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Development Business Featured World

Measuring what matters for business: The new B-READY data in the World Development Indicators

What makes a country a great place to start and grow a business? Among low-income economies across the world, only 29% have a single centralized website dedicated to providing regulatory information pertaining to international trade. In high-income economies, the same number stands at 67% . The World Bank’s new Business Ready (B-READY) project shines a light on this […]

Economy Featured Lifestyle News World

Stanley Fischer and the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics: A tribute

Stanley Fischer, the World Bank’s chief economist from January 1988 to August 1990, passed away on May 31, 2025. Stan Fischer’s immense professional contributions to modern macroeconomic and monetary policy, both as faculty at MIT and in the positions he held thereafter—as the first deputy managing director of the IMF (1994-2001), in running the Bank […]

World Business Featured Finance News

Finding the signal in the score: How the World Bank Group is aligning the Scorecard and impact evaluations

For years, the World Bank Group’s systems for measuring results operated in parallel tracks: corporate Scorecards that monitored performance through outcome-level targets, and impact evaluations that investigated what works, for whom, and why. Both were powerful in their own right—but too often disconnected. That is beginning to change. In today’s context of tighter budgets, more […]

Finance Banking Business News World

Building debt transparency and resilience across East Asia and the Pacific

As the world continues to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, countries face new and unexpected challenges. Elevated debt levels, persistent inflation, and weakened growth prospects have created a perfect storm of financial pressure. For many nations, this has meant shrinking the budgets in vital sectors like health, education, and the environment. In […]

Climate Development Energy Environment Featured

What will it cost to build the cities of the future?

Cities are engines of economic growth and job creation, and their future pathways will shape global development outcomes for decades to come.  But the success of this transformation depends on making the right investments now—investments that strengthen essential infrastructure, unlock new jobs, and build cities that are more sustainable and resilient.  The charts below visualize […]

trade Featured media News World

Missing tariffs: How flawed data turn trade policy analysis into a Herculean task

When the Trump administration pledged to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on countries with “unfair” trade practices, trade economists scrambled to determine what such tariffs might look like. But modelling any tariff-based intervention requires reliable data on what countries actually impose, and this column argues that the tariff data we rely on are incomplete and often wrong. […]

Banking Economy Featured Technology

Finding the sweet spot between bank rivalry and safety

Imagine your favorite open-air market. Stalls hustle for customers, prices fall, and shoppers win—until one fragile roof gives way and everyone scrambles. Banking is similar. Lean rivalry makes credit cheaper; cut-throat rivalry slashes margins so deeply that lenders may gamble to survive. Finding the sweet spot is not guess-work. A new World Bank working paper – Navigating […]

Technology Economy Featured media News

Going bigger, faster, together: Unlocking Eastern and Southern Africa’s digital future

Imagine getting to work on a program that will bring internet access and digitally enabled services to 180 million people. Opportunities like these illustrate the meaningful role institutions like the World Bank, and teams across the institution like ours, can play in addressing urgent development challenges that can drastically improve people’s lives. In Eastern and […]

Economy Business Environment Featured

Protecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights amid growing demand for land and critical minerals

Over half of the world’s critical mineral reserves are located on or near Indigenous lands. As demand for critical minerals is set to surge 500 percent by 2050—and demand for land continues to grow—the need to secure Indigenous Peoples’ land tenure has never been more urgent.  Clear and enforceable land rights are essential to regulating mining transparently and […]

World Economy Featured News

Agrifood powers economies and jobs across Europe and Central Asia

As economies develop, it is often assumed that agriculture becomes less relevant a small slice of GDP and a shrinking share of employment. But evidence from Europe and Central Asia tells a different story. Across countries stretching from Portugal to Uzbekistan, agriculture and the broader agrifood sector remain essential pillars of economic development, employment, trade, […]