World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
Not a member yet
39632 research outputs found
Sort by
Click, Code, Earn: The Returns to Digital Skills
Full text linkThis paper provides the first comprehensive, cross-country evidence on the wage returns to digital skills, using more than 67 million job postings from 29 countries between 2021 and 2024. The paper develops a harmonized digital skills taxonomy and examines returns across extensive (any digital skill required), intensive (number of digital skills), and qualitative (type of digital skill) margins. Digital skills command substantial wage premiums globally, with particularly pronounced returns in low- and middle-income countries where such competencies remain scarce. Requiring at least one digital skill raises advertised wages by 1.6 percent on average, with returns of 1.3 percent in high-income countries and 7.5 percent in low- and middle-income countries. Each additional digital skill increases wages by 0.5 percent in high-income countries and 2.6 percent in low- and middle-income countries. Intermediate and advanced skills yield even higher premiums of 0.8 percent in high-income countries and 3 percent in low- and middle-income countries. Each traditional artificial intelligence skill offers returns of 2.9 percent across all countries. Most remarkably, generative artificial intelligence skills demonstrate the highest premiums: wage increases of 7 to 9 percent in technical occupations, and sizable premiums of 25 to 36 percent for generative artificial intelligence literacy skills in nontechnical roles, reflecting both their productivity potential and current scarcity. Returns are consistently higher in digitally-intensive industries and occupations and are amplified by workers’ education and experience, suggesting strong complementarities between digital competencies and traditional human capital. These findings highlight the critical importance of digital skills for individual earnings and economic development, particularly in low- and middle-income countries
Rapid Social Response-Adaptive and Dynamic Social Protection Umbrella Program : Gender Window Round 21 - Promoting Family-Based Care for Vulnerable and At-Risk Children through Social Protection Systems : A Review and Lessons Learned Report
Full text linkThe main objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the trust funded Rapid Social Response - Adaptive and Dynamic Social Protection (RSR-ADSP) Gender Window Round 21 grants. Particularly, the review focuses on evaluating the achievements and results of the grants, including their influence on World Bank financed operations and on policies that support children and family-based care systems in client countries
Ukraine Fifth Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5), February 2022 - December 2025
Full text linkRussia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to cause profound and far-reaching physical, socioeconomic, and environmental impacts, which will be felt for generations. This fifth Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5), undertaken jointly by the World Bank Group, the Government of Ukraine, the European Commission, and the United Nations, with support from additional partners, provides updated estimates of damage and losses as well as recovery and reconstruction needs. It presents an overview of nearly four years of impact, covering 46 months between February 2022 and December 2025 and building on the previous four assessments, RDNA1, RDNA2, RDNA3, and RDNA4. While RDNA5 assesses impacts up to December 2025, widespread impacts are continuing to mount against Ukraine’s people, economy, and infrastructure. The RDNA5 findings highlight the expanding footprint of destruction in 2025 and the increasing complexity of restoring systems essential for economic recovery and social wellbeing. As of December 31, 2025, total damage is estimated at US195.1 billion dollars, about 10.8 percent higher than in RDNA4, with housing, transport, and energy sectors most affected. Socioeconomic losses have risen to 666.7 billion dollars, reflecting a 13.2 percent increase since RDNA4, driven largely by disruptions to commerce, industry, public services, and livelihoods. Recovery and reconstruction needs continue to grow and are now estimated at 587.7 billion dollars over a 10 year horizon, equivalent to almost three times Ukraine’s 2025 GDP. Meeting these needs requires sustained efforts to restore damaged assets, ensure continuity of essential services, and rebuild infrastructure using a build back better (BBB) approach. Damage, losses, and needs remain concentrated in frontline oblasts and major metropolitan areas
The Effects of Regulatory Information Systems on Credit Allocation: Evidence from Brazil’s Rural Credit Bureau
Full text linkThis paper studies how improvements in regulatory information systems affect credit allocation in rural financial markets. In 2021, the Central Bank of Brazil introduced major enhancements to the Rural Credit Bureau, first by integrating geospatial data on borrowers’ plots with national environmental and social compliance registries, and then by automating real-time verification of credit applications. These reforms simultaneously increased the information available to financial institutions and established a centralized second line of defense that blocks non-compliant credit operations. Using municipality-level data, the analysis finds that after the improvement in regulatory information, credit growth slowed in areas with larger shares of protected land, particularly among cooperatives and public banks. The effect is consistent across regions and biomes, indicating the operation of a uniform national enforcement mechanism. The paper rules out confounding policy changes and shows that the results are not driven by shifts in credit demand or bank risk exposure. The findings suggest that combining improved data integration with real-time monitoring can strengthen environmental enforcement by redirecting financial flows away from high-risk areas without broadly constraining access to rural credit
Demand Shocks in Equity Markets and Firm Responses
Full text linkThis paper examines how shifts in investor demand influence firm financing and investment decisions. For identification, the paper exploits a large-scale MSCI methodo logical reform that mechanically redefined the stock weights in major international equity benchmark indexes, changing the portfolio allocation of 2,508 firms across 49 countries. Because benchmark-tracking investors closely follow these indexes, the rebalancing constituted a clean shock to equity demand. The results show that portfolio rebalancing by benchmark-tracking investors generated significant capital inflows and outflows at the firm level. Firms experiencing larger inflows increased equity issuance, even more so debt financing, and real investment. The paper complements the empirical analysis with a simple model of firm financing in which a decline in the cost of equity increases the value of equity and relaxes borrowing constraints. Higher equity valuations allow firms to expand borrowing even without issuing substantial new equity, so debt financing responds more strongly than equity issuance
Turning Inward and/or Outward: Which Socioemotional Skills Pay for Agribusiness Entrepreneurs in Nigeria?
No full textSocioemotional skills programs are widely used to promote economic empowerment, yet their returns may vary by skill-type and gender. This paper evaluates a socioemotional skills intervention for 4,500 agribusiness owners in a large-scale government program in Nigeria. Using a randomized controlled trial, the paper examines whether trainings that focus on interpersonal skills yield higher economic returns when combined with intrapersonal skills among men and women. Socioemotional skills trainings overall enhance women’s economic outcomes, raising business profits by over 50 percent. The interpersonal and combination treatments yield similar economic impacts. However, the findings show that the interpersonal skills training improves women’s interpersonal skills (negotiation, empathy and collaboration), and the combination training improves men’s intrapersonal skills (emotional awareness and perseverance). The positive impacts on women’s business performance are strongest in norm supportive environments — where there is little perceived judgment from the community for defying traditional gender roles — with no evidence of an effect on their agency or decision-making power. The results suggest that although socioemotional skills programs are effective at improving women’s economic outcomes, accelerating broader empowerment may require complementary programs to help relax gender norms
Local Visibility vs. Global Integrity: Evidence from Corporate Carbon Offsetting
No full textAlthough the climate impact of carbon abatement is geographically invariant, this paper documents limited geographic fungibility in voluntary carbon markets. Firms disproportionately retire offsets in countries where they operate. The paper contrasts an Information Channel, whereby local presence improves project screening, with a Goodwill Channel, whereby supporting local projects enhances reputational visibility. The evidence supports the latter. Offsets retired within firms’ operational footprints exhibit systematically lower project quality than those sourced abroad, revealing a negative local quality gradient. This pattern persists with firm experience and generates equilibrium price-quality decoupling: in jurisdictions with concentrated local demand, prices become less responsive to project quality. The resulting distortions can generate a “market for lemons” dynamic, reallocating climate finance away from high-abatement-potential regions toward areas with greater multinational presence. Strategic corporate incentives thus weaken the allocative efficiency of voluntary carbon markets
Building Evidence to Enhance the Welfare of Refugees and Host Communities in Kenya: Insights from Two Rounds of the Kenya Longitudinal Socioeconomic Study
No full textThe Kenya Longitudinal Socioeconomic Study of Refugees and Host Communities (K-LSRH) is the first
national panel survey of registered refugees and hosts in Kenya. It provides a unique opportunity to inform efforts to enhance the socioeconomic integration of refugees. Unlike previous surveys that lacked comparable host refugee data, K-LSRH includes both refugee and host communities, offering comprehensive and longitudinal insights into their living conditions, challenges and opportunities. The first wave was collected between May 2022 and June 2023, while the second wave followed between March and November 2024. The survey covers refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Dadaab Refugee Complex, Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, as well as refugees in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Nakuru. The survey instrument covers a wide range of socioeconomic modules, including but not limited to employment, consumption, food insecurity, shocks, migration histories and mental health as well as dedicated survey modules on women’s empowerment and child education outcomes. With its extensive scope and panel structure, K-LSRH is well-positioned to assess programmatic changes and their impacts
The Economic Impacts of Insolvency Regimes: Evidence, Challenges and Opportunities
Full text linkThis note reviews empirical evidence on the impacts of insolvency regimes on
entrepreneurship, access to credit, preservation of viable businesses and jobs,
and other variables contributing to economic development. Its objective is to
provide policy makers with evidence to guide insolvency reforms that foster
positive economic outcomes. The note summarizes findings of empirical studies
selected after a wide-ranging literature review. Most of these studies are from
developed economies due to limited data from Emerging Markets and Developing
Economies (EMDEs). Some findings suggest that robust insolvency regimes
can promote entrepreneurship, facilitate access to credit, help preserve viable
businesses and jobs, manage high nonperforming loan levels, and prevent the
persistence of zombie firms. While significant gaps remain in fully understanding
the impact of insolvency laws on economic growth, particularly in EMDEs, the
existing literature indicates that well-designed and effectively implemented
insolvency frameworks are crucial. Policy makers should consider this evidence
when aiming to strike an appropriate balance between creditor and debtor rights
and tailoring the insolvency frameworks to fit the local context
The Human Capital Index Plus 2026: Methodology Note
Full text linkThe World Bank launched the Human Capital Index (HCI) to highlight the
importance of investments in human capital and to benchmark key components of human capital across countries. This HCI is an international metric that measures the amount of human capital a child born today can be expected to attain by age 18, given the risks of poor health and education that prevail in the country where they live (World Bank 2018). It highlights how improvements in current health and education outcomes shape the productivity of the next generation of workers, assuming that children born today experience over the next 18 years the educational opportunities and health risks that children in this age range currently face