Economics

Electric mobility has garnered growing interest and significant momentum across several major global markets, often motivated by transport sector decarbonization. Together, Europe, China, and the United States account for more than 90 percent of the world’s electric vehicle fleet. For many OECD countries, electric mobility is seen primarily as a lever for transport sector decarbonization, given that many of the other relevant policy options have already been exhausted. This report finds that electric mobility is also increasingly relevant for low- and middle-income countries. As of today, el..

As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to take its toll on human life, businesses in North Macedonia have continued to struggle despite a return to some normalcy. Th­is note examines the state of the private sector in North Macedonia by comparing the performance of businesses during the period of adjustment to the pandemic in April 2021 with the initial impact in September 2020 and the baseline before the crisis, drawing on a standard round of the Enterprise Survey in 2019 and two follow-up surveys in 2020 and 2021. While the second round of the follow-up survey revealed signs of some early-s..

Logistics clusters boost logistics efficiency. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic brought about a common global threat of historic proportions and yielded critical lessons as to the importance of supply chain resilience-from essential medical supplies to consumer goods in responding to such a challenge. Today the world increasingly recognizes the value of adaptive infrastructure and service delivery platforms, often collaborative in nature, to face the “certainty of uncertain situations” at all levels of the value chain. Logistics clusters are at the core of positioning trans..

As a green mode of transportation, railways have an important role to play in decarbonizing transport through shifting transport from more polluting modes of transport such as road and air. Railways can enable economic growth, which in turn generates increasing transport demand, while keeping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions low. However, in many parts of the world, railways have lost traffic and market share to air and road transport modes. As countries seek to reduce their GHG emissions, while still delivering on economic growth, many are rethinking the role of rail. Many developing countries ..

The World Bank estimates a significant funding gap in road safety of 260 billion to achieve SDG 3.6 and 11.2 in the next ten years, and recognizes that this gap cannot be closed through public funding alone and thus mobilization of private capital is required. The impacts of road traffic crashes reach far into the economy and can cost L/MICs as much as 6% of their GDP. The costs of a road traffic crash do not end at the roadside; they create ripple effects throughout the wider economy. Loss of income, property damage, insurance premiums, loss of taxes, and burdens on the health sector ..

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing an existential threat to the air transport sector globally, including in Africa. Due to sustained and significant loss of revenue coupled with the presence of several fixed and quasi-fixed inputs in this sector, the survival of carriers is questionable in the short term. This could lead to bankruptcies of important African-based airlines resulting in severe loss of connectivity, especially in the intra-African markets. If history is any guide, within the current regulatory environment that restricts market access and the ownership and control of airlines, it cou..

The purpose of this study is to evaluate non-traditional means to raise additional private financing for the upgrade and maintenance of developing countries’ road networks. To achieve this goal, it combines an in-depth review of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries’ road funds’ (RF) performance and road public private partnerships (PPPs) to evaluate the potential for RFs to fund road PPPs when specific conditions are met. This report presents to explore how, in few selected cases, SSA RFs can be reformed to substantially increase the amount of public and private monies flowing towards the ..

The Disaster Resilient and Responsive Public Financial Management (DRR-PFM) Assessment is designed to help countries strengthen the capability of their Public Financial Management (PFM) systems to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. The DRR-PFM Assessment expands upon an analytical tool first developed to support resilience in nine Caribbean countries. The updated framework integrates ex-ante risk reduction explicitly; it considers how central finance agencies can use risk analysis to inform their risk reduction, response, and recovery planning. The DRR-PFM Assessment identifi..

This report is the product of the technical assistance to develop a business model to finance and scale up e-mobility in Uruguay provided by the World Bank and funded by the Mobility and Logistics (MOLO) Trust Fund. The report systematically analyzes international experiences and synthesizes them as stylized business models. Combining key learnings from other countries and an in-depth assessment of the regulatory and fiscal framework in Uruguay, the report formulates five alternative business models. In a next step, it evaluates these models under different scenarios regarding their expected f..

Emissions trading continues to expand as a flexible policy response to climate change. Its implementation raises complex governance challenges, however, and calls for robust institutional, regulatory and procedural frameworks. Unlike aspects of technical design and implementation, the governance of emissions trading systems (ETSs) has found less extensive treatment in the available knowledge base. However, existing systems offer valuable insights into the successful governance of emissions trading from the initial establishment and routine operation of an ETS to the review of its performance a..

This report initiative is part of an expanding focus on paratransit in the context of urban mobility. This document aims to advance the understanding of how to improve urban mobility in cities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) through building incrementally on the existing paratransit sector, informed by innovative data techniques and data-driven diagnostics. It contains four key elements. First, it explains the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the paratransit industry in SSA, making the case for an incremental, data-driven approach towards improvement. Second, it describes the data collection t..

The broad objectives of this study were to identify the following: (1) mobility differences globally between women and men (and by non-binary individuals, more broadly, where possible). This objective includes identifying and explaining heterogeneity in mobility needs and patterns in developed and developing countries (and intersectionality across gender, age, geographic location, ethnicity, disability, class and income, sexual identity, where possible), and documenting how these dimensions influence mobility choices and needs; (2) outcomes for women and men (and intersectionality across &..

Across the developing world, countries are experiencing rapid growth in urbanization and motorization. While high motorization rates potentially meant hat more people will be able to claim the benefits of improved accessibility to goods and services as a consequence of enhanced mobility, there are questions about the sustainability of this future. Will countries be able to build and maintain infrastructure to accommodate increasing numbers of vehicles? Will the increasing number of vehicles and their characteristics support attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Will they put in jeopardy countries’ ability to meet their climate commitments under their Nationally Determined ..

Economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has been weak since the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the Arab Spring of the early 2010s. Achieving higher and sustainable growth is particularly important in view of other economic challenges facing the region: public debt in MENA countries has increased considerably over the last decade, accompanied by declining investment. This report seeks to understand what lies beneath that relatively slow growth, with a particular focus on the reasons for stagnating productivity and inadequate accumulation of human capital and physical&..

The air transport sector is an integral part of economic growth and development. As the only available means of transporting passengers and goods across the globe within a single day, air transport provides critical connectivity between regions and better access to global markets. The creation of these benefits, however, leads to detrimental impacts on the environment and public health, including the emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases (GHGs). This report emphasizes SAF as the main mitigation option that can most readily realize substantial GHG emission savings for air transport in t..