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Evidence from More Than One Million Transactions in Ukraine
No full textThis paper uses a rich set of
geo-coded administrative and remotely sensed data on more
than 1 million agricultural land transactions in Ukraine to
explore how informality, size, and recent land reforms
affect land prices. Three main findings are highlighted.
First, absence of registered rights generates large negative
externalities, the size of which plausibly exceeds the cost
of registering all land. By contrast, informality of lease
contracts is a choice that may enable owners to evade
regulatory obstacles that prevent them from renegotiating
contracts to obtain more favorable terms. Second, while land
market liberalization generated significant indirect
benefits, gains are unevenly distributed. Furthermore,
competition in sales markets remains limited, pointing to
scope for measures—including reducing the transaction costs
of selling land and accessing mortgage finance, improving
publicity of pending land sales, and use of electronic
auctions—to enhance the reforms’ impact on efficiency and
equity. Third, size at the parcel, field, and farm levels is
associated with higher per hectare prices, pointing to scope
for market-based land consolidation and growth of
medium-size farms to increase land values and productivity.
Achieving this potential will require measures to limit
speculative land acquisition and exercise of market power by
making local land markets more competitive and using
market-based land valuation as a basis for taxing land on a
recurrent basis and any capital gains due to land appreciation
Experimental Evidence from Mozambique
No full textThis study examines the impact of
digital labor-market platforms on job outcomes using a
randomized encouragement design embedded in a longitudinal
survey of Mozambican technical-vocational college graduates.
We differentiate between platforms targeting formal jobs,
where jobseekers direct their search, and informal tasks,
where clients seek workers. Our analysis reveals
statistically insignificant intent-to-treat and complier
average treatment effects for headline employment outcomes
in the full sample. Notably, while the average male
moderately benefits from platform usage, women do not.
Instead, they are less responsive to the encouragement
nudge, and female treatment compliers report higher
reservation wages and lower job searches. This suggests
digital platforms can inadvertently perpetuate gender
disparities in labor markets
A Brief Review and Introduction to the Special Issue
No full textDisplacement has increased continuously over the last 12 years and the number of forcibly displaced persons has reached an unprecedented level. More than half of all forcibly displaced persons are girls or women; yet very little is known about how gender intersects the behavior and welfare of forced displacement. This special issue focuses specifically on the gender dimensions of forced displacement. We make both topical and methodological contributions to knowledge about gender norms, livelihoods, multi-dimensional and income poverty, and gender-based violence and discuss the implications of our findings for future research, policy and practice
Skills for the Green Transition in South Africa
Get PDFSouth Africa’s green transition will
have major implications for its workforce. This note
presents five strategies to prepare the workforce for the
green transition. The note explores the implications of the
green transition on labor and skills needs in South Africa,
and assesses the readiness of the current skills development
system to respond to these changes. It then presents
strategies to improve the ability of the skills development
system to ensure that workforce skills become a catalyst,
rather than a bottleneck, of the green transition, and to
support workers who risk losing employability due to the
green transition. The note concludes by highlighting how the
World Bank contributes to building skills for the green
transition. The focus of this note is on skill needs for the
just energy transition (JET) and on post-school education
and training (PSET), especially Technical and Vocational
Education and Training (TVET) and university education
Mobilizing Public-Private Solutions to Manage the Financial Impacts of Natural Hazards in Emerging Market and Developing Economies
Get PDFManaging the impacts of disasters in emerging markets is an urgent necessity as climate related shocks grow in frequency and intensity. Governments face fiscal constraints, and insurance penetration remains low. This policy note outlines a structured approach to mobilizing public-private solutions that can leverage insurance markets, risk sharing mechanisms, and development partnerships. The vision is to support scalable, adaptive, and financially sustainable disaster risk finance solutions through public private insurance programs (PPIPs). By integrating private sector capital, government action, and innovative financing models, this approach aims to ensure resilience against disasters and climate shocks, while also promoting long-term economic stability and sustainable development
Quatre Recommandations
Get PDFThis policy note consolidates the highlights of a study funded by the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP), exploring the role and operationalization of dynamic social registries in low-income and shock-prone contexts, including in the Sahel. The study is based on innovations in dynamic social registries in low- and middle-income countries, identifying what works and key considerations in the design and adaptation of social registries toward their dynamic updatability and scalability in contexts marked by high exposure and vulnerability to shocks, high levels of poverty, and/or low levels of digital penetration.Cette note de politique consolide les points saillants d'une étude financée par le Programme de Protection Sociale Adaptative du Sahel (SASPP), explorant le rôle et l'opérationnalisation des registres sociaux dynamiques dans les contextes à faible revenu et sujets aux chocs, y compris au Sahel. L'étude est basée sur des innovations dans les registres sociaux dynamiques dans les pays à revenu faible et intermédiaire, identifiant ce qui fonctionne et les considérations clés dans la conception et l'adaptation des registres sociaux vers leur mise à jour dynamique et leur évolutivité dans des contextes marqués par une forte exposition et vulnérabilité aux chocs, des niveaux élevés de pauvreté et/ou de faibles niveaux de pénétration numérique
Cabo Verde Country Climate and Development Report
Get PDFThe World Bank Group’s Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) are a core diagnostic that integrates climate change and development. They help countries prioritize the most impactful actions that can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and boost adaptation and resilience, while delivering on broader development goals. CCDRs build on data and rigorous research and identify main pathways to reduce GHG emissions and climate vulnerabilities, including the costs and challenges as well as benefits and opportunities from doing so. The reports suggest concrete, priority actions to support the low-carbon, resilient transition. As public documents, CCDRs aim to inform governments, citizens, the private sector and development partners and enable engagements with the development and climate agenda. CCDRs feed into other core Bank Group diagnostics, country engagements and operations, and help attract funding and direct financing for high-impact climate action.Cabo Verde’s climate exposure, partly
also because of its geography, is compounded by economic
vulnerabilities. The country has experienced robust economic
growth since the early 1990s and achieved a substantial
reduction in poverty, but growth has been volatile and has
slowed in recent years. Reflecting the comparative advantage
of its attractive natural geography, growth has primarily
been driven by the tourism sector, which accounts for a
quarter of gross domestic product (GDP), over half of
exports, and most foreign direct investment. For similar
reasons, the archipelago is heavily reliant on imports,
notably those of fuel and food. High levels of remittance
and concessional international financing serve to bridge its
external financing needs, but they generate additional
external vulnerabilities. Adding to this, although recurrent
fiscal deficits have recently resorbed, public spending is
rigid, and public debt remains above 100 percent of GDP. The
COVID-19 pandemic put Cabo Verde’s external vulnerabilities
on display, causing a steep decline in tourism revenue and a
surge in the food and fuel import bill before the economy
returned to pre-pandemic conditions in 2023. This CCDR
analyzes how Cabo Verde can build climate resilience and
stimulate low carbon development, while identifying key
enablers. The Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR)
estimates the projected economic and social damage from
climate change in chapter 1. The report then proceeds to a
discussion of the country’s relevant institutional and legal
framework in chapter 2, the main ways in which a
climate-resilient economy can be achieved at the water-land
nexus and through the blue economy and infrastructure
systems in chapter 3, the green transition in the energy,
transport, waste, and digital sectors in chapter 4, the core
actions to support the private sector and people to become
more climate shock-resilient though social protection, and
finally, the skills needed for, and the strengthening of,
the health system in chapter 5. Chapter 6 brings together
the recommendations presented in the earlier chapters,
estimating their costs and benefits and modeling their
effects on the economy
Political Engagement, Collective Action, and Influence of Private Firms in the European Union
Get PDFThis Brief studies patterns of political engagement among private firms in the European Union (EU). Using representative data, allowing for analysis at the level of NUTS2 regional groupings (EU
regions varying from about 800,000 to 3 million inhabitants), various patterns of engagement
emerge. In particular, business association membership is widespread, and its variation seems to be largely explained by cross-country patterns. Such differences may be due to differing legal regimes that do or do not mandate membership in business organizations; generally, firms tend to value the services provided by such organizations less when membership is mandatory. Firms may also turn to other forms of political engagement, such as the maintenance of political connections. Overall, patterns of political engagement seeking influence vary widely, including within countries, often along identifiable institutional lines. An estimated Political Influence score is used to measure this activity. Though this score varies, analysis suggests that firms with higher scores show higher measures of firm performance, especially relative to their peer/competitor firms. There is evidence of political competition, where higher influence begets similar activity among peer firms
Institutional and Functional Review of Air Quality Management in North Macedonia
Get PDFPeople in many parts of North
Macedonia are exposed to more toxic particulate matter air
pollution than their neighbors in Western Europe. The
burning of solid fuels for heating in homes and other
buildings is a main driver of high ambient concentrations of
particulate matter air pollution, particularly during the
winter months. The high levels of air pollution in the
country have significant negative effects on human health
and the economy. The Government of North Macedonia has
recognized air quality management (AQM) as a key building
block toward sustainable economic development, acknowledging
the link between AQM and energy policy and its significant
co-benefits for climate change mitigation. The cost of
inaction is high, and the need for more effective AQM is
evident. The objective of this institutional and functional
review (IFR) is to provide insights and develop
recommendations for strengthening the legal, regulatory, and
institutional framework and capacity for AQM, enabling
national and local authorities to deliver better air quality
for their citizens
Does Competition from Informal Firms Encourage the Formal Firms to Obtain Quality Certificates?
Get PDFThis study investigates the impact of
competition from informal or unregistered firms on the
likelihood of formal manufacturing small and medium-size
enterprises obtaining internationally recognized quality
certificates. The sample includes 16 countries in Latin
America and the Caribbean, one of the regions with the
highest levels of informality in the world. The study
uncovers a positive impact, with a one standard deviation
increase in informal competition leading to an increase in
the probability of having a quality certificate by 2.9 to
3.6 percentage points across the different specifications.
This effect is large, given that only 10.4 percent of small
and medium-size enterprises have a quality certificate.
These findings are consistent with the “legalist” model of
informality, whereby the positive impact of informal
competition on the likelihood of having a quality
certificate is significantly larger in countries where the
business environment is less favorable to operating in the
formal versus informal sector due to factors such as the
weaker rule of law and greater regulatory burden on formal
firms. The paper provides several layers of checks against
omitted variable bias, reverse causality, and measurement
errors. The findings also show that, as expected, there is
no statistically significant impact of informal competition
on the likelihood of having a quality certificate among
large manufacturing firms