Welcome to this month’s World Bank Research E-Newsletter, a monthly summary of research conducted by our department.
In September we kicked off our new season of Policy Research Talks with a discussion of Trade, FDI, and Global Value Chains. A populist backlash against globalization is prompting many to ask: What price might we pay for stepping back from a tightly integrated global economy? In this talk, Senior Economist Hiau Looi Kee drew on a tool called the Overall Trade Restrictiveness Indices to explore a case study of the costs of withdrawal from a customs union. She found that while the costs to trade in the short run may be limited, such a step could present a significant threat to a country’s long-run competitiveness depending on its impact on FDI flows.
And in October we hosted a talk entitled Standing Tall and Growing Strong: Effective Investments in the Early Years. According to the latest data from the Lancet, 250 million children under the age of five in low and middle-income countries are exposed to stunting and extreme poverty. Senior Economist Emanuela Galasso laid out the case for investing early in childhood development, and also discussed the growing body of evidence we have on what works to prevent stunting and promote early stimulation. A recording and presentation will be available soon on our Policy Research Talks page.
This month’s newsletter focuses on the theme of informality. Recent papers on informality examine topics such as testing incentives to formalize in Benin, a new tax regime in Georgia, mandatory pension contributions in Chile, and an evaluation of a program to formalize firms in Brazil. This month we also launched a Toolkit for Informality Scenario Analysis, which allows researchers and practitioners to project the size of formal and informal labor in almost 100 countries yearly until 2030.
Enjoy!
—Asli
