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This study quantifies the effects introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic on air connectivity and passenger travel behaviour. Our analysis suggests that the pandemic has led to significant connectivity loss at all airports, especially at large hubs and tourism destinations. Low-cost carriers' operations at these airports, whose main targets are price-sensitive, non-business travellers, have been significantly reduced, too. There is preliminary evidence that network carriers at hub airports played more important roles amid the pandemic, likely due to the benefits associated with their hub-and-spoke networks. Connectivity losses at the smallest airports tended to be temporary and limited. These airports had limited aviation services to start with and, thus, it was not too costly to maintain the minimum connectivity. Empirical results obtained from a passenger preference study indicate that traveller subgroups are impacted in different ways. When there is no online meeting option, nearly 80% of the respondents prefer, and are willing to pay for, pandemic control measures. These 'pro-control' passengers perceive such measures and the associated high costs/fares as valuable and necessary to lower the health-related risks during air travel. When there is an online meeting option, the share of such passengers decreases to 44.5%, with the remaining 55.5% exhibiting disutility for the increased price and time associated with pandemic control measures. The average willingness-to-pay for pandemic control measures decreases significantly, whereas the value of time saved at health checkpoints increases significantly. The aviation industry thus faces a 'double-hit' problem: operation costs will increase due to pandemic control measures, and the resultant inconvenience and extra time and costs further reduce travel demand. Unlike previous short pandemics, business travel is likely to suffer with an extended decline until the pandemic is fully controlled. These results call for financial and operational support for aviation services, especially at major airports and tourism destinations. Because these large airports are expected to be profitable post the pandemic, they may resort to low-cost finance from the capital market in the short term. Because the value of time saved at checkpoints is very high, it is more important for government agencies to make the pandemic control and health measures efficient and smooth. For operations such as vaccination records, stakeholders in different countries should cooperate to facilitate seamless control and pleasant air travel experiences.

Latest reports suggest that an ambitious high-speed electrified railway track running through Laos and connecting Kunming in China's southwestern province of Yunnan with northeastern Thailand is now 78 per cent complete. All the bridges, tunnels and other structures have been completed; what remains to be done is to lay the track, and to install the signalling and the other 'mechanics' necessary for operations. The first trains are expected to use the line approximately two years from now. Formally announced in 2015, the railway is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and is widely seen as a major step in the Laotian government's long-held desire to turn the country from being land-locked to land-linked. For China, completion of the railway will not only link Yunnan directly to Thailand but also connect it to the Malaysian peninsula further south and ultimately to Singapore. The 420-kilometer north-south line cuts through a large part of northern and central Laos, starting at Boten on the Laos-China border, passing through Luang Namtha province, then wending its way roughly south through Oudomxay, Luang Prabang and Vientiane provinces, before terminating at a station most likely to be built close to the country's capital, Vientiane. Its construction has been a colossal undertaking, requiring more than 70 tunnels and 150 bridges. Indeed, the line will run through tunnels for almost 200 kilometres.) It will have ten stations in Laos, including one at the former royal capital of Luang Prabang, It will thus allow domestic passenger and freight use. The line will also have some 20 'crossing loops' to allow trains to pass each other on what will be largely a single-line railway.

In Asia, which began to develop nuclear power generation in the 1960s, several countries are considering the introduction of nuclear power. East Asia Summit (EAS) countries that have been using nuclear power are China, India, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. When neighbouring countries use nuclear power or begin generating nuclear power, no country can avoid involvement in potential problems such as information sharing in the event of a nuclear accident, or the transportation of radioactive waste. Hence, delivering information about nuclear power to people in a timely fashion, eliminating information asymmetry, and improving public acceptance of nuclear power generation by both hosting and neighbouring communities are important issues. This research offers policy recommendations for improving the public acceptance of nuclear power in Asia based on a direct exchange of views between opinion leaders in Euro-American countries, since 2018. For many years, there have been entities that successfully communicated with and served as a bridge between residents and business operators in areas where nuclear power facilities are located.

The power sector of Armenia achieved remarkable results through first generation policy, legal, regulatory, and institutional reforms implemented from 1991-2003, the first decade of independence. The sector achieved financial sustainability with tariffs that assured recovery of reasonable expenses and collections that reached virtually 100 percent of sales. The implicit and explicit subsidies to the power sector were eliminated and the largest sector companies were among the top taxpayers in the country. More than 70 percent of power sector assets were denationalized (privatized or transferred to Russian ownership in debt-to-asset swaps). However, in 2010 these achievements started to reverse and gradually worsened during the past several years. Today, the large state-owned sector power companies, as well as the privately-owned Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) have accumulated large amount of expensive commercial debts and are on the verge of bankruptcy.

In many countries safety nets consist predominantly of universal subsidies on food and fuel. A key question for policy makers willing to shift to targeted safety nets is under what conditions middle-class citizens would be supportive of redistributive programs. Results from a behavioral experiment based on a nationally representative sample in Jordan reveal that increasing transparency in benefit delivery makes middle-class citizens (particularly among the youth and low-trust individuals) more willing to forgo their own welfare to benefit the poor. Moreover, increasing transparency enhances the relative support for cash-based safety nets, which have greater impact on poverty compared with in-kind transfers, but may be perceived as more prone to elite capture.

When social security is established to provide pensions to parents, their reliance upon children for future financial support decreases, and their need to save for retirement also falls. In this study, the expansion of pension coverage from the state sector to the non-state sector in urban China is used as a quasi-experiment to analyze the intergenerational impact of social security on education investments in children. In a difference-in-differences framework, a significant increase in the total education expenditure is found to be attributable to pension expansion. The results are unlikely to be driven by other observable trends. They are robust to the inclusion of a large set of control variables and to different specifications, including one based on the instrumental variable method.

This paper addresses an old and recurring theme in development economics: the slow adoption of new technologies by farmers in many developing countries. The paper explores a somewhat novel link to explain this puzzle -- the link between market access and the incentives to adopt a new technology when there are non-convexities. The paper develops a theoretical model to guide the empirical analysis, which uses spatially disaggregated agricultural production data from Spatial Production Allocation Model and Living Standards Measurement Study survey data for Nigeria. The model is used to estimate the impact of transport costs on crop production, the adoption of modern technologies, and the differential impact on returns of modern versus traditional farmers. To overcome the limitation of data availability on travel costs for much of Africa, road survey data are combined with geographic information road network data to generate the most thorough and accurate road network available. With these data and the Highway Development Management Model, minimum travel costs from each location to the market are computed. Consistent with the theory, analysis finds that transportation costs are critical in determining technology choices, with a greater responsiveness among farmers who adopt modern technologies, and at times a perverse (negative) response to lower transport costs among those who employ more traditional techniques. In sum, the paper presents compelling evidence that the constraints to the adoption of modern technologies and access to markets are interconnected, and so should be targeted jointly.

This paper estimates the effect of income inequality on real gross domestic product per capita using a panel of 104 countries during the period 1970–2010. The empirical analysis addresses endogeneity issues by using instrumental variables estimation and controlling for country and time fixed effects. The analysis finds that, on average, income inequality has a significant negative effect on transitional gross domestic product per capita growth and the long-run level of gross domestic product per capita. However, the impact varies by the level of economic development, so much so that in poor countries income inequality has a significant positive effect on gross domestic product per capita.

The welfare impact of a disaster does not depend only on the physical characteristics of the event or its direct impacts in terms of lost lives and assets. Depending on the ability of the economy to cope, recover, and reconstruct, the reconstruction will be more or less difficult, and the welfare effects smaller or larger. This ability, which can be referred to as the macroeconomic resilience of the economy to natural disasters, is an important parameter to estimate the overall vulnerability of a population. Here, resilience is decomposed into two components: instantaneous resilience, which is the ability to limit the magnitude of the immediate loss of income for a given amount of capital losses, and dynamic resilience, which is the ability to reconstruct and recover quickly. The paper proposes a rule of thumb to estimate macroeconomic resilience, based on the interest rate (a higher interest rate decreases resilience and increases welfare losses), the reconstruction duration (a longer reconstruction duration increases welfare losses), and a "ripple-effect" factor that increases or decreases immediate losses (negative if enough idle resources are available to cope; positive if cross-sector and supply-chain issues impair the production of non-affected capital). An optimal risk management strategy is very likely to include measures to reduce direct impacts (disaster risk reduction actions) and measures to reduce indirect impacts (resilience building actions).

The objectives of this study are two-fold. First, it presents the basics of assessing working age populations for disability benefits. Increasingly, the operational staffs of the World Bank Group (WBG) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as of other development organizations, are being requested by governmental policy agencies for technical advice and assistance on how to reform their disability assessment system. Secondly, while acknowledging limitations, both in conception and implementation; it makes a case for why adopting the international classification of functioning, disability, and health (ICF) approach to disability assessment may be smart policy that corresponds well with the aims of modern disability policy that focuses on social and economic inclusion for individuals with disabilities, in the context of a recognition of their fundamental human rights. The study is a follow up work to the world report on disability that WHO and WB published jointly in June 2011. The world report made it clear that the process of disability assessment is an important lever of disability policy in any country, yet little is known about how disability assessment is conducted. This study responds to that knowledge gap, but it also describes a paradigm shift in the assessment of disability, one that moves from prevailing impairment and functional limitation approaches to a disability-based approach.

The Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes, Accounting and Auditing (ROSC AA) in Sri Lanka aims to assess the progress made on implementation of the policy recommendations of the first ROSC AA in 2004 and supports the Government of Sri Lanka in preparing a country action plan. This will further enhance the quality of corporate financial reporting, and thereby contribute toward the country's goal of improving the investment climate, attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), and fostering business development. The ROSC review, requested by the Minister of Finance and Planning, entailed an evaluation exercise that assesses the strengths and weaknesses of existing institutional frameworks that underpin financial accounting and auditing practices; determines the comparability of national accounting and auditing standards; and evaluates the effectiveness of enforcement mechanisms for ensuring compliance with existing national standards, rules, and regulations. The review was conducted from December 2013 to September 2014 using the World Bank's multi-layered review methodology. All findings reflect this time period of the review; some stated future events may have been achieved by publication date. The data and information used for the review was gathered from a diagnostic questionnaire completed by stakeholders; by reviewing accountancy profession-related documents; and through interviews with many stakeholders from government, regulatory and accountancy bodies, accounting and auditing firms, banks, insurance companies, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), and academia. The review focused on assessing the institutional framework underpinning accounting and auditing practices in the private sector and in SOEs of the country in comparison with international standards and good practice.

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF) is designed to support the forthcoming Chad Five-Year Development Plan (2016-2020). It succeeds the Interim Strategy agreed with the Government of Chad in March 2010. The Interim Strategy Note (ISN) set out the World Bank Group's (WBG's) support to Chad for the period 2010-2012. The strategy was composed of three main pillars: strengthening governance; improving livelihoods and access to key social services; and improving regional integration and connectivity. The WBG has continued to operate on the basis of the ISN since 2012, as the conditions were put in place for a return to a full partnership framework, in particular the full resumption of an IMF program and of the dialogue towards the HIPC Completion Point. In May 2013 the Government of Chad published its National Development Plan (NDP) for the period 2013-2015, which is considered the third Poverty Reduction Plan for Chad. This included a strong results framework, with 24 strategic indicators and 65 intermediary indicators, including all HIPC completion point triggers. It was the subject of a Joint Staff Advisory Note (JSAN) in June 2013 in which the WBG and IMF broadly endorsed the thrust of the plan. A JSAN issued in March 2015 on the 2013 Monitoring Report of the NDP determined that the NDP was satisfactorily implemented overall in 2013, representing a significant departure from the non-implementation of the first two poverty reduction strategies of 2003-2006 and 2008-2011.

The eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is poised on the edge of a machete blade. Despite the achievement of considerable peace-building successes throughout much of this central African state in recent years, the current activities of armed groups and the Congolese armed forces in North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri, have the potential to further destabilize the eastern provinces, and possibly even neighboring countries. Former combatants are prominent in the security and stability equation in the eastern DRC. The reason is that if this section of society has not been effectively disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated into civilian life, then they have the potential to return to arms. In this region, over 100,000 ex-combatants have been demobilized over the past decade in successive waves of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) interventions. Assessments and speculation about the reintegration of ex-combatants in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri have suggested that these individuals have become marginalized, and their reintegration into civilian society is precarious, thus making them vulnerable to further recruitment by armed groups. Some reports have even suggested that numerous former fighters have remilitarized in the mining areas in order to access mineral wealth. Consequently, research on the socio-economic reintegration of ex-combatants in the eastern DRC was undertaken by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), and funded by the Transitional Demobilization and Reintegration Program (TDRP) of the World Bank. North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri were the three geographical areas of focus, given the volatility and potential pivotal role of these areas in promoting and consolidating peace in the eastern DRC. The specific objectives of the research were to: 1) assess the processes of the socio-economic reintegration of former combatants into civilian life; 2) analyze the causes and dynamics of the current security situation (or lack thereof) in the three areas, and the implications for current and future DDR processes; and 3) evaluate the extent to which demobilized former combatants have been re-recruited into armed groups, including motivating and resilience factors. The research took place between February and September 2011, with the findings and analysis being presented in this report.

This book presents the findings of the technical assistance. Above all, it shows how transport and energy infrastructure contributes to poverty reduction, and why these contributions are important. One new aspect that emerges is that, in addition to their impacts on income dimensions of poverty, transport and energy have significant impacts on nonincome dimensions such as health, education, personal security, and community participation. The book also recommends a series of policy and operational-level refinements for increasing the poverty reduction impact.

This book presents the findings of the technical assistance. Above all, it shows how transport and energy infrastructure contributes to poverty reduction, and why these contributions are important. One new aspect that emerges is that, in addition to their impacts on income dimensions of poverty, transport and energy have significant impacts on nonincome dimensions such as health, education, personal security, and community participation. The book also recommends a series of policy and operational-level refinements for increasing the poverty reduction impact.