The economic thinking around the role of agriculture for development has evolved since the 1950s. Over the past decades, the agriculture sector has been rediscovered as a sector with great potential for triggering growth, reducing poverty and inequality, providing food security, and delivering environmental services.
... See More + This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of agricultural development by investigating the role played by laws and regulations. First, the paper proposes new measures of regulatory quality and regulatory efficiency in agriculture. Second, the paper employs cross-section data to test the relationship of the proposed measures with agricultural performance. The results indicate that agricultural productivity is on average higher where transaction costs imposed by regulations are lower and where countries adhere to more regulatory good practices. This relationship is stronger when low transaction costs and regulatory good practices are combined.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8199 SEP 20, 2017
The Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Program (DRFIP) helps Middle Income Countries develop and implement comprehensive financial protection strategies that bring together different financial instruments to protect against disasters of different frequency and severity.
... See More + By securing the funds for disaster response in advance and putting in place the budget systems to rapidly and effectively execute them, this approach helps governments become more effective risk managers. The program for Middle Income Countries is structured around five main activities.
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Disasters—and their economic and social impacts—are on the rise. While disasters do not discriminate, they tend to have the greatest impact on the poorest.
... See More + These households have limited assets and limited capacity to absorb shocks, so disaster impacts can have long-lasting consequences for them. Furthermore, women and girls often bear brunt of direct (mortality rates higher among women) and indirect (negative impacts on nutrition and school performance are disproportionately high among girls) impacts of disasters. Rapid assistance during a crisis is essential to build the resilience and protect the welfare of poor and vulnerable households. Disaster risk finance (DRF) can play a role in ensuring that disaster response mechanisms react and respond quickly. The development objective of our work on Resilient Livelihoods is to increase the resilience of chronic and transitory poor households to disaster events.
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This paper develops new estimates of export quality, based on bilateral data, which are far more extensive than previous efforts. The data cover 166 countries and hundreds of products over 1962-2014.
... See More + The analysis finds that quality upgrading is particularly rapid during the early stages of development. There is significant cross-country heterogeneity in the growth rate of quality. Within any given product line, quality converges over time to the world frontier. Institutional quality, liberal trade policies, foreign direct investment inflows, and human capital all promote quality upgrading, although their impacts vary across sectors. The results suggest that reducing barriers to entry into new sectors can allow economies to benefit from rapid quality convergence over time.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8196 SEP 14, 2017
Since the 1970s, the world has embarked on a new financial globalization era. Cross-country capital flows have significantly increased in developed and developing countries.
... See More + However, the characteristics of financial globalization differ from what was originally expected. Various examples illustrate this point. Although the literature predicted large gains from financial globalization (such as additional funding, broad diversification, and deeper financial systems), the positive effects have been more limited. In developed and developing countries, financial globalization has manifested in increasing gross capital flows (inflows and outflows) rather than larger net flows. Capital markets are segmented and only a few large firms access international markets. International institutional investors do not seem to have played a stabilizing role, helping to exacerbate and transmit crises across countries. Although financial globalization has brought several beneficial changes, its net effects and spillovers to the overall economies participating in it have yet to be understood.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8194 SEP 13, 2017
The questionnaire module was designed jointly by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nation (UN) habitat, and the World Bank, as custodians, with input from global land indicators initiative (GLII), GLDW, and Landesa.
... See More + It is intended to collect the essential data required for computation of sustainable development goals (SDG) 1.4.2 and 5.a.1. The tool, which aims to address all needs of both indicators, includes only the truly essential questions for these SDGs. The module may be expanded by NSOs or other agencies. An expanded module will be designed and shared in a guidebook by the World Bank. The module in this report is one version of the essential module. This assumes proxy respondents and a full parcel roster. Additional versions will be designed for individual-level data collection efforts and for other types of household surveys with proxy respondents that are not parcel based (such as consumption and expenditure, housing surveys etc.).
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On September 13, 2017, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Board of Governors adopted resolution number six hundred and fifty seven.
... See More + It was resolved that the Child Planning Benefit available to the staff of the Bank to provide assistance when planning for the addition of children to the staff member’s household shall be available to the Executive Directors and their Alternates on the same basis as they are available to the staff.
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On September 13, 2017, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Board of Governors adopted resolution number six hundred and fifty six.
... See More + It was resolved that effective July 1, 2017, the remuneration of the Executive Directors of the Bank and their Alternates pursuant to Section 13(e) of the By-Laws shall be paid in the form of a salary without a separate supplemental allowance, and such salary shall be paid at the annual rate of $258,570 for Executive Directors and $223,680 for Alternate Executive Directors.
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Preferential trade agreements today are more numerous and deeper than they were a quarter century ago. Do deep agreements promote countries' integration into global value chains?
... See More + What are the economic mechanisms? How do countries choose their trade agreement partners? Would the undoing of deep agreements disrupt global value chains? What is the outlook for trade agreements and global value chains going forward? This paper reviews the small but growing literature on the role of deep agreements as the institutional underpinnings of global value chains. It discusses the available evidence and theoretical arguments, providing directions for future research in this area.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8190 SEP 11, 2017
Mediation series is a set of three guides that will help policy-makers, organizations, and practitioners build mediation practice and culture. The series include mediation essentials, integrated conflict management design workbook, and making mediation law.
... See More + Mediation essentials serves as a complete orientation guide to alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in general and to mediation. Making mediation law offers a robust perspective on how to design mediation policy and legislation. Guidance in this area is in high demand and scarce (besides the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) model law on international commercial conciliation and its guide, there aren’t many other comprehensive resources). The authors hope that making mediation law will effectively fill that gap. Integrated conflict management design workbook offers a hands-on focus for designing effective dispute management systems for organizations.
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Mediation series is a set of three guides that will help policy-makers, organizations, and practitioners build mediation practice and culture. The series include mediation essentials, integrated conflict management design workbook, and making mediation law.
... See More + Mediation essentials serves as a complete orientation guide to alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in general and to mediation. Making mediation law offers a robust perspective on how to design mediation policy and legislation. Guidance in this area is in high demand and scarce (besides the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) model law on international commercial conciliation and its guide, there aren’t many other comprehensive resources). The authors hope that making mediation law will effectively fill that gap. Integrated conflict management design workbook offers a hands-on focus for designing effective dispute management systems for organizations.
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Mediation is one of the most frequently used alternative dispute resolution processes worldwide. Mediation provides faster, cheaper, and better solutions than a traditional court decision can.
... See More + Benefits are important for individuals as well as for disputing businesses from the private sector and for public sector institutions. Understanding the principles, process, and skills of mediation is essential for anyone whose professional role involves managing disputes of any kind. Mediation Essentials comprises five chapters as follows: 1) Chapter 1 is about How to Manage and Control Disputes and Alternative Dispute Resolution; Chapter 2 describes on How to Make the Most of Mediation; Chapter 3 discusses on How Professional Advisors Can Add Value to Mediation; Chapter 4 explains on How to Use Guiding Principles and Ethics to Ensure the Integrity of Mediation; and Chapter 5 concludes with How to Draft Contractual Documents for Mediation.
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On September 8, 2017, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Board of Governors adopted resolution number six hundred and fifty five.
... See More + It was resolved that the Bank transfers immediately from surplus, by way of grant, 55,000,000 US dollars to the Trust Fund for Gaza and the West Bank, such transfer to be drawn down by the International Development Association as needed; provided, however, that the amount of such grant may at any time be changed by the International Development Association into an equivalent amount in other currencies.
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Desertification and land degradation threaten the livelihoods of millions of poor people. Managing drylands and restoring degraded lands represent an opportunity to increase productivity and improve incomes while enhancing resilience to climate change.
... See More + In practice, land restoration and drylands management techniques can improve crop yields, reduce erosion, and enhance the provision of water. This publication is an example of thorough analytical studies carried out by the World Bank in collaboration with partners. It summarizes the development challenge posed by drylands in East and West Africa by discussing determinants of resilience to droughts and other shocks. The World Bank regularly carries out comprehensive analytical country reports on relevant environmental issues. More than forty of these publications are available in the Bank’s Open Knowledge Repository website.
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The paper tests the effects of plan-making on job search and employment. In a field experiment with unemployed youths, participants who complete a detailed job search plan increase the number of job applications submitted (by 15 percent) but not the time spent searching, consistent with intention-behavior gaps observed at baseline.
... See More + Job seekers in the plan-making group diversify their search strategy and use more formal search channels. This greater search efficiency and effectiveness translate into more job offers (30 percent) and employment (26 percent). Weekly reminders and peer-support sub-treatments do not improve the impacts of plan-making, suggesting that limited attention and accountability are unlikely mechanisms.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8181 SEP 06, 2017
