The World Development Report (WDR) is an annual report published since 1978 by the World Bank. Each WDR provides in-depth analysis of a specific aspect of economic development. Past reports have considered such topics as agriculture, youth, equity, public services delivery, the role of the state, transition economies, labour, infrastructure, health, the environment, risk management, and poverty. The reports are the Bank's best-known contribution to thinking about development.
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👉 World Development Report in the context of Ease of doing business index
The ease of doing business index was an index created jointly by Simeon Djankov, Michael Klein, and Caralee McLiesh, three leading economists at the World Bank Group, following the release of World Development Report 2002. The academic research for the report was done jointly with professors Edward Glaeser, Oliver Hart, and Andrei Shleifer. Though the first report was authored by Djankov, Klein, and McLiesh, and they continue to be listed as "founders" of the report, some sources attribute the genesis of the idea to Djankov and Gerhard Pohl (Dr. Pohl was the longtime director of private sector development within the Europe and Central Asia unit). Higher rankings (a low numerical value) indicated better, usually simpler, regulations for businesses and stronger protections of property rights. Empirical research funded by the World Bank to justify their work show that the economic growth effect of improving these regulations is strong. Other researchers find that the distance-to-frontier measure introduced in 2016 after a decision of the World Bank board is not correlated with subsequent economic growth or investment.
"World Development Report 2002", the basis of the research behind Doing Business, analyzes how to build effective institutions. In understanding what drives institutional change, the report emphasizes the importance of history, highlighting the need to ensure effective institutions through a design that complements existing institutions, human capabilities, and available technologies. The study was guided by Joseph Stiglitz and Roumeen Islam with principal authors Simeon Dyankov and Aart Kraay. Several background papers, including by Nobel Prize winners Robert Shiller, Amartya Sen and Gabriel García Márquez, were published in academic journals or books.
In this Dossier
World Development Report in the context of Tax avoidance
Tax avoidance is the legal use of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxes. Tax avoidance should not be confused with tax evasion, which is illegal.
Forms of tax avoidance that use legal tax laws in ways not necessarily intended by the government are often criticized in the court of public opinion and by journalists. Many businesses pay little or no tax, and some experience a backlash when their tax avoidance becomes known to the public. Conversely, benefiting from tax laws in ways that were intended by governments is sometimes referred to as tax planning. The World Bank's World Development Report 2019 on the future of work supports increased government efforts to curb tax avoidance as part of a new social contract focused on human capital investments and expanded social protection.
World Development Report in the context of Christopher J.L. Murray
Christopher J. L. Murray (born August 16, 1962) is an American physician and economist serving as Professor and Chair of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a public health research institute best known for publishing the Global Burden of Disease Study. Prior to joining the University of Washington, Murray was the Richard Saltonstall Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Murray also served as Executive Director of the Evidence and Information for Policy Cluster at the World Health Organization, where he served under Gro Harlem Brundtland.
Alongside collaborators such as Alan Lopez and Julio Frenk, Murray is best known for creating the Global Burden of Disease Study, an international effort to catalog the causes of death and disability worldwide. Beginning with the 1993 World Development Report, Murray and his collaborators published several iterations of the Global Burden, culminating in a December 2012 edition of The Lancet featuring only research and commentary from Murray and his collaborators.
World Development Report in the context of Elite pact
An elite pact or political settlement is an explicit agreement or agreed understanding between elites which moderates the violence and winner takes all nature of unrestrained conflict. The elites are often political elites, but in a research context of political economy, they can also be social and economic. Such settlements are often understood to transform government from an autocratic mode into more pluralistic, democratic form. Meanwhile, it is also a political economy framework to understand why sometimes an autocratic mode works whilst a democratic fails. Others may view the political settlement as normatively neutral.
This concept in political theory is part of elite theory and state-building. Joel Migdal has suggested that the concept of political settlements has a pedigree going back to the work of Barrington Moore. Political settlements are the frameworks for governing a state established by elites, either through formal processes or informally over time. There are numerous definitions of political settlements and elite pacts, often including an emphasis on understandings between elites that bring about the conditions to end conflict, or maintain peace. In 2011 the World Bank's World Development Report suggested a new terminology for political settlements with the concept of `good enough coalitions.'