Also known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the World Bank has 188 Member Countries. It is a “unique global partnership”, with “five institutions working for sustainable solutions that reduce poverty and build shared prosperity in developing countries”. They do so by “providing loans to developing countries for capital projects” and providing countries with “policy advice, research and analysis, and technical assistance”.

Publications:

• Research
• Current Projects
• Reports
• OpenDataBank

HIGHLIGHTS:

• World Development Report 2020 (Nov 2019, 293p) – Explores “whether there is still a path to development through Global Value Chains and trade. It concludes that technological change is at this stage more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms to promote GVC participation, industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies, and all countries revive multilateral cooperation.”
• Doing Business Report 2020 (Oct 2019, 149p) – A global study, that “shows that developing economies are catching up with developed economies in ease of doing business. Still, the gap remains wide. An entrepreneur in a low-income economy typically spends around 50 percent of the country’s per-capita income to launch a company, compared with just 4.2 percent for an entrepreneur in a high-income economy. It takes nearly six times as long on average to start a business in the economies ranked in the bottom 50 as in the top 20.”
• Global Mobility Report 2017 (Oct 2017, 107p) – This study is “the first-ever attempt to examine the performance of the transport sector, globally, and its contribution to a sustainable future. Sustainable transport and mobility are fundamental to progress in realizing the promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”