Economics & Development

Understanding specific barriers to job search and returns to relaxing these barriers is important for economists and policymakers. An experiment that changed the default process for initiating job applications increased applications by 600 percent on a search platform in Pakistan. Perhaps surprisingly, the marginal treatment-induced applications have approximately constant rather than decreasing returns. These results are consistent with a directed search model in which some jobseekers miss some high-return vacancies due to the psychological costs of initiating applications. These findings show that small reductions in search costs can substantially improve search outcomes in environments with some relatively inactive jobseekers.

The development objective of the Mexico Disaster and Climate Resilience Development Policy Loan with a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option for Mexico is to strengthen the country’s resilience to disaster, climate, and public health shocks by enhancing institutional and financial capacities and strengthening resilience in selected sectors. The operation supports the legal and financial architecture to mobilize private and social sector participation in resilient strategic infrastructure, including mandatory screening for environmental and climate mitigation and adaptation, and provides contingent financing through a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat DDO) to deliver rapid liquidity after emergencies. It advances the modernization and interoperability of cadastral and public property registry systems to enable risk-informed territorial planning and more efficient post-disaster recovery targeting, and formalizes the national process for developing emergency preparedness and response standards by strengthening the National Advisory Committee on Standardization for Civil Protection and Disaster Prevention (CONAPROC) and instituting annual standardization programs. Sector-focused measures embed resilience in federally supported housing by requiring safe siting outside risk zones, structural safety and habitability standards, and eligibility for public support for structural reinforcement, with implementation prioritizing low-income and female-headed households. In the energy sector, binding multi-year grid expansion and modernization planning improves system reliability and aims to reduce Energy Not Served during extreme events through actions such as reserve margin planning, storage integration, and transmission corridor development. In public health, the operation establishes a national emergency system that includes hospital preparedness standards, incident command mechanisms, strengthened surveillance and logistics, and temporary authorization pathways to ensure timely access to essential medicines and devices during crises. Expected results include enabling private capital for resilient infrastructure, expanded interconnection and data exchange across registries and cadastres, a larger pipeline of national civil protection standards under active development, construction of resilient housing for low-income and female-headed households, reduced energy outage impacts during extreme events, and broader availability of emergency health supplies across federal entities. The program is aligned with national development strategies, Mexico’s climate commitments, and the World Bank Group’s focus on resilience, and is supported by ongoing technical assistance to sustain reforms and strengthen implementation.