• Trust funds (non-core voluntary aid) for health projects made up nearly half of the World Bank’s total funding for health and social services in 2012-13 • The Bank has four major types of trust funds: IBRD/IDA bank executed trust funds, IBRD/IDA recipient executed trust funds, financial intermediary funds, and IFC trust funds. These funds have distinct purposes, implementation mechanisms, and...

Many production firms use intermediary trading firms to export indirectly. This paper investigates the tax evasion motive through indirect trade, using Chinese export data at transaction level. We provide strong evidence that, under the partial export VAT rebate policy of China, production firms can effectively evade value-added taxes (VAT) by under-reporting their selling prices to domestic in...

This paper examines the impact of exchange rates and import prices on domestic PPI and CPI in selected industrialized economies. The empirical model is a VAR incorporating a distribution chain of pricing. Impulse responses and variance decompositions indicate that these external factors have a modest e¤ect on domestic price in‡ation over the post-Bretton Woods era. The pass-through is somewhat ...

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expresse...

This study examines the level of unsecured borrowing done by the firms that would ultimately rescue Long-Term Capital Management in the days leading up to the hedge fund’s rescue. Although there is some evidence that these banks borrowed less at the height of the crisis, further examination reveals that this reduction in borrowing was demand-driven and did not result from rationing on the part ...

There is an emerging consensus within the international development community to subscribe to a human rights based approach to development. Most countries have signed onto international human rights conventions that have important implications for national legislative frameworks. The World Bank has thus far not directly endorsed a human rights based approach to development, but has argued that ...

iv Foreword The AIDS epidemic is one of the greatest development challenges of the 20th century. Since 1986 the World Bank has supported member country efforts to fight the epidemic in many ways, including lending, economic and sector analysis, grant support, technical assistance, and policy advice. This paper is the first comprehensive desk study of all World Bank HIV/AIDS-related activities f...

While many international organisations have independent evaluations, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Health organization (WHO), uniquely the World Bank in its 2015 World Development Report sought to ascertain the potential biases that influence how its staff interpret evidence and influence policy. Here, we describe the World Bank's study design, including experiments ...

As a newly emerging electronic payment instrument, Internet third party payment is becoming increasingly popular and influential in China and has attracted regulatory attention from the Chinese central bank-People's Bank of China. Aiming at broad international readership and policy makers, this article introduces working mechanisms of the Internet third party payment; discusses the crucial fort...