Knowledge is vital in the World Bank Group’s mission of supporting poverty reduction and achieving inclusive, sustainable growth. The Bank Group’s response to the COVID-19 crisis envisages a significant role for knowledge and advisory services to help governments, private sector and civil society better understand and adapt to change and build back better, as well as design policy responses and interventions at the community, national, regional and global levels.This chapter reveals the significant role that trust funds have played in the generation and use of knowledge in response to the COVID-19 crisis and compounding global challenges.
The World Bank Group is a leader in the generation and dissemination of development knowledge products and services. It has pioneered analytical work on issues ranging from economic growth to poverty and inequality measurement to governance and service delivery. It also conducts impact evaluations and randomized control trials and produces a wide variety of global public knowledge goods, such as globally standardized data on households, poverty, and debt. The Bank Group bears the costs and shares results among countries and development partners to support better development outcomes.