A Curated List of My Favorite World Bank Research
The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository and Open Data Repository are treasure troves for policy and decision-makers as well as researchers.
The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository and Open Data Repository are treasure troves for policy and decision-makers as well as researchers. Every single piece of research funded by the World Bank is available free of charge and helpfully tagged, So if you are looking for data and reports on, say, “slum upgrading programs”, you just enter the terms and, voilà, every single relevant World Bank report and operational documents are downloadable.
Here is my list of World Bank reports that I have valued greatly over the years:
Urban China: A 2014 report on how to make urbanization more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable through 6 main areas for reform
A valuable collection on Migration and Remittances. For most poor countries, remittances dwarf FDI or aid. And yet there are huge barriers and costs. The World Bank team puts a spotlight on this often neglected area.
The 1993 World Development Report examines the interplay between human health, health policy & development. Good health increases productivity & growth rates. This is the report that catalyzed Bill Gates to set up @GatesHealth
Our new @WorldBank Groundswell report finds that climate migration could escalate in countries around the world, but collective action could reduce this by as much as 80%.
The “Handbook on Impact Evaluation: Quantitative Methods and Practices; 2010” has 2024 citations on Google Scholar and is one of the most downloaded @WorldBank reports of all time.
The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic has produced a remarkably thorough & comprehensive set of reports on public expenditure, spending needs, and sector performance in each of the main infrastructure sectors on 24 countries of Sub Saharan Africa.
Adaptive social protection [ASP] helps to build the resilience of poor & vulnerable households to impacts of large, covariate shocks e.g. disasters, pandemics, etc. This report outlines an organizing framework for the design & implementation of ASP.
The report “Inclusion Matters: The Foundation for Shared Prosperity” led by my colleague Maitreyi Das is a comprehensive review of social inclusion. It uses evidence to show how inclusion can be advanced & how many countries have moved forward.
Transit-Oriented Development Implementation Resources and Tools. This toolkit provides resources for TOD stakeholders to navigate each phase of the process. It includes how-to guides, analytical & communication tools, case studies & template ToRs
What a Waste 2.0 : A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050: The first edition of this pathbreaking report was produced by my friend and former colleague Dan Hoornweg. By 2050, the world is expected to generate 3.40 billion tons of waste annually, increasing drastically from today’s 2.01 billion tons. This report aggregates extensive solid waste data at the national and urban levels and estimates and projects waste generation to 2030 and 2050. Beyond the core data metrics from waste generation to disposal, the report provides information on waste management costs, revenues, and tariffs; special wastes; regulations; public communication; administrative and operational models; and the informal sector.
Shockwaves: Managing the Impact of Climate Change: Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. his report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win” situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building.
Finally, Abhijit Banerjee (MIT), Angus Deaton (Princeton, chair), Nora Lustig (UNDP), and Kenneth Rogoff (Harvard.) did An Evaluation of World Bank Research, 1998-2005 and made valuable recommendations for improving World Bank research.