In recent years, services tradability has increased. Services that previously required the physical proximity between the consumer and the producer can now be delivered across borders.
... انظر المزيد + As technology opens new channels for international trade in services, laws and regulations become more and more relevant in supporting this economic activity and setting the conditions for its success. Domestic regulations, such as limitations on foreign participation, monopoly rights, and laws that limit the temporary movement of people, directly affect the provision of services. Economic reforms that have privatized and deregulated industries over the last two decades have allowed for the greater participation of private providers, both national and foreign, in services such as telecommunications, finance, and transport. Other services, such as professional ones, which have traditionally been supplied by the private sector, are increasingly being exposed to international competition, expanding the variety and quality of services offered. But countries' legal and regulatory frameworks have not kept pace with these vast market (and policy) transformations. Now is an opportune time for countries to modernize their regulatory regimes and reap the economic and social benefits of increasing trade in services. Most administrations, especially in developing and least developed countries, face a number of constraints in adopting this agenda of modernization. First, reviewing a regulatory framework is a time- and resource-consuming task that requires highly technical knowledge. Second, most developing countries have limited skills and human resources to put in place new, independent, regulatory agencies, and at the same time maintain capacity to define broad policies in ministries that are often sector based. Finally, assessing the impact of existing regulations and designing suitable alternatives requires a careful balance between technical feasibility, trade impact, and policy goals. One objective of this toolkit is to help countries mitigate these costs. The toolkit is designed to assist policy makers, regulators, and experts in assessing their countries' regulatory environments. It proposes a three-step approach to the reform of services regulations. The first step is to map all regulations that affect a wide range of activities; this might include, for example, cataloguing the laws and regulations that affect investment, labor, and migration. The focus is not only on formal regulations but also on the administrative practices that determine how the regulations are applied. Many countries have state-of-the-art regulations on the books, but allow wide discretion in their application. This creates uncertainty, instability, and regulatory risks. In other cases, the institutional setting is weak, which undermines enforcement. In that situation, the regulations and their administration might be adequate, but the capacity to enforce those regulations may not exist.
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This report contains the World Bank Group Boards' calendar for the period March to May 2014, specifying the Boards' engagements, such as meetings and briefings, for the aforementioned time period.
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What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immediately preceding the filing of a petition for protection.
... انظر المزيد + A decomposition methodology allows a comparison of imports from two groups of countries supplying the same product: those that are named in the petition and those that are not. The same decomposition can be applied to products quite similar to the imports in question, but not subject to a petition. The results suggest that industries typically seek protection when faced with a specific pattern of shocks. First, a persistent positive relative supply shock favors imports from named countries. Second, a negative demand shock hits imports from all sources just prior to domestic industries' petition for protection. The relative supply shock is a broad one; it applies both to named commodities and to the comparison product group. The import demand shock, by contrast, is narrow, hitting only named products. The latter shock is also large: import growth over the two-year window is 15 percentage points lower in named products than in reference products, with most of this gap arising in the final two quarters before the petition. The negative import demand shock appears to be a key event in the run-up to the filing of a petition. It has been missed by previous studies using more aggregated data.
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Financial constraints are widespread in developing countries, where even short-term credit is limited. Finance held by firms as working capital is a substantial proportion of sales revenue, yet the role of working capital is largely neglected by existing models of financial constraints.
... انظر المزيد + This paper presents a dynamic model of the firm that incorporates working capital by introducing a delay between factor payments and the receipt of revenue. In contrast with previous models, the working capital model predicts that firms under binding constraints will substitute between labor and capital in response to demand shocks, causing investment to be countercyclical. For firms near the margin of being constrained, constraints bind when positive production opportunities arise. Output growth is therefore constrained in response to positive shocks but not to negative shocks. Simulations suggest that models without working capital may understate the predicted effects of financial constraints on production efficiency, firm profit and growth over time. The predictions are tested with the Bangladesh Panel Survey data for manufacturing firms. Consistent with the theory, there is evidence that constraints bind when output price increases, that investment by constrained firms is countercyclical, and that output response to positive shocks is dampened for firms that are sometimes constrained. The results also are important for policy. In order to maximize growth, efforts to relieve credit constraints should be focused on periods when demand shocks are high.
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This paper uses regression analysis to identify which country context, reform content, process, and project management variables predict the performance of public sector management projects, as measured by the Independent Evaluation Group's project outcome ratings.
... انظر المزيد + The paper draws on data from a large sample of World Bank public sector management projects that were approved between 1990 and 2013. It contributes to an emerging literature that uses cross-country regressions to analyze public sector management reform patterns. The findings suggest that political context factors have a greater impact on the performance of public sector management projects than on other projects. Specifically, public sector management projects perform better in countries with democratic regimes than autocratic ones. They fare better in the presence of programmatic political parties and in more aid-dependent countries. Project managers' subjective risk assessments predict performance in public sector management operations better than objective risk indicators. These findings suggest that the performance of public sector management projects would benefit from a better alignment of project design with political context and from a more open dialogue about risk between task team leaders and management.
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This document summarizes the approach that the global partnership for oceans (GPO) will take in its work with countries to help improve the health of the oceans and reduce coastal poverty.
... انظر المزيد + Restoring the health of the world's ocean is a global challenge that can and must be solved if one has to alleviate poverty, build resilient communities, and foster strong coastal economies. The natural systems underpinning the health of the ocean and the livelihoods, food, and other services dependent upon them are at risk, due largely to human action occurring in the context of weak institutions. The GPO has been established as a convening platform that can help to reduce the barriers to countries obtaining the finance and expertise needed to restore ocean health. To finance this support, the GPO will establish a new global fund for oceans (GPO fund), as well as an ocean investment roundtable. To mobilize the knowledge countries need, the GPO will include a network of expertise from the partners, coordinated through a global assembly of partners, supported by the GPO fund, and a number of communities of practice established around specific issues and themes.
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This paper reviews the published work on the governance of regulatory authorities in order to identify the basic governance standards that apply and some of the factors that affect the implementation of good governance.
... انظر المزيد + There are four pillars of good regulatory governance: independence, accountability, transparency, and integrity. The regulator should be operationally independent from commercial and political influences in the exercise of its functions and powers. Accountability is the means whereby a regulatory authority is held responsible for the actions it takes. Transparency refers to the publication of relevant information designed to demonstrate consistency and openness. The fourth governance pillar, integrity, refers to the internal processes that the authority adopts to ensure there is discipline and consistency in its operations and to limit the risks of regulatory staff acting in their own self-interest as opposed to that of the authority and the market. These four elements are mutually reinforcing, in that accountability is necessary to provide legitimacy to independence, transparency is necessary to demonstrate that independence does not lead to abuse or improper behavior, and integrity is necessary to provide the discipline to control the exercise of independent powers. Available evidence suggests that independence and accountability are far from being universally applied in practice. The paper concludes with some practical suggestions that experience indicates are likely to enhance the effectiveness of the governance of securities regulators. Good governance of the securities regulator is necessary for effective regulation. It is also of importance in setting an example to encourage good corporate governance in the private sector.
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This paper examines the association between the intensity, timing, and persistence of personal history of mobility on individual support for redistribution.
... انظر المزيد + Using both rounds of the Life in Transition Survey, the paper builds measures of downward mobility for about 57,000 individuals from 27 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The analysis finds that more intensive, recent, and persistent downward mobility increases support for redistribution more. A number of extensions and checks are done by, among others, taking into account systematic bias in perceived mobility experience, considering an alternative definition of redistributive preferences, and exploring the severity of omitted variable bias problems. Overall, the results are robust.
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There is growing recognition that access to good jobs is an important driver of social cohesion. While economic dimensions of labor market outcomes are relatively well documented, evidence on the link between social cohesion and jobs is still surprisingly scarce.
... انظر المزيد + This paper, based on an earlier background report for the WDR 2013, presents empirical evidence for pathways between labor market outcomes and social cohesion. The findings indicate that formal employment is associated with a range of social outcomes and behaviors that are typically associated with higher levels of social cohesion. However, there are also indications that this relationship varies across dimensions of social wellbeing. In particular social interactions and political activism among those in regular employment can either improve the quality of aggregate institutions or deepen existing social divides.
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As part of the change management initiatives, the SMT endorsed on July 22nd the proposal of a new Country Partnership Framework (CPF) to define the World Bank Group (WBG) country engagement.
... انظر المزيد + The goal is to build on the current country-driven model, but to strengthen this with a more systematic, evidence-based and selective approach to goal setting and prioritization. Under the new approach, WBG country engagements will continue to draw upon the national development strategies of the country. They will also draw upon a Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD), which will be prepared by WBG staff in close consultation with national authorities and other stakeholders. The SCD is intended to become a reference point for client consultations on priorities for WBG country engagement. It is intended to help the country, the WBG and other development partners establish a dialogue to focus their efforts around goals and activities that have high impact and are aligned with the global goals of ending absolute poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner.
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This report contains the World Bank Group Boards' calendar for the period February - April 2014, specifying the Boards' engagements, such as meetings and briefings, for the aforementioned time period.
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The Sub-Committee (SC) of the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) considered Independent Evaluation Group's (IEG's) approach paper entitled getting to poverty: lessons from the World Bank's record on supporting poverty reduction in country programs.
... انظر المزيد + They encouraged IEG to place focus on the factors that explain the diversity of outcomes and the gaps associated with data availability and quality, as well as the drivers for effective utilization of data in Bank's engagement with partner countries and in the formulation of country programs. The SC requested that the evaluation capture both lessons-learned and good practices and inquired whether the title of the evaluation can be phrased in a clearer fashion. While the evaluation is to focus on extreme poverty reduction, members cautioned that poverty reduction is expressed as part of the World Bank Group (WBG) twin goals which are intertwined and that shared prosperity may also contribute to extreme poverty reduction.
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This report contains the World Bank Group Boards' calendar for the period February - April 2014, specifying the Boards' engagements, such as meetings and briefings, for the aforementioned time period.
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The report includes the thematic and chronological listing of items pertaining to the Board and and committees work programs for the third quarter of FY14 to the first quarter of FY15.
... انظر المزيد + Additional information on the work program, including a database of forthcoming Board items, which is updated on an ongoing basis, is available on the Executive Directors' Portal (EDsPortal). An updated executive directors' work program is discussed each month at the Executive Directors' steering committee meeting.
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This report concerns the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and post conflict reconstruction, especially with ways in which ICTs can be used by governments and donors to support the transition from violence to stability.
... انظر المزيد + The report is divided into two parts: part one presents an overview and framework for analysis; and part two presents' case studies. The World Bank Group (WBG) has been concerned with sustainable recovery from violent conflict since its origins in 1944 as indicated by the name of its leading institution, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The role of ICTs in development has also been prominent within the Bank's portfolio since the 1990s, as they have developed rapidly in technological complexity and geographic reach, becoming ever more central to government and business, to the sharing of knowledge, and to interactions between individuals and within communities. This report gives an overview of the relationship between conflict, reconstruction and the role of ICTs. It builds on experience within the Bank as well as on a wide range of practitioner, academic, and other literature. It draws on five case studies of aspects of ICT development in societies emerging from conflict, which were commissioned by the Bank and which are reported in subsequent chapters. These case studies were specifically chosen to reflect the experiences of widely differing countries, at different stages of recovery from conflict: Afghanistan following decades of civil war followed by international intervention; Liberia following a negotiated settlement to protracted civil war; Timor-Leste since its troubled acquisition of independence; Rwanda seeking stability in the aftermath of genocide; and Tunisia, which recently experienced not civil war but insurrection leading to a change of government.
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