within countries. The report presents several opportunities for the Mashreq governments to take advantage of and improve their digital infrastructure and the verticals that build on it. The report also highlights the opportunity to develop regional digital services for trade diversification, growth, and economic integration as a foundation for the emergence of a digital economy. Finally, the report stresses the importance of digital transformation, highlighting opportunities in key sectors, including health, education, urban development, and social services for migrant communities.
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The Mashreq countries must fully leverage digital infrastructure as well as their relative strengths in transforming their economies. The report lays out the strategic importance of digital infrastructure for countries in the region, takes stock of its status, and provides recommendations.
... See More + Countries studied are: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria. Digital infrastructure covers the broadband value chain: international connectivity, Internet exchange points (IXPs), backbone networks, and access networks. It identifies the main elements of broadband networks in the Mashreq, assesses the potential of data centers and regional IXPs, and provides benchmarks on key sector indicators for the region. The second part of the report looks in detail at the importance of regional digital infrastructure for key sectors of the Mashreq economy, relates digital infrastructure to the overall development program of the Mashreq, and presents emerging research in private sector digital platforms in the region. It concludes that there is a substantial cross-infrastructure agenda both at the national, but more importantly, at the regional level, as energy and transport networks can be effectively used to expand broadband access in the region both across and within countries. The report presents several opportunities for the Mashreq governments to take advantage of and improve their digital infrastructure and the verticals that build on it. The report also highlights the opportunity to develop regional digital services for trade diversification, growth, and economic integration as a foundation for the emergence of a digital economy. Finally, the report stresses the importance of digital transformation, highlighting opportunities in key sectors, including health, education, urban development, and social services for migrant communities.
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Data collected for refugee registration and to target humanitarian assistance include information about household composition and demographics that can be used to identify gender-based vulnerabilities.
... See More + This paper combines the microdata collected by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to register refugees with data from its Home Visit surveys to analyze income poverty rates among refugees with a gender lens. It finds distinguishing between different types of male and female principal applicant (PA) households is important in the setting of Syrian refugees in Jordan. Poverty rates for couples with children do not differ by gender of the PA but for other household types poverty rates are higher for those with female PAs. Households formed because of the unpredictable dynamics of forced displacement, such as sibling households, unaccompanied children, and single caregivers, are extremely vulnerable, especially if the principal applicant is a woman or a girl.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8616 OCT 17, 2018
This issue focuses on FCV Countries and Topics and features the following articles: Confronting the Development Challenges of Fragility, Conflict, and Violence; What Drives the Radicalization of Foreign Terrorist Recruits?
... See More + The Cost of Fear; Leaving, Staying, or Coming Back? Migration Decisionsduring the Northern Mali Conflict; How Myanmar’s Reforms Are Playing Out in Rural Villages; Obstacles on the Road to Economic Growth in the West Bank; Can Public Works Help Postconflict Communities Escape Poverty? Can Mass Media Increase Women’s Political Participation after Civil War? Conflict and Poverty in Afghanistan’s Transition; Who Benefited from Burundi’s Demobilization Program? and U.S. Food Aid and Civil Conflict Revisited: A Methodological Caution .
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This paper details the results from the first comprehensive survey of private firms across major urban areas in the Syrian Arab Republic -- including Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Latakia, and Damascus -- since the conflict began in 2011.
... See More + This builds on the World Bank's Enterprise Survey from 2009 and attempts to survey each of the 508 firms from 2009 again. The survey highlights the major challenges facing firms in Syria today, such as access to electricity, fuel, and water. Yet, loss of workers, managers, and supply chain relationships are also notably severe. Rebuilding the social and human capital of Syria may be even more difficult than the bricks and mortar. The paper also identifies the ways firms have been affected in their prices, sales, supply chains, taxation, and costs as well as how they have adapted in financing and employment. These constraints and impacts are also analyzed at the subnational level and across sectors. Firms in Aleppo stand out for their uniquely difficult challenges and responses that are sometimes at odds with the rest of the country. Finally, the paper analyzes firm exit from 2009 to 2017 and finds that higher productivity firms from 2009 were more likely to survive, except in Aleppo where the reverse holds. The paper hypothesizes that productive firms facing the particularly severe destruction in Aleppo may have made a different calculation compared with productive firms elsewhere: to use their capabilities to leave rather than to use their capabilities to weather the storm.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8397 APR 02, 2018
Global terrorist organizations attract radicalized individuals across borders and constitute a threat for both sending and receiving countries.
... See More + The paper provides plausibly-identified evidence on the drivers of transnational terrorist recruitment. Using unique personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, a.k.a. Daesh), it shows how economic opportunities and migration costs interact to explain the spatial pattern of foreign participation in the terrorist group. Poor labor market opportunities generally push more individuals to join Daesh, but they hamper recruitment in countries far away from the organization’s headquarters, as migration costs are large and liquidity constraints may bind.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8381 MAR 27, 2018
Brockmeyer,Anne; Do,Quy-Toan; Joubert,Clement Jean Edouard; Abdel Jelil,Mohamed; Bhatia,KartikaDisclosed
This study analyses how the Syrian refugee inflows into turkey affected firm entry and performance. To estimate the casual effects, instrumental variables, difference-indifferences and synthetic control methodologies are used.
... See More + The results suggest that hosting refugees is favourable for firms. Total firm entry does not seem to be significantly affected. However, there is a substantial increase in the number of new foreign-owned firms. In line with the increase in new foreign-owned firms, there is some indication of growth in gross profits and net sales.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8323 JAN 30, 2018
Akgunduz,Yusuf Emre; van den Berg,Marcel; Hassink,WolterDisclosed
Between fiscal year 2014 and 2018, the World Bank financed around 35 IBRD/IDA projects in the Mashreq Region, totaling approximately US$8 billion.
... See More + This includes loans and guarantees which support a wide array of investments in education, health, public administration, infrastructure, urban and social development, financial and private sector development, job creation, agriculture, and environmental and natural resource management. Lending operations have been complemented by several grant-funded projects in different sectors, particularly municipal services, poverty targeting, social protection and capacity building. The Mashreq portfolio is also leveraged by innovative concessional financing initiatives, provided through the Global Concessional Financing Facility which was established in 2016 to support Middle Income Countries impacted by a massive influx of refugees. Over the coming years, the World Bank’s strategy in the Mashreq Region focuses on: (i) promoting inclusive economic growth and job creation, (ii) financing climate-smart infrastructure, (iii) scaling up access to and quality of service delivery, and (iv) mitigating the economic and social impact of recent and ongoing crises in the Region in order to safeguard development gains and promote peace and stability. This paper includes the following headings: who we are? Main World Bank financing instruments; the World Bank Group Middle East and North Africa strategy; the World Bank in the Mashreq; strengthening the resilience of poor and vulnerable groups; growth for jobs; maximizing finance for development; climate-smart infrastructure for essential services; citizen engagement; building back better; capturing human capital; effective governance, finance and markets; and supporting reforms and strengthening service delivery.
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Doing Business 2018 is the 15th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... See More + This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Syrian Arab Republic. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies; for 2018 Syrian Arab Republic ranks 174. Doing Business measures aspects of regulation affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking. Data in Doing Business 2018 are current as of June 1, 2017. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why.
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The combination of conflict, food insecurity, and displacement generates competing claims for financial resources that stretch the donors' ability to provide funding and the humanitarian organizations' capacity to provide social assistance.
... See More + The paper uses Receiver Operating Characteristic curves and related indexes to determine the optimal targeting strategy of a food voucher program for refugees. The estimations focus on the 2014 food vouchers administered by the World Food Programme to Syrian refugees in Jordan. The analysis uses data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Based on a poverty model, Receiver Operating Characteristic curves are used to optimize coverage and leakage rates under budget constraints. The paper shows how policy makers can use these instruments to fine-tune targeting using coverage rates, budgets, or poverty lines as guiding principles to increase the overall efficiency of a program. As humanitarian organizations operate under increasing budget constraints and increasing demands for efficiency, the proposed approach addresses both concerns.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8191 SEP 12, 2017
The objective of the Damage Assessment (DA) of selected cities is to provide information onthe effects of the current crisis on population, physical infrastructure, and quality of servicedelivery in those cities.
... See More + It is a broad brush and remote-based exercise, drawing mostly onexisting secondary sources of information including satellite imagery, social media analytics,existing public information, and – whenever available – partner organizations’ data. Theassessment data is aggregated in a digital geospatial platform that allows for the collection,monitoring and regular updates of the damage information. This assessment has been conducted at three distinct times during the evolution of the crisis. Phase 1 was conducted in December 2014, Phase 2 in March 2016, and Phase 3 in February 2017. The first phase of the assessment established pre-crisis baseline data on assets and facilities, and estimated damages across six cities and six sectors as of December 2014. The second phase was an update of the December 2014 assessment, and provided a more recent snapshot of damages and quality of services as of March 2016 by using the baseline established in the first phase. The third phase updates the damage information of the second phase for three cities: Aleppo, Idlib and Hama.
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The Arab Spring protest marked the beginning of a new era in the Syrian Arab Republic in 2011. Minor public protests began almost immediately after the initial protests in Cairo in January 2011.
... See More + The first large demonstrations began two months later in March, and the following months saw a process of escalation as demonstrations spread and increased in size within the country. By the summer of 2011, the armed conflict was already unfolding. Now in its sixth year, the Syrian conflict remains active and is bringing much pain and tragedy on a daily basis. This study provides an assessment of the conflict's impact on economic and social outcomes in Syria as of early 2017. Conflicts destroy tangible and intangible assets and leave deep marks on a country's social fabric, culture, and collective memories. The Syrian conflict has quickly become a particularly harsh example of this.
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The Arab Spring protest marked the beginning of a new era in the Syrian Arab Republic in 2011. Minor public protests began almost immediately after the initial protests in Cairo in January 2011.
... See More + The first large demonstrations began two months later in March, and the following months saw a process of escalation as demonstrations spread and increased in size within the country. By the summer of 2011, the armed conflict was already unfolding. Now in its sixth year, the Syrian conflict remains active and is bringing much pain and tragedy on a daily basis. This study provides an assessment of the conflict's impact on economic and social outcomes in Syria as of early 2017. Conflicts destroy tangible and intangible assets and leave deep marks on a country's social fabric, culture, and collective memories. The Syrian conflict has quickly become a particularly harsh example of this.
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The Arab Spring protest marked the beginning of a new era in the Syrian Arab Republic in 2011. Minor public protests began almost immediately after the initial protests in Cairo in January 2011.
... See More + The first large demonstrations began two months later in March, and the following months saw a process of escalation as demonstrations spread and increased in size within the country. By the summer of 2011, the armed conflict was already unfolding. Now in its sixth year, the Syrian conflict remains active and is bringing much pain and tragedy on a daily basis. This study provides an assessment of the conflict's impact on economic and social outcomes in Syria as of early 2017. Conflicts destroy tangible and intangible assets and leave deep marks on a country's social fabric, culture, and collective memories. The Syrian conflict has quickly become a particularly harsh example of this.
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The Arab Spring protest marked the beginning of a new era in the Syrian Arab Republic in 2011. Minor public protests began almost immediately after the initial protests in Cairo in January 2011.
... See More + The first large demonstrations began two months later in March, and the following months saw a process of escalation as demonstrations spread and increased in size within the country. By the summer of 2011, the armed conflict was already unfolding. Now in its sixth year, the Syrian conflict remains active and is bringing much pain and tragedy on a daily basis. This study provides an assessment of the conflict's impact on economic and social outcomes in Syria as of early 2017. Conflicts destroy tangible and intangible assets and leave deep marks on a country's social fabric, culture, and collective memories. The Syrian conflict has quickly become a particularly harsh example of this.
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Forced displacement -- defined as the displacement of refugees and internally displaced persons due to violence -- has reached an unprecedented scale and global attention during the past few years, particularly in the aftermath of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2011 and the European Union's migration crisis in 2015.
... See More + As this plight gained momentum, economics found itself unprepared to answer the basic questions surrounding refugees and internally displaced persons. Few economists or institutions were working on forced displacement. Economic theory or empirics had little to offer in articles published in journals. Data were scarce, unreliable, or inaccessible. Can economics rise to the challenge? Is the economics of forced displacement different from neoclassical economics? Can off-the-shelves models be used to study forced displaced populations? What is missing to do the economics of forced displacement? What are the data constraints that limit economists in this work? This paper provides a first nontechnical introduction to these topics. The paper argues that the modeling of utility, choice, risk, and information in a short-term setting is the key to address the problem. Neoclassical economics lacks some of the theoretical ingredients that are needed, but recent developments in game theory, neuroeconomics, and behavioral economics have opened new horizons that make the task of modeling forced displacement within reach. Empirics is clearly limited by the scarcity of quality data, but an example shows how welfare economists can start working with existing data. Economists have no excuse to maintain the status quo and should get on with the work on forced displacement.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8038 APR 25, 2017
