Bread for the World Institute

Amongst the Thematic Assembly Centers (TACs) of the Copernicus Marine Service, the Wind TAC is in charge of providing L3 and L4 sea surface wind and wind stress observation products at a global and regional scale. From 2015, the Wind TAC has been successful in providing data coming from scatterometer observations both Near Real Time (NRT) and reprocessed (Multi Year, MY) data. Since the new phase of the project, starting in 2025, high-resolution (i.e. 1 km) data from C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Satellite have been included in the Wind TAC. As the Copernicus Marine Service evolution is mainly user-driven, we take this opportunity to announce that L3 daily products of Sentinel-1A winds are operationally processed and delivered in Near Real Time since June 2024. The associated Multi Year database of L3 daily products has also been uploaded to the Copernicus Marine Service and covers data from 2018 to 2025. To obtain wind data from SAR observations the ocean surface roughness measured by the satellite is transformed into wind speed and direction using an empirical inversion method called the "dual-pol" (Mouche et al. 2017, Mouche et al. 2019) and an a priori wind helps constrain the possible values. To this purpose, the SAR Wind Production Unit uses the L2 files produced by ESA's Mission Performance Center for Sentinel-1 (MPC-SAR) both for NRT and MY processing. Then, the only difference between the two processing chains (NRT and MY) lies in the a priori wind used to constrain the computed wind speed: while the NRT chain uses wind model from the European Center for Medium-range Weather and Forecasting (ECMWF) operational Integrated Forecast System (IFS), the MY chain uses wind model from ECMWF ReAnalysis v5 (ERA5). To quantify the impact of the input a priori wind, the NRT and MY data are compared over their common period. More generally, the SAR wind data from Wind TAC has been qualified through comparisons against Numerical Weather Forecast (NWP) models, in situ measurements from buoys and co-located measurements from scatterometer. The results of these comparisons are shown here, illustrating some limitations in the methodology and ways to overcome them. Overall, these global comparisons highlight the complementarity of high-resolution SAR wind data with other wind observations. In the near future, the integration (in 2026 and 2027 respectively) in the SAR Wind TAC of the recently launched Sentinel-1C and Sentinel-1D satellites will allow for better coverage, and the complementarity between observation should be further investigated through triple-collocation between SAR, scatterometer and buoy data.

Many employers link wages at establishments outside of the home region to the level at headquarters. We show this using new data on 1,200 multinationals’ establishments across the world and linked employee-level data on their establishments in Brazil. Headquarters wage changes arising from minimum wage and exchange rate shocks are partially transmitted to workers employed in the same position abroad. Wage change transmission appears to be direct and results from firm-wide wage-setting procedures rather than associated technology or employment changes. “Anchored” wage setting is somewhat associated with particular characteristics of the job × employer × headquarters-establishment country-pair. (JEL F23, F31, J24, J31, J38, M16, O15)

We examine job seekers' heterogeneous preferences for nonwage amenities, with a focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, using an incentivized field experiment in Brazil. Our findings reveal that ESG is the most polarizing nonwage amenity across multiple sociodemographic groups, with the strongest preferences observed among highly educated, White, and politically liberal individuals (Colonnelli et al. 2025). While women report a stronger preference for work-from-home policies, all other nonwage amenities exhibit minimal variation across sociodemographic groups. Our findings highlight the critical role of corporate values in shaping economic outcomes within an increasingly polarized society.

Abstract We survey the recent literature studying the effects of globalization on inequality in Latin America. Our focus is on research emerging from the late 2000s onward, with an emphasis on empirical work considering new mechanisms, studying new dimensions of inequality and developing new methodologies to capture the many facets of globalization’s relationship to inequality. Both design-based and quantitative work in this area finds that imperfect mobility across sectors and regions is crucial to understanding the effects of trade liberalization on inequality. Our overarching recommendation is that researchers develop unifying frameworks to help synthesize the results of individual studies that focus on distinct aspects of globalization’s relationship to inequality.

We estimate and validate test score–based measures of school quality (school value added, or SVA) in Pakistan. We document substantial variation in SVA within villages and within the public and private sectors, leading to a wide range of possible estimates of the private premium. We also show that parents value SVA. Heterogeneity in parental demand for quality helps explain both the evolution of the market over time and cross-market variation in school quality. The supply side responds to parental demand for quality in the private sector, but there is no evidence it does so in the public sector. (JEL H44, I21, I26, I28, O15)

Forced displacement is a major driver of mental health disorders among refugees globally.The mental well-being of adult refugees, particularly mothers, is widely recognized as a crucial determinant of their children's psychological health and development.In this study, we conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the effectiveness of a multifaceted psychosocial program in improving the mental health of refugee mothers, and fostering growth and development among children under the age of two.Collaborating with BRAC, we conducted a cluster RCT involving 3,500 Rohingya mother-child pairs in refugee camps in Bangladesh.Participants received weekly psychosocial support for 44 weeks, facilitated by trained peer volunteers.The program included psychoeducation and parenting guidance for mothers, as well as interactive play activities for both mothers and children.The intervention proved largely successful, resulting in: (i) reductions in the psychological trauma and depression severity among both mothers and children, (ii) improvements in children's communication, gross-motor, and problem-solving skills, and (iii) reductions in the prevalence of stunting and severe stunting among children.At a cost of approximately $1 per dyad per session, the intervention has demonstrated cost-effectiveness and is currently being scaled-up in Bangladesh's refugee camps, bene-

Are labor markets in higher-income countries more meritocratic, in the sense that worker-job matching is based on skills rather than idiosyncratic attributes unrelated to productivity? If so, why? And what are the aggregate consequences? Using internationally comparable data on worker skills and job skill requirements of over 120,000 individuals across 28 countries, we document that workers' skills better match their jobs' skill requirements in higher-income countries. To quantify the role of worker-job matching in development accounting, we build an equilibrium matching model that allows for cross-country differences in three fundamentals: (i) the endowments of multidimensional worker skills and job skill requirements, which determine match feasibility; (ii) technology, which determines the returns to matching; and (iii) idiosyncratic matching frictions, which capture the role of nonproductive worker and job traits in the matching process. The estimated model delivers two key insights. First, improvements in worker-job matching due to reduced matching frictions account for only a small share of cross-country income differences. Second, however, improved worker-job matching is crucial for unlocking the gains from economic development generated by adopting frontier endowments and technology.