Development Research Group

For the world’s poorest people, climate change does not announce itself in parts per million. It arrives as a ruined harvest, a flooded shopfront, and lost learning as children are kept out of school.

This new Policy Research Report argues that the most consequential climate-policy question for developing economies is how quickly people, firms, and governments can prepare for shocks, recover from them, and learn to do better next time. To ensure that a bad day, week, or season does not become a bad decade, the principal response to climate change for developing economies should be to quickly become more resilient to it.

While entrepreneurship training programmes can modestly enhance business survival, income, and management skills in developing countries, their effectiveness depends on tailored design, sustained engagement, and complementary support such as finance, peer learning, and technology.

The latest edition includes about 20 new studies, with more about the longer-term impacts of training and consulting interventions, business training for youth, training firms to enter export markets, and the early evidence on using AI to help train business owners.

Development succeeds when people are not just beneficiaries, but partners in shaping change. Yet too often, policies are designed and evaluated from the top down — guided by data and models that miss how people actually live, adapt, and respond.

On November 18, World Bank Lead Economist Vijayendra Rao shared insights from two decades of research on participatory and adaptive approaches to policymaking.

Drawing on examples from India, Malaysia, and South Asia, he explored how engaging citizens can make institutions more accountable, programs more effective, and development more inclusive.

The World Bank, the International Growth Centre, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University invite scholars and practitioners to submit papers on how cities influence jobs, firms, and economic development in developing economies. The deadline for paper submissions is 8 December, 2025 (at 23:59 GMT). 

The policy-focused research event will take place on 30-31 March 2026 in Washington, DC. Pre-registration to attend the conference will open in early 2026.