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Delivering Results through a Better World Bank Group: The FY25 Management Action Record - A World Bank Group Management Report on Implementation of IEG Recommendations
Get PDFFollowing the 2020 Management Action Record (MAR) reforms, World Bank Group (WBG) Management prepares an annual self-assessment of its progress toward implementing the full range of outstanding Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluation recommendations. The purpose of the Management Action Record (MAR) assessment system is to support accountability, learning, and adaptation for the WBG’s implementation of recommendations from IEG evaluations. This report is built on information gathering and sharing with IEG. In turn, IEG reviews Management’s self-assessment to judge progress toward achieving the outcomes of active recommendations. The recommendations involve, among other things, actions to enhance operational modalities, inform risk taking, improve guidance for staff, and improve results measurement systems. As part of the accountability function of the MAR, both Management’s self-assessment and IEG’s review are discussed with the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) annually. The 2025 Fiscal Year (FY25) MAR reports on progress in implementing 72 recommendations from 28 evaluations, with 13 new recommendations in the FY24 cycle
Behavioral Insights for Tax Compliance: A Whole-House Approach to Improving Taxpayer and Tax Official Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behaviors
Get PDFThe objective of this note is to summarize the role of behavioral science in tax compliance and tax administration, elaborating on a previous note outlining the World Bank’s past work in this area (Dalton et al., 2021). This note will provide an overview of a behaviorally informed approach to tax compliance and highlight how behavioral insights can be useful for diagnosing and confronting tax compliance challenges (section II), provide thoughts on a way forward for integrating behavioral insights into revenue administration, summarizing evidence from the field (section III), and present the approach and experience of the World Bank in this space (Annex). The note will place particular emphasis on the experimental and quasi-experimental literature on behaviorally-informed solutions to improve compliance and collection and group these into three generalized tools: the nudge (modifications to the decision environment), the budge (elevating new narratives around tax compliance), and the trudge (taking an inward-looking approach to improving compliance). We also developed a Practitioner’s Guide where we provide detailed “how-to” on applying behavioral insights for revenue collection
When Water Runs Out: Adaptation to Gradual Environmental Change in Indian Agriculture
Get PDFIncreasing water scarcity will affect hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers in coming decades, but little is known about the likely forms of adaptation. This study exploits a natural experiment in which heterogeneous geological formations affect the rate of groundwater depletion across 40 villages in Gujarat, India, to provide novel evidence on this question. The analysis reveals that greater water scarcity leads to widespread declines in irrigated agriculture and enhanced migration to cities, but only among dominant socio-economic groups. No evidence is found of substantial compensating investments in water-efficient technologies or in human capital, despite farmers having long been aware of the decline in water levels
Insights from GEMs Consortium Statistics
No full textEmerging markets have long been viewed as high-risk destinations for investment, particularly investments in companies. Although macroeconomic and political stability risks are higher, this perception also reflects project-level risks, or uncertainty about repayment prospects. Investors, with limited historical data and a lack of reliable metrics on the likelihood of default and recovery rates, approach emerging markets with great caution. The research challenges this view. Newly released statistics from the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database (GEMs), a consortium of 26 multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development finance institutions (DFIs) pooling their credit risk data, provides a way to analyze the risks in a more nuanced way. The statistics offer insights into default and recovery patterns for loans to emerging market firms over the past three decades, especially when investments are made alongside MDBs and DFIs. They also highlight the benefits of incorporating emerging market exposure into diversified investment portfolios
Evidence from Peru
Get PDFThis paper evaluates the impact of higher temperatures on learning outcomes in Peru. The results suggest that 1 degree above 20°C is equivalent to 7 and 6 percent of a standard deviation of what a student learns in a year for math and reading tests, respectively. These results hold true when the main specification is changed, splitting the sample, collapsing the data at school level, and using other climate specifications. The paper aims to improve understanding of how to deal with the impacts of climate change on learning outcomes in developing countries. The evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer programs can mitigate the negative effects of higher temperatures on students’ learning outcomes in math and reading
Crowding Out and Banking Crises
No full textThis paper studies the effect of government issuance on firm issuance during banking crises using transaction-level bond and loan data from 66 countries between 1991 and 2017. Governments rarely issue loans, preferring to issue in bond markets. In contrast, firms receive most of their financing from banks. During banking crises, as the supply of domestic loans decreases, firms switch to issuing bonds in domestic markets. The paper uses a novel instrument based on maturing debt to overcome the potential endogeneity of government issuance. The findings show that firms must compete with the government for funds in the domestic bond market and are crowded out from this market as a result. This happens not only in developing countries, but in advanced countries as well. The paper also shows that firms with the ability to tap international debt markets switch to these markets when crowding out occurs in domestic bond markets. Lastly, the paper shows that more developed domestic bond markets mitigate, but do not eliminate, the degree to which crowding out occurs
June 2025 Update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP)
No full textThe June 2025 update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) introduces several
important changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. The most
important change is the adoption of the 2021 Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs). In
addition, new data for India has been incorporated and the existing series adjusted for
comparability. This document details the changes to underlying data and the
methodological reasons behind them. Depending on the availability of recent survey
data, global and regional poverty estimates are reported up to 2023, together with
nowcasts up to 2025. The PIP database now includes 74 new country-years, bringing the total number of surveys to over 2,400, for 172 economies
A Global Assessment of Domestic Petroleum Fuel Prices
No full textOil prices have been increasingly volatile since 2004. However, the impact of this volatility on domestic end-user prices differs significantly by fuel and country. Some countries fully pass through global price movements to domestic end-user prices, and some countries freeze domestic fuel prices for long periods of time. Fuel subsidies emerge or grow if domestic prices significantly diverge from international prices in times of rising international oil prices. This paper draws on two new databases developed by the author for the purposes of this paper to analyze the degree of pass-through of international price volatility onto domestic consumers for eight fuels between December 2017 and December 2023 for up to 125 economies, depending on the fuel. This period saw significant oil price volatility on account of events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The paper finds that domestic prices in many countries did not follow international fuel prices within the period analyzed. Countries with price controls had much lower levels of pass-through than those with price deregulation. Countries that adjusted their fuel prices at frequent intervals (weekly or monthly) had higher levels of price pass-through than those adjusting them quarterly or less frequently. Currency depreciation and the existence of an official fuel subsidy are associated with lower levels of price pass-through, and the impact of being a net crude oil or net refined fuel exporter is mixed. The results show that not tracking international prices closely is associated with higher incidences of fuel shortages, fuel smuggling, and fuel black marketing
Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE)
No full textSince the publication of the previous (2022) RISE edition, progress toward universal electrification reversed course for the first time in 20 years. About 685 million people, most of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa, lacked access in 2022. While RISE electricity access scores climbed in many countries between 2021 and 2023, progress in fragile states stalled due to structural barriers and instability. Most countries with substantial unelectrified populations have high RISE scores, but this has not translated into significant electrification gains, because access requires more than sound policies. Expanding access requires capacity for implementation, together with efforts to
address barriers to affordability and financing, and challenging environments for doing business. With just five years left to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), moving beyond strong RISE scores to expand actual electricity access is more urgent than ever. Clean cooking policy and regulatory frameworks saw modest progress between 2021 and 2023. Many countries showed minimal changes, while any improvements were slow and uneven. More than half of surveyed countries remain in the red zone, underscoring the need for stronger frameworks, targeted financial interventions, and greater international collaboration to scale clean cooking solutions
Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor, May 2025
No full textThailand’s economic performance remained mixed in March with stable private consumption and robust exports offset by weak private investment amid rising uncertainty. While fiscal stimulus supported consumption, softening consumer confidence and weak manufacturing production pose risks to the outlook. The tourism recovery slowed, with fewer tourist arrivals particularly from China. Inflation turned negative for the first time in over a year, prompting the Bank of Thailand to lower its policy rate amid a dimmer economic outlook. Financial markets experienced volatility due to global trade uncertainty. The Thai baht depreciated against the US dollar in early April, before notably appreciating in the following weeks