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Women at Work: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Urban Djibouti
Get PDFIn some developing countries, women’s labor-force participation remains persistently low. This gives rise to questions regarding what types of employment opportunities or interventions can draw women into work in such contexts. In this study in urban Djibouti, with restrictive gender norms and very low female employment rates, women are randomly offered the opportunity to be employed in a public-works program designed specifically to facilitate their participation. Program take-up is very high, and most participants do not delegate their work opportunity to another adult. However, in the medium term after the program ends, women who receive the temporary employment offer revert back to nonparticipation in the labor market. These results suggest that while social norms can be a deterrent to women’s work in settings with very low employment rates, women will participate in work opportunities when they are offered and are suitable
How Green are Jobs in Malaysia? A Task-Based Approach to Measuring Green Jobs in Malaysia
No full textIn line with the global movement toward environmental sustainability, Malaysia has significantly expanded initiatives concerning climate change mitigation and adaptation. Specifically, the National Energy Transition Roadmap (NETR) and other strategic green initiatives outline significant investment opportunities that are expected to create thousands of green job opportunities. The NETR operationalizes green initiatives in the country and focuses on six areas: energy efficiency, renewable energy, hydrogen, bioenergy, green mobility, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. The transition from carbon-intensive modes of production toward more sustainable modes is expected to change both the nature of jobs and their requisite skill requirements in different ways. The policy brief aims to understand the current landscape of green jobs in Malaysia and its implications for skills needs in the future. Using a task-based approach toward the measurement of green jobs, the brief will provide an overview of the scale and trends of green employment in Malaysia using nationally representative survey data. Additionally, it will provide evidence of the prevalence of green employment by sector, industry, occupations, and the wage premium associated with green jobs. It will touch briefly on the demand for green jobs using the critical occupations list (COL) before concluding with policy recommendations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to measure the scale of green jobs in Malaysia using a task-based approach
Commodity Markets Outlook, April 2025
No full textCommodity prices are set to fall sharply this year, by about 12 percent overall, as weakening global economic growth weighs on demand. In 2026, commodity prices are projected to reach a six-year low. Oil prices are expected to exert substantial downward pressure on the aggregate commodity index in 2025, as a marked slowdown in global oil consumption coincides with expanding supply. The anticipated commodity price softening is broad-based, however, with more than half of the commodities in the forecast set to decrease this year, many by more than 10 percent. The latest shocks to hit commodity markets extend a so far tumultuous decade, marked by the highest level of commodity price volatility in at least half a century. Between 2020 and 2024, commodity price swings were frequent and sharp, with knock-on consequences for economic activity and inflation. In the next two years, commodity prices are expected to put downward pressure on global inflation. Risks to the commodity price projections are tilted to the downside. A sharper-than-expected slowdown in global growth—driven by worsening trade relations or a prolonged tightening of financial conditions—could further depress commodity demand, especially for industrial products. In addition, if OPEC+ fully unwinds its voluntary supply cuts, oil production will far exceed projected consumption. There are also important upside risks to commodity prices—for instance, if geopolitical tensions worsen, threatening oil and gas supplies, or if extreme weather events lead to agricultural and energy price spikes
A Diagnostic of the Health Taxes Landscape in India
No full textThe consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in India leads to
significant public health and economic challenges, with 1.6 million deaths and 49.3 million disability-adjusted life years lost annually. These products are major risk factors for noncommunicable diseases, responsible for 64.9 percent of all deaths in India as of 2019. India is the world's second-largest tobacco consumer, with declining but still a substantial 267 million tobacco users. Alcohol consumption has seen per capita increases among drinkers, and India leads globally in sugar consumption. The economic burden from diseases related
to these products is considerable, with tobacco-related costs at US31.4 billion. Health taxes have been effective globally in reducing consumption and generating revenue while addressing market failures from negative externalities and internalities. India's current indirect tax system, involving a national-level Goods and Services Tax (GST) on tobacco and SSBs, as well as statelevel excise duties and value added tax (VAT) on alcohol, poses challenges due to its complexity and inconsistencies. Tobacco products are taxed under GST at 28 percent with additional cesses, but rates remain
well below the World Health Organization's recommendations, and its structure is highly complex. The GST applied on SSBs is not commensurate with the product’s sugar content. Excise duties and VAT applied on alcoholic beverages vary significantly across states. Reforming health taxes requires addressing these inconsistencies, improving tax compliance, and introducing new tax structures based on the relative harm of each product. Empirical evidence on the effectiveness of health taxes in India is limited, particularly for alcohol and SSBs. Policy priorities include increasing specific excise taxes, replacing compensation cess with health tax, simplifying the tax structure, regulating marketing practices, and detailed state-level analysis of alcohol
taxation to find a preferred taxation regime on alcohol
Marine Spatial Planning
No full textGovernments face the complicated challenge of making policy decisions relating to coastal and marine ecosystems without a well-established body of knowledge about such systems. To complicate matters, the benefits that marine and coastal ecosystems deliver, which include resilience to climate change, are highly contested and, ironically, vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Marine spatial planning (MSP) provides a framework for managing these tensions. MSP reduces investment risk and improves investor confidence by including a broad range of stakeholders in participatory mapping and decision-making processes. This is important because Africa’s Blue Economy will require substantial private-sector investment. This brief sets out how MSP can help governments better manage the dual challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss in a collaborative, participatory manner that considers both present and future uses and creates an attractive environment for private investment into the Blue Economy
Patient Pathway Analysis and Summative Network Analysis - Consolidated Findings Report
No full textThis report is a comprehensive
analysis of Ghana's health system, focusing on the
Patient Pathway Analysis (PPA) and Summative Network
Analysis (SNA). It highlights the implementation of Networks
of Practice (NoP) to improve primary healthcare delivery.
The report covers the methodology, findings, and
recommendations for enhancing healthcare access and quality.
Key findings include high utilization of hospitals for
maternal and neonatal health (MNH) and hypertension (HTN)
care, with a preference for quality care and proximity. The
NoP districts showed better resource sharing, collaboration,
and community engagement compared to non-NoP districts. The
report suggests strategies for optimal NoP performance,
including advocacy, patient-centered mapping, routine system
strengthening, and continuous learning
2024 Tax Compliance Cost Survey - Report on Results of a Survey
No full textThe Ukraine Taxpayer Compliance Cost
Survey (TCCS) provides a snapshot of taxpayers’ experience
filing and paying taxes and estimates of the cost of
taxpayers’ compliance with State Tax Service (STS)
administrative requirements and procedures related to tax
accounting, including filing and paying taxes, working with
tax inspectors, and filing appeals. The survey methodology
is based on the standardized taxpayer compliance cost survey
methodology developed by the World Bank. Thesurvey results
provide a baseline against which future STS modernization
efforts can be measured. The survey was web-based, targeting
all active taxpayers registered with STS. 3,169 taxpayers
responded to the survey. 85.1 percent of respondents were
business owners, 74.1 percent were sole proprietors, and
25.9 percent were representatives of legal entities. 60.2
percent of businesses have no employees, 37.2 percent employ
up to 50 people, and 2.6 percent have over 50 employees. 90
percent of businesses were in the service sector, 6.02
percent were in industry and 3.71 percent in agriculture.
Survey responses came from all regions of Ukraine, except
Crimea region
Zambia : Country Private Sector Diagnostic
No full textZambia’s economy is emerging from a
debt crisis and has successfully negotiated a debt
restructuring with creditors and an International Monetary
Fund (IMF) program. This report highlights that, with
reforms, significant profitable investment opportunities are
available for businesses, which will contribute to better
jobs and higher incomes for Zambia’s population. To keep the
analysis focused and manageable, the report delves into four
specific sectors: mining, solar power, agribusiness, and
tourism. Implementing key actions in these sectors can
attract up to 21 billion dollars in cumulative new
investment between 2025 and 2030, or close to 50 percent
above current trends. Up to roughly 80,000 additional formal
jobs can be created directly - equivalent to more than 10
percent of formal jobs in 2022. In an upside scenario, as
many as 220,000 additional jobs can also be created
indirectly in the rest of the economy (with greater
uncertainty in the estimates, especially for the indirect
impact of mining investments on employment)
Conceptual Background and Evidence from 85 Countries
No full textProperty registries have long been a pillar of state capacity and a basis for private market activity. While registry establishment and operation traditionally were costly and time consuming, digital technology makes low-cost registry operation and wide outreach easier. To guide developing countries aiming to establish such registries and measure progress, this paper develops indicators (in terms of digital coverage, interoperability, and property taxation for local service delivery and public land management) of effective digital registry service provision. Data from 85 countries highlight vast differences and provide suggestions for strategic reforms as well as a basis for measuring progress over time. Expanding geographical coverage and collecting these indicators on a regular basis could provide guidance to improve the way in which, by protecting property, the state creates the basis for widely shared prosperity and a livable environment
Educational inequalities during COVID-19: Results from longitudinal surveys in Sub-Saharan Africa
No full textWhile the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic is growing, there are few studies on learning inequalities in a lower-income, multi-country context. Analyzing a rich database consisting of 34 longitudinal household and phone survey rounds from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda with a rigorous linear mixed model framework, we find lower school enrolment rates during the pandemic. But countries exhibit heterogeneity. Our variance decomposition analysis suggests that policies targeting individual household members are most effective for improving learning activities, followed by those targeting households, communities, and regions. Households with higher education levels or living standards or those in urban residences are more likely to engage their children in learning activities and more diverse types of learning activities. Furthermore, we find some evidence for a strong and positive relationship between public transfers and household head employment with learning activities for almost all the countries