Up to 73 million people in Eastern and Southern Africa experience acute food insecurity, including famine. While it is critical to feed the hungry and lessen the cost of malnutrition, the…

Victoria Kwakwa, Juergen Voegele |

The widespread availability of free geospatial data has accelerated interest in data fusion. While village-level welfare estimates are key to the design and evaluation of anti-poverty programs,…

Melany Gualavisi, David Newhouse |

Whenever the share of industry in the economy starts waning, industrial expansion often becomes a component of the growth policies. This blog analyzes if and how targeting labor market barriers…

Rishabh Sinha |

Why are fertilizer prices so high, and what can countries in Central America do about this?

Luis Flores, Viviana Perego, Diego Arias |

This blog is a biweekly feature highlighting recent working papers from around the World Bank Group. It introduces five papers published in August 2022 on various topics, including COVID-19…

Marcelo Buitron, Policy Research Working Paper team |

Building capacity to collect taxes efficiently and equitably is an important policy goal for governments. Still, Liberia, like many low- and lower-middle-income countries, faces serious challenges…

Oyebola Okunogbe, Yahe Li |

Crop production losses are as significant from an aggregate economic perspective as they are a threat to the livelihoods of the poorest. A fine-grained and standardized way to measure this…

Yannick Markhof, Philip Randolph Wollburg, Giulia Ponzini |

In Malawi, where stunting is as high as 37%, and 10% of the gross domestic product is lost annually due to malnutrition, girls are becoming part of the solution.

Blessings Botha |

Southern African countries had a tough 2019. The Government of Lesotho declared a national disaster as a result of the drought which left a fourth of its population facing severe food insecurity…

Barry Maher, Gracelin Baskaran |

According to a Pan American Health Organization assessment, nearly seven out of 10 hospitals in Latin America and the Caribbean are in areas vulnerable to natural hazards.

Mirtha Escobar, Joaquin Toro, Jack Campbell |