Statistics

Socioemotional 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 ..

Landslides claim more than 4,000 lives annually and lead to approximately US$20 billion in economic losses. However, landslide hazard, risk assessment, and early warning systems remain constrained by fragmented, inconsistent, and incomplete data. This study addresses the global data gap by proposing a standardized, interoperable framework for documenting landslide events across countries. Using open-access data and machine learning–based susceptibility modeling in Nepal, the paper assesses the limitations of existing inventories in terms of spatial resolution, temporal updates, and missing attributes such as triggers, volumes, impacts, and soil-geotechnical properties that are critical for..

This study evaluates whether low-cost digital nudges delivered via WhatsApp can improve property tax compliance in Gorontalo, Indonesia. In a randomized controlled trial, individuals were as-signed to receive either (i) a soft-tone message emphasizing civic duty and public benefits, (ii) a hard-tone message highlighting penalties and consequences, or (iii) no message (control). Four findings emerge. First, although messages referenced overdue obligations, the soft-tone nudge substantially increased current-year compliance: payment of the fiscal year 2024 bill rose by 9–11 percentage points from two weeks through the payment deadline and remained 9.9 percentage points higher at six months, ..

This paper investigates the determinants of saving behavior—both formal and informal—using individual-level data from the 2021 Global Findex database, covering more than 139,000 adults across 138 countries. The analysis employs a Heckman selection model to distinguish between the decision to save any money and the decision to save formally using a financial account. Key findings reveal that individuals in the poorest 40 percent of households, those with only primary education, and those out of the workforce are significantly less likely to save and even less likely to save formally. While women are equally likely as men to save any money, they are less likely to save formally. Country-le..

Flood risk is increasing globally as climate change interacts with urban expansion and land-use decisions in flood zones. Using a nationally consistent, high-resolution assessment, this study analyzes how settlement growth, climate change, and flood protection shape the evolution of flood exposure across more than 11,000 municipalities in Germany, revealing exposure dynamics relevant to many advanced economies. The study integrates biannual settlement footprint data from 2016 to 2025 with fluvial, pluvial, and coastal flood hazard data, future climate scenarios, and detailed dike protection maps. The results show that in several regions the growth of settlements in flood zones has outpaced t..

This paper examines agriculture growth performance in 20 countries in West and Central Africa over 2001–23. Most countries in the region continued to depend on land expansion to raise agricultural output. However, two countries in West Africa, Ghana and Senegal, stand apart. Over these two decades, Ghana and Senegal achieved rapid improvements in yields for a wide range of crops and agro-ecological zones. Agricultural labor productivity and total factor productivity also grew at rates comparable to those of the rest of the world. The paper investigates policy choices that may have contributed to accelerating and sustaining productivity growth. Compared to other countries in the region, Gha..

This 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,..

Can employer-side wage subsidies increase hiring women in low female labor force participation settings? This paper tests this using a randomized experiment with 1,227 Pakistani firms on a national jobs platform. Treatment firms were offered a six-month wage subsidy determined via the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak mechanism. They were 11 percentage points more likely to hire a woman, with larger effects for male-only firms. After 18 months, the treatment effect on employing a woman persisted, although the firm-wide share of female employees did not change. Additionally, administrative data show the treated firms reduced male-preference language in job postings, consistent with emerging demand-..

Why do some countries have more disaster-resilient housing than others, even at similar income levels? This paper addresses this question using a novel data set on housing robustness in 150 countries and proposes a \

This 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 f..

This report reviews the implementation of the degree of urbanisation over the past six years. Endorsed by the United Nations for international comparison, it provides a globally comparable...

This 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..

This paper examines the impact of improvements in digital infrastructure on labor market performance, focusing on employment and productivity, measured by average wages. The empirical setting exploits the staggered expansion of high-speed fiber broadband across provinces in Türkiye, using linked employer-employee administrative data and complementary Labor Force Surveys. Across specifications, better digital connectivity raises formal employment and wages, with effects concentrated in occupations amenable to remote work. Most of these gains arise from workers—disproportionately women—entering teleworkable occupations enabled by high-quality internet access. Detailed occupational data re..

This paper makes an initial attempt to account for differences in the technologies used by women- and men-run businesses, that is, technological “heterogeneity,” for better understanding productivity differences between the two groups. The paper applies meta frontier analysis to the efficiency of private hotels in Georgia estimated using the data envelopment analysis methodology. The exercise allows distinguishing between productivity differences conditional on the available technology to each group (technical efficiency) and due to differences in the available technology (technology gap). The findings show that gender-based differences in technical efficiency and the technology gap are ..

In fragile states such as the Central African Republic, where conflict and institutional fragility severely constrain traditional data collection, mapping multidimensional vulnerability and potential deprivation poses a significant challenge for designing targeted interventions. This paper presents an innovative geospatial dashboard that harnesses alternative data sources—including nighttime light intensity, other relevant satellite imagery, geocoded infrastructure inventories, and critical event records. It uses the dashboard to develop high-resolution indices (at a 5×5-kilometer scale) of economic capacity, access to essential services (education, health, and water), flood exposure, and..

This paper studies the long-term impacts of dual apprenticeships on youth employment in a high-informality labor market. A Randomized Controlled Trial in Côte d'Ivoire with four follow-up surveys collected over seven years shows that dual apprenticeships have sustained impacts: youth earnings increase by 14 to 20 percent two to five years after program completion. Gains are observed across the earnings distribution, and the share of youth in working poverty — with earnings below the minimum wage — decreases by 11 percent. Importantly, results highlight a distinct pathway whereby training raises earnings through self-employment, with no impact on access to wage employment. Youth perform ..

This study explores public opinion for reducing fossil fuel subsidies in Angola, identifies strategies that can shift public opinion, and analyzes variations in support based on respondents’ area of residency and gender. It uses data from a survey of 598 respondents and focus groups involving 30 individuals, conducted in 2024 after the first phase of a fuel subsidy reform. The findings suggest that this initial phase of reforms had significant negative effects on households’ well-being. Support for subsidy reform is low among respondents, around 30 percent, but bundling reforms with mitigation measures is expected to increase public support significantly to nearly 90 percent. This happen..

Digital skills are becoming increasingly more important in the labor market as demand for them is increasing in all sectors. This paper explores the determinants of digital skill acquisition and estimates the impact of digital skills on wages in developing countries by using the latest round of the Life in Transition Survey from 30 countries in the Europe and Central Asia region. The results show that acquisition of digital skills is correlated with individual characteristics including age, education, and gender but also with household characteristics such as household income, place of residence, and parents’ educational attainment. These disparities translate directly into labor market ou..

Intergroup hate—both shaped by and shaping development processes—is spreading worldwide as hate speech becomes normalized, hate groups proliferate, and political discourse increasingly frames opponents as enemies rather than as partners in compromise. Drawing on historical, economic, political, and social-psychological research, this paper synthesizes 10 drivers of intergroup hate into four interlocking components: history, current context, call to arms, and justification of mistreatment. These components form a self-reinforcing cycle that escalates animosity and legitimizes harm, making hate difficult—but not impossible—to disrupt. The paper shows how the 10 drivers interact over ti..

This paper studies information diffusion in a large organization through a field experiment at the World Bank. The paper focuses on transmission of scientific evidence on the impacts of generative artificial intelligence by experimentally varying whether research findings are shared with senior or junior staff, and varying beliefs about peer adoption and evidence credibility. Providing evidence to senior staff significantly increases transmission and diffusion as measured by engagement with study materials and colleagues’ recall of study details. In contrast, changing beliefs about peer adoption or credibility has no detectable effects. The results highlight the importance of organizationa..

This paper examines whether small low- and middle-income countries offer excess returns and diversification benefits to global investors. Using monthly equity price data from 2015–25, the study pools listed stocks from low- and middle-income countries whose populations fall below a given threshold and construct value-weighted portfolios, sorted by population and land area. It then estimates a two-factor asset-pricing model to evaluate their risk-adjusted performance relative to developed- and emerging-market benchmarks. Portfolios restricted to countries with fewer than 20 million people—or less than 100,000 square kilometers—earn positive and economically meaningful alphas alongside l..

This paper examines how suppliers adjust their decarbonization choices when major customers obtain validated emission-reduction targets. Using global supplier-customer links matched to firm-level emissions and project-level data from voluntary carbon registries, the analysis shows that downstream climate pressure elicits both real and symbolic responses, but in systematically different ways across suppliers. On average, treated suppliers become more likely to adopt climate targets of their own. High-emission suppliers subsequently reduce their emission intensity relative to comparable firms, indicating meaningful operational adjustments. Low-emission suppliers, by contrast, do not further re..

European statistical business registers, comprising national registers and the EuroGroups register, form the backbone of EU business statistics. This second edition of the report evaluates the...

The East Asia and Pacific region has made remarkable progress on poverty reduction, transforming the economic lives of hundreds of millions of people. With growth prospects dimmer in a world that is increasingly polarized, the question of what it will take to convert the success in poverty reduction into a similar success in growing and nurturing the emergent middle class has become critical for the region. Providing an updated definition of middle class that is grounded in the concept of economic security, this paper presents new evidence on the size, evolution, and characteristics of the region’s middle class. The results show that around a third of the region’s population belongs to t..

Decline in the school-age population due to demographic changes presents an opportunity to redirect resources within the education sector to improve access and quality. However, the experiences of countries that have gone through similar demographic transitions show that a shrinking student population does not automatically translate into more efficient spending due to structural and political challenges. Realizing the potential fiscal space depends critically on how education systems adapt in practice to demographic changes. This paper projects public education expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product from 2020 to 2050 across eight South Asian countries, considering demographic..