The world's attention to the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has often been dominated by headline issues: conflict, sanctions, political turmoil, and rising oil prices. Little of this international attention has considered the broad range of development challenges facing this diverse group of countries. Breaking the Barriers reflects the collected thinking of the World Bank's Office of the Chief Economist for the MENA Region on the long-term development challenges facing the region and the reform priorities and strategies for effectively meeting these challenges. It.

In times of growing economic inequality, improving equity in education becomes more urgent. While some countries and economies that participate in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have managed to build education systems where socio-economic status makes less of a difference to students' learning and well-being, every country can do more. Equity in Education: Breaking Down Barriers to Social Mobility shows that high performance and more positive attitudes towards schooling among disadvantaged 15-year-old students are strong predictors of success in higher education and work later on. The report examines how equity in education has evolved over several cycles of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It identifies the policies and practices that can help disadvantaged students succeed academically and feel more engaged at school. Using longitudinal data from five countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States), the report also describes the links between a student's performance near the end of compulsory education and upward social mobility - i.e. attaining a higher level of education or working in a higher-status job than one's parents.

Where are the women in Canada’s international history? Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds answers this question in a comprehensive volume that explores the role of women in Canadian international affairs. Foreign policy historians have traditionally focused on powerful men. Though hidden, forgotten, or ignored, this book shows that women have also shaped Canada’s relations with the world over the past century – whether as activists, missionaries, aid workers, diplomats or diplomatic spouses. Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds examines the lives and careers of professional women working abroad as doctors, nurses, or economic development advisors; women fighting for change as anti-war, anti-nuclear, or Indigenous rights activists; and women engaged in traditional diplomacy. This wide-ranging collection reveals the vital contribution of women to the search for global order that has been a hallmark of Canada’s international history.

"With job opportunities in decline for youth with no postsecondary degree, and college completion rates especially for students of color stagnating, a high school diploma is no longer enough. To solve this large-scale global problem. High school must be completely redesigned and reinvented providing all students real opportunity with both equity and excellence. P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) has done just that by combining public high schools and community colleges in partnership with employers, providing both opportunity and support for all students, regardless of income, race or any screen for admission. Unlike many school models, this innovative and effective approach has spread across the US and around the world, eliminating barriers to replication by engaging all stakeholders. The first P-TECH, opened in a low-income Brooklyn neighborhood, across from a public housing project, and served 100% students of color. It has become the model for school reform across over a dozen US states and nearly twenty countries. Praised by President Obama, governors in red and blue states, and heads of nations, its story is told in this book through the personal stories of students who have destroyed the myths about which students can succeed. Their stories demonstrate that all students, if given the opportunity and support, can reach great heights in high school, college, and career"--

While there are many uniquely positive attributes about the US economy, something is fundamentally wrong and here's what it is: economic growth can no longer be counted on to deliver broadly shared prosperity. Remarkably, pundits, politicians, and candidates from both sides of the aisle are constantly citing the disconnect between overall growth and the economic prospects of most households. We hear lots of well-placed angst about the middle-class squeeze, wage stagnation, "sticky" poverty rates that are unresponsive to growth, and the immobility of those on the wrong side of the inequality divide. And yet . . . no one has articulated a thorough, robust agenda designed explicitly to reunite growth and prosperity. Until now. While many books on these issues spend most of their time on diagnosis and little on prescription, Jared Bernstein, former Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden and member of President Obama's economics team, intentionally flips that ratio in The Reconnection Agenda: each chapter presents concrete policy solutions to the fundamental disconnect, including those that can get us to full employment, make monetary and fiscal policy work together more effectively, rebalance international trade, promote mobility, and break the "economic shampoo cycle" (bubble, bust, repeat) that has characterized our economy for decades. Bernstein's last chapter explains why, even while powerful economic elites block commonsense solutions, the demand for a reconnection agenda is growing. What's critical is that citizens recognize the difference between a policy set that will actually help and a phony one that will exacerbate the forces that for decades now have been preventing growth from reaching most Americans. If you've ever read an article or heard a radio report about the lack of enough good jobs, the rise of inequality, and/or the economic stressors facing the middle class and the poor-not to mention the endless squabbles of policy makers unable to do anything truly useful about these problems-and wished for a reader-friendly, even occasionally fun (really!) book that takes you through what's gone wrong and how to fix it . . . Then The Reconnection Agenda is for you! Oh . . . and by the way . . . it's also downloadable for free. How's that for a whack at the forces of economic darkness?

The Bottom Billion is an elegant and impassioned synthesis from one of the world's leading experts on Africa and poverty. It was hailed as "the best non-fiction book so far this year" by Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times.

For a long time, economic research on Africa was not seen as a profitable venture intellectually or professionally-few researchers in top-ranked institutions around the world chose to become experts in the field. This was understandable: the reputation of Africa-centered economic research was not enhanced by the well-known limitations of economic data across the continent. Moreover, development economics itself was not always fashionable, and the broader discipline of economics has had its ups and downs, and has been undergoing a major identity crisis because it failed to predict the Great Recession. Times have changed: many leading researchers-including a few Nobel laureates-have taken the subject of Africa and economics seriously enough to devote their expertise and creativity to it. They have been amply rewarded: the richness, complexities, and subtleties of African societies, civilizations, rationalities, and ways of living, have helped renew the humanities and the social sciences-and economics in particular-to the point that the continent has become the next major intellectual frontier to researchers from around the world. In collecting some of the most authoritative statements about the science of economics and its concepts in the African context, this ^lhandbook (the first of two volumes) opens up the diverse acuity of commentary on exciting topics, and in the process challenges and stimulates the quest for knowledge. Wide-ranging in its scope, themes, language, and approaches, this volume explores, examines, and assesses economic thinking on Africa, and Africa's contribution to the discipline. The editors bring a set of powerful resources to this endeavor, most notably a team of internationally-renowned economists whose diverse viewpoints are complemented by the perspectives of philosophers, political scientists, and anthropologists.