Policy Research Reports
14 items available
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This series brings to a broad audience the results of World Bank research on development policy. The reports are designed to contribute to the debate on appropriate public policies for developing economies. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the Research Group in the World Bank's Development Economics Vice Presidency.
Items in this collection
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Publication
Finance for All? Policies and Pitfalls in Expanding Access
(Washington, DC, 2008)This book, finance for all, presents first efforts at developing indicators illustrating that financial access is quite limited around the world and identifies barriers that may be preventing small firms and poor households from using financial services. Based on this research, the report derives principles for effective government policy on broadening access. The report's conclusions confirm some traditional views and challenge others. For example, recent research provides additional evidence to support the widely-held belief that financial development promotes growth and illustrates the role of access in this process. Improved access to finance creates an environment conducive to new firm entry, innovation, and growth. However, research also shows that small firms benefit the most from financial development and greater access-both in terms of entry and seeing their growth constraints relaxed. Hence, inclusive financial systems also have consequences for the composition and competition in the enterprise sector. This report reviews and synthesizes a large body of research, and provides the basis for sound policy advice in the area of financial access. The findings in this report also underline the importance of investing in data collection: continued work on measuring and evaluating the impact of access requires detailed micro data both at the household and enterprise level. -
Publication
Reforming Infrastructure : Privatization, Regulation, and Competition
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2004)Infrastructure industries and services are crucial for generating economic growth, alleviating poverty, and increasing international competitiveness. Safe water is essential for life, and health. Reliable electricity saves businesses and consumers from having to invest in expensive backup systems, or more costly alternatives, and keeps rural women and children from having to spend long hours fetching firewood. Widely available and affordable telecommunications and transportation services can foster grassroots entrepreneurship, and thus are critical to generating employment, and advancing economic development. In most developing and transition economies, private participation in infrastructure, and restructuring have been driven by the high costs, and poor performance of state-owned network utilities. Under state ownership, services were usually under-priced, and making it difficult to expand services. The report indicates that although privatization, competitive restructuring, and regulatory reforms improve infrastructure performance, several issues must be considered and conditions met for these measures to achieve their public interest goals. First, reforms have significantly improved performance, leading to higher investment, productivity, and service coverage and quality. Second, effective regulation-including the setting of adequate tariff levels-is the most critical enabling condition for infrastructure reform. Regulation should clarify property rights, and assure private investors that their investments will not be subject to regulatory opportunism. Third, for privatization to generate widely shared social benefits, infrastructure industries must be thoroughly restructured and able to sustain competition. Thus restructuring, to introduce competition should be done before privatization, and regulation should be in place to assure potential buyers of both competitive, and monopoly elements. -
Publication
Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions. The report aims to strengthen the effectiveness of land policy in support of development, and poverty reduction, by setting out the results of recent research in a way that is accessible to a wide audience of policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, academics in the Bank's client countries, donor agency officials, and the broader development community. Its main message rests on three principles: 1) provision of secure tenure to land improves the welfare of the poor, particularly by enhancing the asset base of those whose land rights are often neglected, and, creates incentives needed for investment, paramount to sustainable economic growth; 2) facilitation of land exchange, and distribution, whether as an asset or for current services, at low cost, through markets, and non-market channels, will expedite land access by productive, but land-poor producers, so that once economic growth improves, financial markets would rely on the use of land as collateral; and, 3) governments' contribution to the promotion of socially desirable land allocation, and utilization. The report discusses mechanisms to promote tenure security, demonstrates the importance of rental market transactions, arguing the removal of impediments to these can generate equity advantages, and positive investments. It also illustrates mechanisms, ranging from taxation, to regulation and land use planning to address these issues. -
Publication
Finance for Growth : Policy Choices in a Volatile World
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2001-04)The overall impact of financial globalization on the domestic financial sector is profound. Liberalization of capital flows has effectively made domestic financial repression obsolete. The consequences have not been uniformly favorable. Following liberalization, domestic interest rates in developing countries have moved to a premium over industrial country rates, and can surge at times of currency speculation. Heightened interest rate and exchange rate volatility pose practical risk management difficulties for financial intermediaries and reinforce the need for appropriate infrastructures and incentives for risk containment, as well as for good macropolicies. On the other hand, the cost of equity capital has been reduced by allowing foreign investor access to local equity markets and allowing local firms to list abroad. Increased international flows through the equity markets have not been the major contributor to increased international sources of volatility. In addition to opening access to foreign-sourced financial services, more and more countries have been permitting foreign-owned banks and other financial firms to operate locally. Although this can represent a threat to domestic owners of financial firms, the drawback is outweighed by improved service quality. On all three fronts--debt, equity, and services--the costs and risks as well as the benefits of increased financial globalization. knowledges