Research and Publications

Infrastructure Foundations" presents a global database on physical infrastructure assets across 150+ countries. It finds widespread underinvestment in energy, transport, and digital sectors—especially in Sub-Saharan Africa—and offers a policy framework to prioritize investments based on social returns.

The report argues that food security requires modernizing the entire agrifood system—from farm to table—through stronger value chains, better storage, logistics and trade, climate-smart practices, innovation, efficient public spending, greater private investment, and improved nutrition.

Rationalizing Informality offers a unified model that incorporates both the forces pushing workers into informality and those pulling them toward it, and it quantifies the impact of policies meant to alter those forces. 

Nourish and Flourish calls for transforming agricultural water management to feed 10 billion people by 2050 through three paradigm shifts, a water-food nexus framework, and expanded financing — unlocking food security, jobs, and climate resilience.

This report focuses on two concrete and immediate examples of how heat- and trade-related policies in destination markets affect firms and the broader economy of the MENAAP region. 

Human capital—the health, knowledge, skills, and experience that people accumulate throughout their lives—is essential for productivity and economic growth. Yet, progress has stalled, and there have even been reversals in human capital accumulation over the last 15 years.