Global Trends

Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency
Doing Business 2016 is the 13th publication in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 189 economies. This year the publication addresses regulations affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity including: Starting a business, Dealing with construction permits, Getting electricity, Registering property, Getting credit, Protecting minority investors, Paying taxes, Trading across borders, Enforcing contracts, Resolving insolvency.

Global Economic Prospects
Report on global economic prospects with forecasts, outlook on the global economy and regional reports with extensive economic data and forecasts.

Global growth disappointed again in 2015, slowing to 2.4 percent, and is expected to recover at a slower pace than previously envisioned. Growth is projected to reach 2.9 percent in 2016, as a modest recovery in advanced economies continues and activity stabilizes among major commodity exporters, according to the World Bank’s January 2016 Global Economic Prospects. Forecasts are subject to substantial downside risks. A more protracted slowdown across large emerging markets could have substantial spillovers to other developing economies, and eventually hold back the recovery in advanced economies. A broad-based slowdown across developing countries could pose a threat to hard-won gains in raising people out of poverty, the report warns.

Global Financial Development Report 2015/2016 : Long-Term Finance
Global Financial Development Report 2015/2016 is the third in a World Bank series. It provides a unique contribution to financial sector policy debates, building on novel data, surveys, research, and wide-ranging country experience, with emphasis on emerging markets and developing economies. The report’s findings and policy recommendations are relevant for policy makers; staff of central banks, ministries of finance, and financial regulation agencies; nongovernmental organizations and donors; academics and other researchers and analysts; and members of the finance and development community.

International Debt Statistics 2016
International Debt Statistics (IDS) 2016 (formerly Global Development Finance) focuses on financial flows, trends in external debt, and other major financial indicators for developing and advanced economies (data from Quarterly External Debt Statistics and Quarterly Public Sector Debt databases). Includes over 200 time series indicators from 1970 to 2014, for most reporting countries, and pipeline data for scheduled debt service payments on existing commitments to 2022.

World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior
The World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society and Behavior holds new insights on how people make decisions; it provides a framework to help development practitioners and governments apply these insights to development policy.

The Report emphasizes what it calls 'the three marks of everyday thinking.' In everyday thinking, people use intuition much more than careful analysis. They employ concepts and tools that prior experience in their cultural world has made familiar. And social emotions and social norms motivate much of what they do. These insights together explain the extraordinary persistence of some social practices, and rapid change in others. They also offer new targets for development policy.