This policy note support for agriculture and rural development (ARD) access to a huge market for Serbian agriculture and European Union (EU). The current framework for agricultural policy and budget support needs to adjust quickly to this challenge.
... See More + Otherwise, these disparate growth pathways will continue leading to low aggregate growth. This outcome is not inevitable, however, provided that government is willing to implement bold, forward thinking structural reform. Experience from countries that have acceded EU recently suggests that agriculture has prospered most in those that met this challenge. The Government needs to use its pre-accession time wisely and focus on two objectives. First, it needs to recognize the core sector development prioritiesthat will increase Serbia’s agriculture competitiveness, and adjust its policy instruments accordingly. Second, national funds would be best spent on supporting these priorities, while complemented with EU funds. The Government’s efforts will require the intensification of work both in sector policy, and in institutional development. Some of the lessons learned from EU enlargements can be translated into a set of recommendations for Serbia that will assist the sector during the transition to full EU membership. They encompass four broad areas: (1) agricultural policy during the period leading to eventual EU membership; (2) commitmentto the completion of necessary reforms; (3) institutional adjustment and capacity building; and (4) re-thinking the use of limited budgetary resources.
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The Poverty Mapping in the European Union (EU) project, an initiative of the World Bank and European Commission (EC) in cooperation with EU member states, has developed a set of high-resolution poverty maps by using information from recent national population censuses and household income surveys to estimate the rates of monetary poverty for small policies at the national and sub-national levels in each of the EU member states.
... See More + This brief outlines several of the key knowledge externalities gained in the context of this project that have improved the World Bank’s approach to poverty mapping, including methodological innovations in small area poverty estimation and enhancements to the publicly available poverty mapping software PovMap. The objective is to help the EC and EU member states target funds and programs in the 2014–2020 budget cycle most efficiently to the areas in highest need. The knowledge externalities from the Poverty Mapping in the EU project have notably changed the way the WBG approaches poverty mapping. The initiative, PovMap software, has helped build bridges between researchers in statistics and econometrics, promoting interaction and exchange of ideas through featured sessions. As this type of technical engagement in middle and high income countries can provide a platform for sophisticated innovation, it has important implications for low income countries as well. To conclude, with the development of improved tools and training, these technical advancements can be adapted and used in settings with weaker data and analytical capacity.
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The Poverty Mapping in the European Union (EU) project, an initiative of the World Bank and European Commission (EC) in cooperation with EU member states, has developed a set of high-resolution poverty maps by using information from recent national population censuses and household income surveys to estimate the rates of monetary poverty for small geographic areas in EU member states.
... See More + This disaggregated information can help guide allocations of EU funds to the areas in highest need as well as inform decision making and policies at the national and sub-national levels in each of the EU member states. The project succeeded in producing a large volume of high quality analytical work and made important methodological advances, but not without overcoming certain institutional challenges. This brief outlines key lessons learned from this project on working together efficiently with multiple partners. The key lessons learned are as follows: (i) the regional development agenda can provide an entry point for small area poverty estimation; (ii) building on pre-existing arrangements can help to reduce institutional barriers; (iii) strategic engagement across institutions and across countries can have great impact not only on project outcomes but also on sustainability; and (iv) one size does not fit all. To conclude, the engagement of the World Bank with the EC and EU member states has been successful at gaining an improved understanding of the wide variation in poverty risk across small geographic areas, both in terms of poverty levels and the underlying reasons for poverty.
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Since 2004, the World Bank has been working with the countries of the EU’s Eastern Partnership - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, to assess accounting and auditing standards and offer policy recommendations under the Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC) program.
... See More + Given the often similar issues faced, a regional program on Strengthening Auditing and Reporting in the Eastern Partnership (STAREP) was launched by the World Bank’s Centre for Financial Reporting Reform (CFRR) in October 2013 to support the design and implementation of sound corporate financial reporting reforms that strengthen business and investment climates and bring closer integration with the European Union. STAREP provides knowledge and convening services, and fosters peer-exchange on the practical challenges and successful approaches to financial reporting reform. 2014 was the first full year of STAREP activities. Key events included a ministerial level conference to discuss financial reporting, with a particular focus on creating conditions for Small or Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) growth, and a senior officials’ workshop, which considered the progress of reform and EU requirements. STAREP activities will continue to develop in 2015. This annual update covers the activities of STAREP for the year 2014 and the plans for 2015.
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Facing the prospects of rapid demographic aging and decline over the coming decades, Poland needs a highly skilled workforce to help generate the productivity growth that it needs to fuel continued convergence of its living standards with those of its West European neighbors.
... See More + Skilling up the workforce starts with equipping youth with the right cognitive and socio-emotional foundation skills. International research has identified three dimensions of skills that matter for good employment outcomes and economic growth: cognitive skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and creative and critical thinking or problem solving; socio-emotional skills and behavioral traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, and openness to experience; and job- or occupation-specific technical skills, such as the ability to work as an engineer. This report focuses on cognitive skills. It examines results for Poland from the program for international student assessment (PISA), which assesses the mathematics, reading, and science competencies of 15-year-olds. The overall effects of reform on Poland’s PISA scores have been positive, although isolating the precise impact of each reform element is difficult. There is evidence from PISA assessments replicated for older students in upper-secondary education in 2006, 2009 and 2012 that performance gaps previously found between vocational and general schools for 15-year-olds prior to the 1999 reform persist today in upper secondary education, where the performance of students in vocational upper-secondary schools trails that of their peers in general education.
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Facing the prospects of rapid aging and shrinking population over the coming decades, Slovakia needs a highly skilled workforce to help generate the productivity growth that it needs to fuel its continued convergence of living standards with its West European neighbors.
... See More + Skilling up the workforce starts with equipping youth with the right cognitive and socio-emotional foundation skills. International research has identified three dimensions of skills that matter for good employment outcomes and economic growth: cognitive skills, such as literacy, numeracy, creative and critical thinking or problem-solving; socio-emotional skills and behavioral traits, such as conscientiousness, grit or openness to experience; and job- or occupation-specific technical skills, such as the ability to work as an engineer. This report focuses on cognitive skills and examines results for Slovakia from the program for international student assessment (PISA), which assesses the mathematics, reading, and science competencies of 15-year-olds. Its findings suggest that Slovakia can do significantly better in helping students develop cognitive foundation skills. This note proposes several policy recommendations, based on an analysis of Slovakia’s PISA data as well as international evidence, to make Slovakia’s education system both stronger and more inclusive.
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This paper empirically examines the determinants of credit at different maturities across European Union countries during the last decade. The paper documents the lengthening of maturities since the early 2000s, and whether these patterns were driven by similar factors in advanced countries and in emerging market countries.
... See More + Before the 2008 crisis, long-term credit expanded faster than short-term credit in most countries in the sample, and contracted less than short-term credit after 2008. The paper finds that domestic deposits and foreign liabilities were more important sources of funding in emerging market countries than in advanced countries. Moreover, trade openness and initial banking sector depth matter more for emerging market countries than for advanced countries.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7436 OCT 08, 2015
The European Union (EU) Regular Economic Report (RER), is a semiannual publication of the World Bank Group and covers economic developments, prospects, and economic policies in the European Union.
... See More + The report uses four sub-groups that share broadly similar development patterns EU : Central Europe comprises Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia; Northern Europe comprises Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden; Southern Europe comprises Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain; Western Europe comprises Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. While the report covers the European Union, it provides additional information on European countries which had historically a stronger operational engagement with the World Bank Group, in particular, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland and Romania. The focus note of this RER covers “Welfare States and the Protection of the Poor in the European Union”.
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Portraits of Labor Market Exclusion presents "profiles" or "portraits" of individuals who have limited labor-market attachment. It is widely accepted that those with limited attachment to the labor market are a highly heterogeneous group (including, for instance, recent job losers, long-term unemployed, school leavers with no labor-market experience, those close to retirement age, or people with caring responsibilities), and that understanding their circumstances and potential barriers is an essential prerequisite for designing and implementing a tailored and effective mix of policy support and incentives.
... See More + The report takes a comprehensive view, focusing on both the labor market attachment of a country's out-of-work population and the social assistance package and poverty profile of the same segment of the population. In essence, the report looks at individuals through the lenses of both poverty/welfare status and labor market indicators, and, in doing so, the portraits helps move the dialogue from a purely labor market-centric view to a broader dialogue that includes social policy as a whole. This is an important shift; for instance, social protection programs, such as family benefits and maternity benefits, and broader social policy issues such as retirement ages, often have a great impact on who remains inactive. Specifically, the report presents portraits of the out-of-work population of six countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania and Romania) in terms of distance from the labor market, human capital, and labor supply conditions, as well as demographic conditions. The analysis relies on the European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) surveys for the years 2007 to 2011. Latent class analysis methodology allows multidimensional profiling of the out-of-work population, and identifies classes or groups of out-of-work individuals that are as homogeneous as possible within each class according to a set of observable characteristics, and as distant as possible between classes. Consequently, this analysis provide a much richer glimpse of the very different barriers to labor market integration that these various groups experience, considerably augmenting the limited amount of information contained in traditional descriptive statistics.
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Publication 97883 MAY 30, 2015
Sundaram,Ramya; Hoerning,Ulrich; De Andrade Falcao,Natasha; Millan,Natalia; Tokman,Carla; Zini,Michele DavideDisclosed