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Mobility and Development Periodical, Winter 2025
Get PDFThis periodical brings together fourteen insightful articles that showcase the transformative role of transport in driving development, connectivity, and innovation across diverse contexts. The collection spans a wide spectrum of themes—from infrastructure renewal and governance reforms to cutting-edge technologies and sustainable mobility solutions. The articles explore how countries are addressing critical challenges and seizing opportunities to modernize transport systems. Highlights include Ethiopia’s ambitious road infrastructure renewal, strategies for achieving net-zero pathways in the European Union, and innovative approaches to car-lite urban futures in small island cities. Other contributions examine traffic demand management in Bogotá, machine learning applications for connectivity in the Amazon, and inland waterway modernization in Assam. Emerging trends such as electric mobility adoption in Bangladesh and the Western Balkans, low-emission transport strategies in China, and proactive asset management in Brazil underscore the sector’s dynamic evolution. Practical lessons from Bolivia’s performance-based contracts and Africa’s output-based models provide actionable insights for practitioners worldwide. Together, these articles offer a comprehensive view of how transport can empower communities, enhance economic resilience, and foster inclusive growth. This compendium serves as a valuable resource for policymakers, development partners, and professionals committed to shaping the future of mobility
Mongolia Public Finance Review, June 2025: Making this Time Different - Fiscal Reforms for Stable, Sustainable, and Inclusive Development
Get PDFAfter three difficult years, a new phase of mining-led growth that began in late 2022 has helped Mongolia emerge from a period of acute macroeconomic imbalances. Despite improvements in fiscal and macroeconomic outcomes, some vulnerabilities persist. Mongolia has experienced repeated boom-bust cycles in the past - but can this time be different? Mongolia’s economic stability, resilience, and development depend critically on fiscal reforms to reduce macroeconomic volatility and rebuild fiscal buffers to protect against future shocks. Alongside reforms to address macro-fiscal vulnerabilities, enhancing the equity and efficiency of both public spending - especially of physical and human capital - and revenue mobilization is crucial for achieving Mongolia’s NRP and Vision 2050 objectives. The country remains vulnerable to volatility due to its dependence on mining revenues - around one-fifth of the total - and faces ongoing challenges related to efficiency, equity, and the broadness of its tax base. To address these challenges, the report identifies the following priority areas for action: (i) reinforcing the fiscal framework; (ii) enhancing the efficiency of human capital spending - particularly in social protection, health, and education; (iii) improving the prioritization and value for money of public investment; (iv) strengthening the poverty and distributional impact of the fiscal system; and (v) improving revenue mobilization by enhancing the efficiency, progressivity, and simplicity of the tax system while reducing reliance on volatile mining revenues. The measures identified in this report can be used to rebuild fiscal buffers while also supporting higher economic growth, equity, and human capital outcomes
A Justificativa Econômica para Reduzir a Vulnerabilidade da Infraestrutura de Transportes aos Desastres Naturais
Get PDFBrazil’s transport infrastructure and the social and economic activities it supports face increasing exposure to climate and natural hazards, with climate change intensifying risks to critical corridors such as those used for soybean exports. Proactive investments and maintenance programs aimed at climate adaptation of key transport assets can help Brazil avoid costly delays, detours, and expensive reconstruction efforts, offering high returns on investment. In addition, robust emergency response mechanisms within the transport sector are essential to minimize economic losses caused by traffic disruptions.A infraestrutura de transporte no Brasil, bem como as atividades sociais e econômicas que dela dependem, está sujeita a riscos significativos decorrentes de eventos climáticos e desastres naturais. As mudanças climáticas intensificam essa vulnerabilidade, afetando diretamente corredores logísticos estratégicos, como aqueles utilizados para o escoamento de commodities agrícolas, incluindo a soja. Investimentos proativos e programas de manutenção voltados à adaptação climática das infraestruturas de transporte mais críticas podem evitar atrasos e desvios dispendiosos, além de custos elevados com a reconstrução de ativos estratégicos. Essas iniciativas apresentam elevado retorno sobre os investimentos. Além disso, mecanismos de gestão de riscos e de resposta emergencial no setor de transportes é crucial para minimizar perdas econômicas decorrentes da paralisação de fluxos logísticos
TIDES of Change: Igniting Productivity Growth in Europe and Central Asia
Get PDFEurope and Central Asia (ECA) is at a turning point. After a period of convergence and reform-driven growth during the first decade of the 2000s, the region’s productivity engine has lost momentum. Total factor productivity growth has halved since the global financial crisis, and the gains from capital deepening and labor expansion are no longer sufficient to sustain economic growth. If pre- 2008 trends in productivity growth had continued, average incomes would be around 60 percent higher today. Instead, misallocated resources, incomplete integration into global markets, and weak firm capabilities during a period of stalled reforms have left the region below its potential.
This report lays out a new agenda for boosting productivity. Drawing on unique firm-level data from across the region, it shows how deeper trade integration, smarter investment, and adoption of technology, coupled with improved firm capabilities and investments in workers’ skills, can unlock significant productivity gains. The report highlights the need to face the challenges of the unrealized potential of exports and foreign direct investment, insufficient level of digital technology adoption, and limited investment in skills training (offered by only one in five firms in ECA today), coupled with weak foundational skills. The evidence is clear: Addressing these challenges through targeted reforms in improving market functioning, technology adoption, export promotion, and skills development is crucial for unlocking the region’s productivity potential.
The path forward is captured by the policy framework of trade, investment, digitalization, efficiency, and skills (TIDES)—the levers that can help boost the region’s productivity. This flagship report is not just a diagnosis of what went wrong; it is a call to action for what must come next. Focusing on TIDES, with the right policies and political will, ECA can reclaim its momentum and deliver a new era of shared prosperity
Global Regulations, Institutional Development, and Market Authorities Perspective Toolkit (GRIDMAP): Maturity Assessment Profile (MAP) Methodology
Get PDFThe Global Regulations, Institutional Development, and Market Authorities Perspective
Toolkit (GRIDMAP) provides a Minimum Package of regulations and practices for emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) to build safe, trustworthy markets. GRIDMAP uses a modular approach, applying the same methodology to different regulatory areas. By using a consistent methodology for the development of the different modules, GRIDMAP facilitates international benchmarking and learning, and meaningful assessments of regulatory and institutional frameworks.
The modular nature of GRIDMAP allows for focused attention on specific areas of market regulation, such as consumer protection and data market regulations. These areas affect the most vulnerable actors in the market ecosystem: individuals and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Consumer protection and data markets have been identified as priority modules for GRIDMAP because consumers face significant information asymmetries and may be subject to abuse of market power. Of all the actors in the digital and global market landscape, consumers are among the most vulnerable, especially given the low digital literacy in some EMDEs. Some of the risks faced by consumers are excessive data collection, discrimination and bias based on automated decision-making, unfair commercial practices, fraud and data security breaches. Additional GRIDMAP modules may look at topics impacting particular types of business transactions. GRIDMAP sets forth three Pillars that form the Minimum Package required for EMDEs to build safe and trustworthy contestable markets: (i) the legal framework, (ii) the institutional arrangements, and (iii) the availability and effectiveness of implementation and enforcement (Figure 1). This three-pillar approach puts particular emphasis not just on adopting laws—the typical initial policymaking focus—but also on developing institutions and institutional activities
that promote the effectiveness of the adopted laws in practice
Cambodia Green Jobs: How the Greening of the Cambodian Economy can Impact Cambodia’s Jobs and how to Prepare the Workforce
Get PDFThis report aims to fill the knowledge gap on green jobs by better defining them in Cambodia and establishing a baseline on their prevalence, their trends, their task content, and their key characteristics. The report intends to add the information base needed to align the education and training systems with the workforce skills needed to perform well in green jobs, to ensure the workforce optimally contributes to and benefits from the green transition. The report adopts two approaches in measuring green jobs: (i) task-based: Using the tasks performed on the job; and (ii) output-based: Using the product or output produced by the job. These approaches
stem from the fact that any job involves two dimensions: the worker and the firm. The two dimensions complement each other and can serve as a basis to define and identify green jobs. At the worker-level, the task-based approach focuses on whether tasks performed by workers produce green outputs or have the goal of reducing a firm’s environmental footprint. At the firm level, the output-based approach focuses
on the final products and services and whether they contribute to lessening the adverse environmental impacts and/or conserving the environment, e.g. solar panels
A Case Study of Ethiopia
Get PDFForeign direct investment has the potential to introduce much-needed capital and expertise in emerging and developing economies. To attract foreign direct investment, many countries have eased restrictions on foreign ownership in various sectors, reformed their institutions, and set up investment promotion agencies. Until the mid-2010s, Ethiopia remained one of the few countries that resisted this trend, with several stringent restrictions in place on foreign direct investment entry and operations in the country. This study employs a synthetic control method to examine patterns in foreign capital inflows following a series of investment policy reforms that were substantively introduced in the mid-2010s (circa 2015). The study offers evidence that investment policy reforms contributed to a significant foreign direct investment inflow in Ethiopia, compared to what would have occurred in the absence of these policies. An alternative strategy that conservatively specifies the donor country pool using an AI-assisted deep search technique changes the donor pool weighting matrix of the synthetic control method, but the estimated policy effects largely remain robust to this specification. The findings highlight the importance of targeted reforms in promoting foreign direct investment inflow in developing countries
Rooted: Agriculture Rooted in Biodiversity
Get PDFThe objective of the report is to raise countries’ understanding of biodiversity’s importance for agriculture and provide the knowledge, policy tools, and investment options to increase biodiversity to meet the growing demand for food and provide healthy diets. The information in this report is a foundation for supporting countries to reform agricultural policies and investments for conservation, restoration, and scaling up the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices for biodiversity. This will also support countries in meeting COP 15 commitments. Chapter 1 describes how biodiversity provides a foundation for the ecosystem services that support agriculture and explains why biodiversity in both natural and agricultural landscapes must be protected to support agricultural productivity and resilience, locally and globally, for decades to come. Chapter 2 draws on recently published studies on the spatial distribution of biodiversity and ecosystem services to map the threat that agricultural development and climate change pose to biodiversity and ecosystem services in natural and semi-natural areas. Chapter 3 delineates the pathways through which unsustainable agricultural practices drive biodiversity loss, and in turn, the loss of ecosystem services supporting agriculture across wide spatial and temporal scales. Chapter 4 identifies sustainable agricultural practices that mitigate agricultural-driven biodiversity loss and may even improve biodiversity over time. Chapter 5 presents evidence on the relationship between agricultural support and the number of threatened species and discusses the types of agricultural support that harm or benefits biodiversity. Chapter 6 provides recommendations on policy and investment
The Regulating Platform-based Work Low and Middle-income Countries: Towards a Context-appropriate Approach
Get PDFThe note is divided into three parts. Part One provides a conceptual framework for understanding labor market dynamics and market failures typical of platform work. It then summarizes regulatory responses to these failures based on a review of regulations from middle- and high-income countries. We find that authorities
have taken two main regulatory approaches. The first focuses on improving and clarifying the classification of platform workers, with the goal of giving at least some platform workers the opportunity to be treated as formal employees and to enjoy the full package of labor and social protection rights enshrined in the existing
legislation. The second, adopted by several middle-income countries, creates special regulations or amends existing labor regulations specifically tailored for platform workers. These tailored regulations provide a more limited set of rights than those granted to formal employees. They are also often crafted after engagement
with stakeholders in social dialogue
Migrants as Social Protection? Simulations of a Market for Work Permits
Get PDFWorkers have the right to accept any job offer in their country of citizenship, but not to sell or rent out that right. This paper shows that relaxing this restriction using a two-sided competitive market in work permits can provide a basic income guarantee for workers in migration-destination countries, financed by selling temporary work permits to migrant workers. Regulating the market by imposing a tax on work permits narrows the set of beneficiaries, whose income can be further complemented by the revenues from such a tax. Substantial gains in the destination countries’ gross domestic product can be expected, alongside the first-order gains to migrant workers who would not otherwise have access to the labor markets in destination countries. The paper provides a quantitative illustration by simulating a fictitious market for work permits between Mexico and the United States