Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

584 items available

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9388

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Behavioral Insights for Tax Compliance

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01) World Bank

This brief provides evidence from World Bank field experiments that consider the social, psychological, and economic factors influencing taxpayer decision-making. Complementary studies from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Poland, Latvia, and Kosovo demonstrate how context-specific, behaviorally informed messaging can offer an immediate, low-cost solution to bureaucratic and technological barriers.
Tanzania: A Simple Teacher Incentive System Can Improve Learning

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) World Bank

Tanzania devotes about one-fifth of government spending to education, focusing much of the funding on expanding school access. Primary school enrollment rates have surged, yet the quality of education services and learning outcomes remain poor, with only 38 percent of children aged 9–13 able to read or do arithmetic at the second grade level. Teachers play a critical role in helping children learn, but in Tanzania, many do not show up to teach. Poor motivation and lack of accountability have contributed to the high absenteeism and commensurate loss of instructional time. One way to strengthen teacher motivation and management is through performance pay. Teacher incentive schemes link bonuses or other rewards to specific targets, whether outputs (e.g., verified classroom presence) or outcomes (e.g., student test score improvement). Performance pay can help achieve learning results at low cost compared to teacher base salaries. In Tanzania, the Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund supported a randomized control trial comparing two types of teacher performance pay systems and their effect on early grade learning.
Living Conditions and Asset Ownership for the Host and Rohingya Populations in Cox's Bazar

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11-25) World Bank

The modules on housing characteristics and assets were administered as part of the household questionnaire of the Cox’s Bazar Panel Survey (CBPS) to the household head or an adult member (age 15+) with substantial knowledge about the daily activities of the household. Data was collected from 5,020 households across camp and host settlements (Camp settlements are defined as areas within the camp boundaries set by the government, UNHCR and IOM jointly. Host settlements are defined as all areas outside of the camp boundaries), on topics of housing conditions and asset holdings. This includes information on the construction material of housing, water and sanitation facilities, lighting and electricity usage, and current and past ownership of assets. The module generates representative statistics for hosts and displaced Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar; and it can be further disaggregated into hosting areas with low and high exposure to the Rohingya influx
Insights from the Labor Module on Work and Wages in Cox's Bazar

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11-19) World Bank

The labor market module was administered as part of the adult questionnaire of the Cox’s Bazar Panel Survey to 2 randomly selected adults from every household in the sample, amounting to a total of 9,045 individuals. The module generates representative statistics for the adult (15+) population of hosts and displaced Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar; and it can be further disaggregated into hosting areas with low and high exposure to the Rohingya influx, and by gender. Besides collecting information on the participation of adults in the labor force and their employment status, the module collects details on wage and non-wage employment, wage rates, sectors of employment and barriers faced in obtaining work.
Insights from the Household Roster on Demographics and Educational Attainment in Cox's Bazar

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11-03) World Bank

Administered to 5020 households, evenly split between Rohingya campsites and host communities, the household roster collects basic information on all members of the household. In addition to basic demographic characteristics, the module includes information on education for all members of the household. The descriptives confirm that the Bangladeshi population living in Cox’s Bazar is vulnerable and poor by national standards; and this was the case even before the influx of the Rohingya into the sub-districts of Teknaf and Ukhia. At the same time, the Rohingya population living in campsites faces high levels of need, and fare worse than the host community across a range of indicators related to household demographics and education.
Measuring What Works in Rural Water: Toward a Set of Global Indicators

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-10) World Bank

Creating a global core set of indicators that can be integrated into existing monitoring efforts or harnessed as a foundation for new monitoring efforts will improve the efficiency of the sector and still enable collection of locally-relevant information. Following a World Bank review of 40 different existing rural water indicator frameworks from national and development partner project systems, a set of 24 existing indicators was identified as a potential set of global core metrics for rural water supply. This knowledge note describes challenges, opportunities, implementation, and next steps for measuring what works in rural water.
Colombia: Can a Management and Information System Improve Education Quality?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-28) World Bank

The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded the development of a Management & Information System to monitor the quality of the education system in Colombia. This system builds on existing monitoring tools, which focus on outcome measures such as test scores but do not capture intermediate quality indicators that can shed light on how learning outcomes are achieved. The overarching purpose of this system is to foster improvement in the education system by informing the decision-making and everyday activities of education practitioners and policymakers. This can be achieved by: (i) gathering detailed and relevant information about activities within schools and (ii) managing the information efficiently and making it accessible to users to enable them to analyze, understand, and provide evidence-based recommendations on how to improve education quality. This monitoring system is not intended to be an accountability mechanism for schools but rather a management tool for stakeholders to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the education system and take appropriate action.
Cameroon - Can School Grants and Teacher Incentives be Used to Increase School Access and Improve Quality?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02) World Bank

The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded a feasibility study and a pre-pilot of performance-based school grants and teacher incentives among 20 rural primary schools in Cameroon. The purpose was to assess whether these RBF mechanisms could feasibly be used to improve transparency, financial management, and monitoring at the school level, increase community satisfaction, and draw lessons from the implementation of these RBF mechanisms to enable the initiative to be scaled up throughout Cameroon. While it is not possible to draw conclusions about the effect of this RBF program on education access or quality given the short time period and small sample size, this pre-pilot demonstrated that RBF is feasible in rural primary schools in Cameroon and highlighted the importance of several critical preconditions that must be in place for RBF to be effective. These preconditions include a simple and context-appropriate design, clear communication with key stakeholders, effective monitoring tools to assess school and teacher performance, and community involvement.
Zanzibar: Can Goal-setting and Incentives Improve Student Performance?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02) World Bank

The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded an evaluation that measured how two different incentive approaches affected the academic performance of grade 9 students in Zanzibar (Tanzania). The first approach allowed students to set personal goals at the beginning of the school year regarding their performance by the end of the year. The second approach combined this goal-setting exercise with non-financial rewards such as certificates or in-kind prizes for students who met their goals. These approaches were designed to answer the following questions: (i) whether students setting goals for themselves has any effect on their performance in school and (ii) whether this effect is strengthened when combined with non-financial incentives.
Rethinking Electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa: Why we Should Stop Counting and Start Thinking Big

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019) World Bank

If African nations want to see their economies transform, the issue of electricity must be tackled head-on. Expansion needs investment too, and for that, utilities must recover their costs. Yet all over the region utilities are running at a loss. This report takes a broader look at the issue to show that the problem in Africa is not power but poverty. It shows that affordability, reliability, and coordination are the missing links to making utilities financially viable and expanding their consumer base. The report emphasizes that access to electricity cannot be a stand-alone goal. Policymakers must rethink their approach to electrification by placing the productive use of electrification at center stage. Given the resource constraints, governments need to coordinate investments in other aspects of their infrastructure at the same time as they invest in electricity. Policies and programs need to focus on improving access to markets through better roads and expanding credit for new businesses. In this way, electricity can energize agriculture in rural areas and industry in urban areas. This report shows that, to generate income, create jobs, and alleviate poverty in Africa, electricity has to be part of a package.