Creating jobs and increasing productivity are at the top of agenda for policymakers across the world. Knowledge accumulation and skills are recognized as central in this process. More-educated workers not only have better employment opportunities, earn more, and have more stable and rewarding jobs, but also they are more adaptable and mobile. Workers who acquire more skills also make other workers and capital more productive and, within the firm, they facilitate the adaptation, adoption, and ultimately invention of new technologies. This is crucial to enable economic diversification,...

Increasing life expectancy in South Asia is resulting in a demographic transition that can, under the right circumstances, yield dividends through more favorable dependency ratios for a time. With aging, the disease burden shifts toward noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) which can threaten healthy aging. However, securing the gains expected from the demographic dividend where developing countries working and nondependent population increases and per capita income thus rises is both achievable and affordable through efficiently tacking NCDs with prevention and control efforts. This book looks...

This study analyzes the impacts of the financial crisis on power sectors in five countries in the region: Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. Before the financial crisis, these countries faced expected power shortages as a result of large investment gaps. With the financial crisis, GDP dropped, leading to a drop in demand for electricity. The drop in demand created a window of opportunity for meeting investment needs, but the crisis has limited the sources of financing available to the sector. In the post-crisis period, the study concludes that policymakers need to...

The financial crisis, which began in the United States and Western Europe swiftly expanded into an economic crisis throughout developing countries. The Eastern Europe and Central Asia region was hit harder than any other region in the world. Deteriorating macroeconomic conditions led to deteriorating household welfare, as unemployment increased. Those workers who kept their jobs took home smaller paychecks. Men became more highly represented among the unemployed, and youth struggled to secure their first job. Confronted by an income shock, families tried two strategies. First, families took...

This report discusses the variety of low-cost and highly efficient actions that governments can take to improve the health and nutrition of school-age children. The book summarizes how improvements in these areas will lead to gains in human capital development through its beneficial effects on school enrollment, attendance, and performance, economic productivity, and the health of future generations.

Over the coming decades, the supply of electric power will need to expand to meet the growing demand for electricity, but how the production and use of electricity develops will have broad ramifications for the diverse economies and societies of Latin America and the Caribbean. This report discusses the critical issues for the power sector considering a baseline scenario to 2030 for countries and sub-regions. Among these critical issues are the demand for electricity, the total new supply of electric generating capacity needed, the technology and fuel mix of the generating capacity, and the...

The positive contribution of tertiary education is increasingly recognized as not limited to middle-income and advanced countries, since it applies equally to low-income economies. Tertiary education can help countries become more globally competitive by developing a skilled, productive, and flexible labor force and by creating, applying, and spreading new ideas and technologies. Research universities are reckoned among the central institutions of the 21st century knowledge economies. This book extends the analysis of the framework presented in The Challenge of Establishing World-Class...

For countries as diverse as China and Mauritius, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been a powerful tool to attract foreign investment, promote export-oriented growth, and generate employment; for many others, the results have been less than encouraging. While the benefits and limitations of zones will no doubt continue to be debated, what is clear is that policymakers are increasingly attracted to them as an instrument of trade, investment, industrial, and spatial policy. Since the mid 1980s, the number of newly-established zones has grown rapidly in almost all regions, with dramatic growth...

This book serves as a toolkit on risk-based audits and brings together country experiences for implementing risk-based audit systems. Risk management is an important element of effective and efficient compliance management in revenue administration. It is impossible for any revenue administration to control and check every single taxpayer, and an unnecessary waste of scarce enforcement resources on routinely examining low-risk, compliant taxpayers. The opportunity costs for such roving examinations are high. Just as a private business allocates its resources to areas they feel have the most...

Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Analysis takes stock of education in Sub-Saharan Africa by drawing on the collective knowledge gained through the preparation of Country Status Reports for more than 30 countries. The analysis is based on a cross-country dataset which combines both administrative and household survey data to describe aspects of enrollment and student flow, disparities, out-of-school children, finance, management, quality, social impact and the link between education systems and labor markets. The book provides those concerned with education in Sub-Saharan Africa...