Economics & Development

Multiple shocks, including the accelerating climate crisis, mounting public debt, increasing food insecurity, an unequal recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the effects of geopolitical conflicts, have affected the global development landscape in recent years and have jeopardized the progress made by the World Bank Group (WBG) on its mission end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet. In response, the WBG is adapting its approaches by seeking out efficiencies, ways to speed up and scale up its engagements, and focusing on priority areas (as laid out in the WBG’s Global Challenge Programs (GCPs). The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), in its unique role to analyze past experiences to inform future decisions, has also adapted to ensure its work is relevant for Board members as well as WBG Management. In Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24), IEG adjusted its strategic framework in line with the evolving context of the WBG, including a revision of IEG’s work streams into new thematic streams that reflect the WBG’s vertical themes of Planet, People, Prosperity, Infrastructure, and Digital Technology. In addition, IEG continues to conduct cross-cutting evaluations on Fragility, Conflict, Violence (FCV), Gender, and Private Capital, and retains its work on corporate effectiveness issues and country program evaluations. IEG started to develop Theories of Change (ToC), which will be a core component of IEG’s evaluation selection process going forward. ToCs and evidence gap maps for each of the work program’s thematic streams and additional sub-streams guide the identification of overarching evaluation questions and prioritization of evidence gaps that can be addressed through IEG’s work.

Abstract The transition to a low-carbon economy requires an expansion in the production of clean energy technologies. Recent shifts in the European Union’s industrial policy aim to boost local manufacturing and attract clean technology production to Europe. This paper uses a data-driven scenario approach to explore how such onshoring efforts could create economic opportunities in four Central and Eastern European countries—Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania—across five key clean tech value chains: electric vehicle batteries, solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, heat pumps, and electrolyzers. If the European Union achieves the targets in its Net Zero Industry Act to source a larger share of these products domestically by 2030, all four countries have opportunities to grow production across value chains and their segments, with a particular focus on electromobility. Poland stands out with the highest export potential and investment requirements in absolute terms, while Bulgaria and Croatia demonstrate greater potential relative to the size of their economies.

This paper estimates the monetary and full returns to micro-entrepreneurship using a cross-section of Mexican women leveraging self-reported reservation wages. A generalized Roy model of micro-entrepreneurship choice that accounts for selection bias and non-response in earnings is estimated. The analysis exploits variation in homicide rates as an exclusion restriction to identify the average treatment-on-the-treated. The average monetary return is 4.2 percent while the average full return is 68 percent, which points to substantial non-pecuniary benefits from entrepreneurship among women. The monetary return sharply increases with years of schooling. Full returns are less steep, suggesting that non-pecuniary benefits are more salient for less educated women.