World Bank Publications: 275 books

Urban flooding is a significant challenge which today increasingly confronts the residents of the expanding cities and towns of developing countries, as well as policymakers and national, regional and local government officials. The Global Handbook presents the state-of-the art in urban flood risk management...

Energy efficiency is an important factor in an economy, since it helps meet energy needs, decrease costs, and lower environmental impacts. A review of the evolution of energy intensity in European and Former Soviet Union countries indicates a positive trend: high-energy-intensity countries have now reached...

Over the last decade, significant global and regional forces including changes in technology, trade patterns, and business practices, with a steady shift in value added production and employment toward knowledge-intensive activities and services such as finance, the hospitality industry, and the retail...

"Scaling Up Affordable Health Insurance: Staying the Course" is the fifth volume in a series of in-depth reviews on the role of health care financing in improving access for low-income populations to needed care, protecting them from the impoverishing effects of illness, and addressing the important...

The past two decades have seen exciting changes with developing countries emerging as exporters of services. Technological developments now make it easier to trade services across borders. But other avenues are being exploited: tourists visit not just to sightsee but also to be treated and educated,...

The Broadband Strategies Handbook is a guide for policymakers, regulators, and other relevant stakeholders as they address issues related to broadband development. It aims to help readers, particularly those in developing countries, by identifying issues and challenges in broadband development, analyzing...

High fertility and declining mortality rates have led to a very young population in most Sub-Saharan African countries. The region?s labor force is expected to increase by 11 million people per year over the next 10 years. Most of this increase will be new entrants seeking their first job. While the...

The Municipal Finance Handbook aims to help local government practitioners, particularly staff of medium and large cities, improve strategic management of municipal finances. The demands for pragmatic knowledge are fueled in part by decentralization and fiscal pressures, as transfer of responsibilities...

Performance-based financing (PBF) approaches have expanded rapidly in lower-and middle income countries, and especially in Africa. The number of countries has grown from three in 2006 to 32 in 2013. PBF schemes are flourishing and cause considerable demand for technical assistance in executing these...

The Great Recession of 2009-11 was not simply a severe business cycle slowdown or even a combined credit, housing, and asset market collapse. It left permanent scars, especially on the advanced economies. In its wake, policy makers must navigate uncharted economic territory where 'business as usual'...

Entrepreneurship -- manifested in the entry of new firms or products into new markets, or substantial improvements in technological capacity or process innovation by incumbent firms -- is widely considered to be an important ingredient for long term economic development. This report argues that entrepreneurship...

This study highlights the interaction between social protection (SP) programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challenges caused by high informality for achieving universal social protection for old...

Behaviors that pose risks for an individual’s health and that also represent important threats for public health, such as drug use, smoking, alcohol, unhealthy eating causing obesity, and unsafe sex, are highly prevalent in low income countries, even though they are traditionally associated with richer...

The seven million teachers of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are the critical actors in the region's efforts to improve education quality and raise student learning levels, which lag far behind those of OECD countries and East Asian countries such as China. This book documents the high economic...