Central America is undergoing an
important transition, with urban populations increasingat
accelerated speeds, bringing pressing challenges as well as
opportunities to boost sustained,inclusive and resilient
growth. Today, 59 percent of Central America's
population lives in urban areas, but it is expected that
within the next generation 7 out of 10 people will live in
cities, equivalent to adding 700,000 new urban residents

The analysis of the distributional
impact of policy reforms on the well-being or welfare of
different stakeholder groups, particularly on the poor and
vulnerable, has an important role in the elaboration and
implementation of poverty reduction strategies in developing
countries. In recent years this type of work has been
labeled as Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) and is
increasingly implemented to promote evidence-based policy

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
presents the World Bank Group (WBG) program and the
associated results framework for Lebanon for the period
FY17-FY22. In a fragile and conflict-prone environment, this
CPF aims at mitigating the immediate, and potentially
long-lasting impact of the Syria crisis on Lebanon, while
strengthening state institutions, addressing existing
vulnerabilities, and bolstering efforts on longer term

In the past decade, Latin America and
the Caribbean has achieved impressive social and economic
successes. For the first time in history, more people are in
the middle class than in poverty. Inequality, although still
high, declined markedly. Growth, jobs and effective social
programs have transformed the lives of millions. In a
striking departure from the crisis-prone Latin America of
the past, the region has shown it is better prepared to

Georgia has an impressive growth record
but social vulnerabilities persist. It remains a challenge
to tackle social vulnerabilities within a sustained
macroeconomic framework. This programmatic public
expenditure review (PER) assesses the alignment of selected
fiscal programs with the government’s social objectives.
Building on the analysis and recommendations of the 2014
PER, this PER analyzes the impact of recent reforms

Africa is rapidly urbanizing and will
lead the world’s urban growth in the coming decades.
Currently, Africa is the least‐urbanized continent,
accommodating 11.3 percent of the world’s urban population,
and the Sub‐Saharan region is the continent’s
least‐urbanized area. However, the region’s cities are
expanding rapidly, by 2050; Africa’s urban population is
projected to reach 1.2 billion, with an urbanization rate of

This note is a summary of a report that
considers urban areas as the complement to rural areas that
will allow the Plurinational State of Bolivia to achieve the
goals set forth in its Patriotic Agenda for the Bicentennial
2025. The report uses data available at the national level
from censuses and household surveys from the National
Statistics Institute (INE) and the Social and Economic
Policy Analysis Unit of the Ministry of Development Planning

The Country Opinion Survey in Bolivia
assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better
understanding of how stakeholders in Bolivia perceive the
WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from
national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral
agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil
society in Bolivia on 1) their views regarding the general
environment in Bolivia; 2) their overall attitudes toward

This report highlights recent economic
updates in Bangladesh as of April 2015. Economic growth in
Bangladesh was gaining momentum in the first half of FY15.
Capacity utilization improved and investments were showing
some signs of recovery. This growth was also job-friendly.
The 12-monthly-moving average inflation decelerated from 7.6
percent in February 2014 to 6.8 percent in February 2015.
The resilience of the Bangladesh economy continues to be

The use of the phrase, ‘political
economy’ originates in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and is
also found in the writings of David Ricardo and Karl Marx.
What is presently understood as ‘economics’ was, at that
time, termed ‘political economy’. This was understood to
mean ‘conditions of production organization in
nation-states’ (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, Beuran,
Raballand and Kapoor, 2011). Venerable scholars such as

From 2004 to 2012, Zambia experienced a
combination of good economic policies and high rates of
growth not seen since the early years after its
independence. While growth was mainly driven by rising
copper prices, other factors contributed to Zambia’s ability
to take advantage of this growth. The international debt
relief programs in 2004-2005 almost eliminated public debt
and provided the fiscal space for selective, high-priority

The inability to unlock natural resource
wealth for the benefit of developing countries’ local
populations, a phenomenon popularly known as the ‘resource
curse’ or the ‘paradox of plenty’, has spawned extensive
debate among researchers and policy makers in recent years.
There is now a well-established body of literature exploring
the links between natural resources and conflict, with some
sources estimating that over the past 60 years, 40 percent