Bleak short-term economic outlook raises the risk that social and environmental
achievements may not be sustained. The changed economic circumstances have exposed shortcomings in Brazil’s development model, epitomized by the struggle to achieve a sustainable fiscal policy. Against this background, some Brazilians are now asking whether the gains of the past decade might have been an illusion, created by the commodity boom, but unsustainable in today’s less forgiving international environment. Brazil thus finds itself at an important juncture and, to a certain extent, the policy

Jordan is an upper middle income country which has proven remarkably resilient despite decades of turmoil in its neighborhood. Even with economic stability in the face of massive shocks, the Jordanian government - reflecting the views of the population - has made clear the need for improvement in the current growth trajectory. Public dissatisfaction coalesced around a perception, which the government acknowledges, that previous reform efforts had struggled with implementation, while discretionary decisions and unequal opportunities remain entrenched.

Sri Lanka is in many respects a
development success story. With economic growth averaging
more than 7 percent a year over the past five years on top
of an average growth of 6 percent the preceding five years,
Sri Lanka has made notable strides towards the goals of
ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity (the
‘twin goals’). The national poverty headcount rate declined
from 22.7 to 6.7 percent between 2002 and 2012/13, while

Despite its rapid growth in recent
decades, GDP per capita in India remains at a relatively low
level by international standards, and the country continues
to be marked by large subnational disparities in levels of
well-being. These large disparities naturally lead to
interest in India’s spatial landscape of potential for
economic development. Against this backdrop, this paper
presents the results of an analysis of underlying variations

Infrastructure services are significant
determinants of economic development, social welfare, trade,
and public health. As such, they typically feature strongly
in national development plans. While governments may receive
many infrastructure project proposals, however, resources
are often insufficient to finance the full set of proposals
in the short term. Leading up to 2020, an estimated US$836
billion - 1 trillion will be required each year to meet

Many ex ante measures taken to reduce
disaster risk can deliver co-benefits that are not dependent
on disasters occurring. In fact, building resilience to
climate extremes and disasters can achieve multiple
objectives. These are secondary to the main objective of
disaster risk management of avoiding disaster losses, but
identifying and measuring additional co-benefits can enhance
the attractiveness of disaster risk management investments.

This paper addresses the question
whether and how co-benefits, through disaster resilience
building, can be further promoted. Co-benefits are defined
as positive externalities that arise deliberately as a
result of a joint strategy that pursues several objectives
synergistically at the same time, such as disaster risk
management and development goals, or disaster risk
management and climate change adaptation. Of particular

This paper examines the spatial
organization of jobs in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda,
and applies the Lucas and Rossi-Hansberg (2002) model to
explain the observed patterns in terms of the agglomeration
forces and the commuting costs of workers. The paper
suggests that: (i) Economic activities are concentrated in
the downtown -- beyond which employment is spatially
dispersed. (ii) Geographically weighted regressions identify

West Africa’s coastal area is critical
to the region, home to a third of its people and the source
of about half of its gross domestic product (GDP). Because
most of it is composed of mangroves and sand formations, the
area’s coastline is also highly vulnerable to erosion caused
by coastal currents and storm surges. Erosion is evident
from Mauritania to Gabon - and the rates of erosion are
increasing. Around the port of Lome, for example, Togo’s

The Zambia Mining Investment and
Governance Review (MInGov) collects and shares information on
mining sector governance, its attractiveness to investors
and how its activities affect national development. It
reviews sector performance from the perspective of three
main stakeholder groups– government, investors in the mining
value chain and civil society – and identifies gaps
between declared and actual government policy and practice.

Over the last decade, the countries of
the Latin America and the Caribbean region experienced a
deep economic and social transformation which lifted
millions out of poverty and swelled the ranks of the middle
class. Strong economic growth driven by both domestic
reforms and a favorable global economic environment, was
responsible for this progress. Complementary social
programs, made possible by growing fiscal space, helped

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
for Tunisia, prepared jointly by International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), International Finance
Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency (MIGA) covers the period Fiscal Year (FY) 2016
through FY 2020. The CPF is anchored in the Government of
Tunisia’s September 2015 Note d’Orientation Stratégique and
the WBG’s October 2015 Strategy for the Middle East and