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This publication serves as a roadmap for exploring and managing climate risk in the U.S. financial system. It is the first major climate publication by a U.S. financial regulator. The central message is that U.S. financial regulators must recognize that climate change poses serious emerging risks to the U.S. financial system, and they should move urgently and decisively to measure, understand, and address these risks. Achieving this goal calls for strengthening regulators’ capabilities, expertise, and data and tools to better monitor, analyze, and quantify climate risks. It calls for working closely with the private sector to ensure that financial institutions and market participants do the same. And it calls for policy and regulatory choices that are flexible, open-ended, and adaptable to new information about climate change and its risks, based on close and iterative dialogue with the private sector. At the same time, the financial community should not simply be reactive—it should provide solutions. Regulators should recognize that the financial system can itself be a catalyst for investments that accelerate economic resilience and the transition to a net-zero emissions economy. Financial innovations, in the form of new financial products, services, and technologies, can help the U.S. economy better manage climate risk and help channel more capital into technologies essential for the transition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5247742
This pocket-sized reference on key environmental data for over 200 countries includes key indicators on agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, energy, emission and pollution, and water and sanitation. The volume helps establish a sound base of information to help set priorities and measure progress toward environmental sustainability goals.
Poor people in developing countries are often affected by droughts, floods, illness, crop failure, job loss, and economic downturns. Much of their energy goes into coping with these shocks and into day-to-day survival. While insurance and credit markets, combined with widespread social security, provide an important cushion against poverty in rich countries, the need for immediate survival may lock the poor into persistent poverty in developing countries.The poor in developing countries do have informal mechanisms to cope with risk and misfortune. These are based on income diversification, risk avoidance, self-insurance by saving together with family, and community-based mutual assistance. Nevertheless, the scope of these mechanisms remains limited. Repeated individual-specific shocks such as illness or pests, or covariate risks associated with drought, flood, or recession, undermine the ability of individuals and their families to cope withrisk.We now know much more about vulnerability to risk and how poor people cope. Even more importantly, we have learned much about the large long-term consequences of these risks, which condemns many to persistent poverty and excludes them from economic growth. But there is much that can be done. The micro-level studies that underpin this book offer new insights on how effective public action could be more effective in protecting the vulnerable against persistent poverty. Policy should focus onproviding a comprehensive menu of ex-ante and post-crisis protection mechanisms, including new forms of insurance, savings, safety nets, and the means to strengthen the poor's asset base. Local communities have a big role to play: public funds should not be used to replace indigenous community-basedsupport networks; rather they should be used to build on the strengths of these networks to ensure broader and more effective protection.With numerous thematic chapters and case studies of both best practice and of failure, from a mix of low-income and middle-income countries across the developing world, this book evaluates alternatives in widening insurance and protection provision, and makes an important contribution to the topical field of insurance and risk.
Abstract: Schiff considers the policy options of the West Bank and Gaza with respect to trade and the export of labor services. He concludes that: Nondiscriminatory trade policy is unambiguously superior to a free trade agreement with Israel; The West Bank and Gaza should pursue a nondiscriminatory trade policy with all its neighbors, but only on the condition that the trade policy be open, transparent, and enforced by a credible lock-in mechanism. Otherwise, a customs union with Israel may be preferable; The Palestinian Authority should establish a system of fee-based permits for Palestinians working in Israel; The Palestinian Authority should consider allowing Jordanians access to the West Bank and Gaza labor market. This paper"a product of Trade, Development Research Group"is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze trade and regional integration policies in the Middle East. The author may be contacted at mschiff@@worldbank.org.
Abstract: Real GDP and oil prices are decomposed into common stochastic trend and cycle processes using structural time series models. Potential real GDP is represented by the level of the trend component of real GDP. The potential rate of growth of real GDP is represented by the stochastic drift element of the trend component. Cuevas finds that there is a strong association at the trend and cycle frequencies between real GDP and the real price of oil. This association is also robust in the presence of key economic policy variables. From 1970-80, when the underlying annual rate of increase of the real price of oil was 12 percent, the underlying annual rate of increase of potential GDP in Venezuela was 2.6 percent. By contrast, from 1981-2000 when the underlying rate of increase of the real price of oil was -5 percent, the underlying growth rate of potential GDP fell 1.5 percent. However, the strength of association between the underlying growth of oil prices and real GDP has fallen considerably since the early 1980s, suggesting that oil cannot be relied on as an engine for future growth in Venezuela. This paper"a product of the Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela Country Management Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region"is part of a larger effort in the region to encourage research on macroeconomic issues. The author may be contacted at mcuevas@@worldbank.org.
Abstract: Bourguignon, Ferreira, and Leite develop a microeconometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, they also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for conditional distributions of education, fertility, and nonlabor incomes. The authors import combinations of estimated parameters from these models to simulate counterfactual income distributions. This allows them to decompose differences between functionals of two income distributions (such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares because of differences in the structure of labor market returns (price effects), differences in the occupational structure, and differences in the underlying distribution of assets (endowment effects). The authors apply the method to the differences between the Brazilian income distribution and those of Mexico and the United States, and find that most of Brazil's excess income inequality is due to underlying inequalities in the distribution of two key endowments: access to education and to sources of nonlabor income, mainly pensions. This paper is a product of the Research Advisory Staff. The authors may be contacted at fbourguignon@@worldbank.org, fferreira@@econ.puc-rio.br or phil@@econ.puc-rio.br.
Abstract: Fafchamps, Hamine, and Zeufack test two alternative models of learning to export: productivity learning, whereby firms learn to reduce production costs, and market learning, whereby firms learn to design products that appeal to foreign consumers. Using panel and cross-section data on Moroccan manufacturers, the authors uncover evidence of market learning but little evidence of productivity learning. These findings are consistent with the concentration of Moroccan manufacturing exports in consumer items"the garment, textile, and leather sectors. It is the young firms that export. Most do so immediately after creation. The authors also find that, among exporters, new products are exported very rapidly after production has begun. The share of exported output nevertheless increases for 2-3 years after a new product is introduced. Old firms are unlikely to switch to exports, even in response to changes in macroeconomic incentives. The authors find a positive relationship between exports and productivity and conclude that it is the result of self-selection: it is the more productive firms that move into exports. Policy implications are discussed. This paper"a product of Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group"is part of a larger effort in the group to investigate the microeconomic foundations of export and growth performance using plant-level data. The authors may be contacted at marcel.fafchamps@@economics.ox.ac.uk or azeufack@@worldbank.org.