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Carbon Pricing Implementation Support in Moldova
No full textThe overarching aim of this report is to help Moldova meet its climate commitments, advance EU integration, and foster inclusive economic growth, while safeguarding vulnerable households and businesses throughout the transition. Achieving these objectives requires careful policy design that balances climate ambition with social and economic resilience. This report provides policymakers with a roadmap for introducing carbon pricing, focusing on carbon taxes as the most suitable instrument given Moldova’s current administrative capacity. Its main goals are to analyze the existing carbon pricing landscape (Section 2), evaluate policy mixes and complementary measures (Section 3), model the economic and social impacts of different illustrative carbon tax scenarios (Section 4), assess the country’s readiness for robust MRV systems (Section 5), and present a phased strategy for implementation (Section 6). By doing so, the report supports Moldova’s objectives of meeting climate commitments and advancing EU integration, while ensuring that vulnerable households are protected and inclusive growth is promoted
Mozambique Economic Update, March 2026: From Fragility to Stability - Why Fiscal Reforms Cannot Wait
No full textAmbitious and credible fiscal consolidation measures are needed to restore debt
sustainability and create fiscal space to meet growing social needs. As the
population continues to grow rapidly, the demand for teachers and health professionals intensifies. Keeping pace with these growing needs would require a substantial increase in resources. However, such an expansion is not feasible under current fiscal constraints, which risks further deterioration in service quality and accessibility and exacerbating existing regional disparities. The window for action is narrowing rapidly, with further delays increasing the costs for the government, the private sector, and the population. Addressing fiscal and external imbalances would require strong political commitment, policy coordination, and a clear communication strategy to gather support from a broad range of stakeholders
Heat, Informality, and Misallocation: Firm Adaptation in the Short and Long Run
Full text linkHow do climate shocks shape resource allocation across firms? Rising temperatures might worsen allocative efficiency if large, productive firms face constraints in adapting. This paper assesses this question in India, an economy characterized by informality, misallocation, and extreme heat. The paper uses census data on 42 million non-farm establishments from 1990 to 2013 linked to granular climate histories to estimate the impact of heat on the firm size distribution. A 1 degree Celsius temperature shock reduces firm size by 11.6 percent, with losses concentrated among large, formal firms. Displaced workers reallocate to smaller, informal firms, generating allocative efficiency losses of up to 4.3 percent. In long difference estimates spanning several decades, the relationship reverses: large firms adapt and absorb labor, while small firms contract. This adaptation offsets nearly 60 percent of the short-run labor demand shock. These results highlight a general mechanism of climate adjustment: in the short run, shocks exacerbate misallocation by pushing labor into low-productivity firms, but in the long run, adaptation by larger firms restores efficiency
Addressing Pluralistic Ignorance to Promote Gender Equality
Full text linkPluralistic ignorance is a social norms phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that their personal preferences are not what most people around them support or prefer. This misalignment can lead individuals to adjust their behaviors away from their preferences. Pluralistic ignorance can also explain why certain social norms, particularly those that support or justify harmful practices and or actions that limit women’s and girls’ opportunities, might stay in place. Learning how to address pluralistic ignorance through policy interventions can accelerate gender equality and address harmful social norms. This note provides background on what pluralistic ignorance is, how to identify it, and practical guidance on how to address it
Social Assistance in Malaysia: Who Benefits, and Who Misses Out
Full text linkThis paper presents an in-depth analysis of who benefits and who misses out on social assistance (SA) transfers in Malaysia. As the first in a two-part series on SA, the paper uses data from the Household Income Survey (HIS) of 2019 and 2022 to assess targeting outcomes and the adequacy of benefits received by those in need. In doing so, the paper profiles those who are excluded from such programs, despite being in need and eligible, and offers recommendations to improve the effectiveness of SA spending. A second paper in the series complements these findings with qualitative evidence on access and adequacy of SA transfers among residents of public housing (Program Perumahan Rakyat, PPR) in Kuala Lumpur. This paper is divided into four main sections. The first section provides an overview of the SA system in Malaysia. The second section introduces the main groups of SA programs. The third section assesses coverage, adequacy, and incidence of benefits of SA programs, before providing an in-depth analysis of targeting outcomes and discussing the targeting and design issues identified by this analysis. The fourth section presents policy recommendations for reform in the short, medium, and long term
FY 2025 Panama Country Opinion Survey Report
Full text linkThe Country Opinion Survey in Panama assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in Panama perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Panama on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Panama; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Panama; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Panama; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in Panama
What Works for Work: A Guidebook to Proven and Promising Employment Solutions
Full text linkGovernments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face growing pressure to create jobs amid shrinking fiscal space and weak growth prospects. Employment solutions - like active labor market programs (ALMPs), regulatory reforms, or alignment of social programs - are effective tools to address these challenges. Recent years have seen a strengthening evidence base for employment solutions, with rigorous evaluations indicating that well-crafted programs can achieve impacts that far exceed earlier interventions. This guidebook reviews those high-performing employment solutions and distills lessons on how to replicate them. It draws from more than a hundred successful programs and reforms implemented in diverse settings, showing that targeted and well-designed solutions can quickly make a difference in many different contexts. The guidebook builds on the 2025 Global Labor Market Conference (GLMC) report on making labor markets work for youth, expanding the scope to a much larger set of programs, reforms, and beneficiary groups. To help policy makers navigate these options, this guidebook presents a simple framework linking labor market challenges to specific families of interventions. Intended as an operational resource, this guidebook also provides global evidence and concrete examples to inform real-time policy decisions. It offers a structured approach to understanding where specific employment solutions and programs fit within broader jobs strategies, what results are feasible given local conditions, and how different interventions can be adapted and scaled. The guidebook is structured as follows: section 1 discusses employment constraints in LMICs. Section 2 provides an overview of proven and promising solutions, with a detailed catalogue presented in Appendix A. Section 3 offers a framework for designing impactful interventions. Section 4 concludes with considerations for scaling up these programs
Why Do Some Countries Build Safer? Economic Constraints, Disaster Learning, and the Two-Stage Housing Quality Ladder
Full text linkWhy do some countries have more disaster-resilient housing than others, even at similar income levels? This paper addresses this question using a novel data set on housing robustness in 150 countries and proposes a "two-stage housing quality ladder" framework. The analysis reveals that the constraints on housing improvement fundamentally differ across development stages. In the first stage—eliminating fragile housing—household poverty is the binding constraint, showing strong negative associations with housing quality and nonlinear effects that diminish at extreme poverty levels. Progress depends primarily on poverty alleviation and basic governance capacity. In the second stage—achieving robust, engineered construction—household poverty becomes statistically insignificant. Instead, national income, construction-sector institutions (building codes, permit systems, and inspections), and overall institutional quality emerge as the critical determinants. The paper further demonstrates that countries learn from disaster experience, but this learning is hazard-specific and mediated by governance quality. Earthquake experience consistently drives improvements in housing resilience, particularly in well-governed countries, while storm and flood experiences show weaker direct effects but significant interactions with poverty levels. These findings carry important policy implications: disaster risk reduction investments should emphasize poverty alleviation and basic governance in low-income countries eliminating fragile housing, while middle- and high-income countries should prioritize construction-sector regulatory capacity and code enforcement systems to achieve robust engineering standards. Earthquake-prone countries benefit particularly from institutional strengthening that enables sustained learning from repeated seismic events
FY 2025 Côte d’Ivoire Country Opinion Survey Report
Full text linkThe Country Opinion Survey in Côte d'Ivoire assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in Côte d'Ivoire perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Côte d'Ivoire on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Côte d'Ivoire; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Côte d'Ivoire; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Côte d'Ivoire; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in Côte d'Ivoire
Policy Lessons from International Commodity Agreements: Failure of Non-Oil Pacts and the Endurance of OPEC
No full textCommodity price volatility—along with energy and food security concerns—has renewed interest in supply- and demand-management schemes. This paper revisits experiences of international commodity agreements. Historically, agreements covering non-oil commodities involved both producers and consumers and employed various policy tools such as inventory and trade flow management. While some initially stabilized prices, all eventually failed or disbanded, often amplifying price volatility. In contrast, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, a producer-only arrangement, has endured longer but faces challenges from the energy transition, alternative sources of oil, and consumer responses including energy diversification, efficiency gains, policy coordination, and strategic reserves under the auspices of the International Energy Agency. These experiences offer cautionary lessons for current proposals advocating industrial commodity cartels or global food inventory management. Nonetheless, international coordination, particularly in energy conservation, food aid, and information sharing, remains relevant. During periods of severe market disruption, collaboration on inventory management and trade flow regulations may still offer benefits