Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced low economic growth per capita, a very slow decline in poverty incidence, and the number of people living in extreme poverty has been rising steadily. As a…

Johannes Hoogeveen, Johan A. Mistiaen, Haoyu Wu |

Firms play an important role in the impact of payroll taxes on their workers and different firms respond differently to payroll tax cuts. Findings suggest that governments need to consider the…

Anikó Bíró, Réka Branyiczki, Attila Lindner, Lili Márk, Daniel Prinz |

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 |

One year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the level of education became the main predictor of joblessness in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda. These four countries represent 34% of…

Ivette Maria Contreras-González, Gbemisola Oseni, Amparo Palacios-Lopez, Janneke Pieters, Michael Weber |

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 |

Today, on the occasion of the World Youth Skills Day , we are pleased to announce the winners of the Blog4Dev 2021 competition.

Hafez Ghanem, Ousmane Diagana |

On March 20, 2020, Malawi’s President, Peter Mutharika, declared a State of Disaster due to the high risk of a COVID-19 outbreak. A few days later, on April 2, not far from my house in a…

Francisco Obreque |

Caribbean nations offer valuable lessons on how to mitigate the effects of shocks, like natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic, through more resilient public financial management (PFM)…

Tracey Marie Lane, Ruxandra Burdescu, Leah April |

Effective management of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) can offer countries a layer of defense for fiscal resilience and sustainability when resources become scarce due to natural disasters.

Ruxandra Burdescu, Jana Kunicova, Joy ten Berge |

The archetype of the strong African woman standing as an unmoving pillar of her community is one that transcends national borders on the African continent. While in the past, this image often…

Nayé Bathily |