Economic Premise

121 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9402

The Economic Premise series summarizes good practices and key policy findings on topics related to economic policy. They are produced by the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Network Vice-Presidency of the World Bank.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 42

Inclusive Growth Revisited: Measurement and Determinants

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-07) Anand, Rahul ; Mishra, Saurabh ; Peiris, Shanaka J.

The call for inclusive growth has been unanimously broadcasted by policy makers across the world. The Arab spring, the growing divide between Main Street and Wall Street in advanced economies, and the three-speed world economy have placed inclusive growth at the forefront of policy debates. However, efforts to measure and assess the determinants of inclusive growth have remained limited. What is inclusive growth? How can the micro and macro dimensions of inequality and growth be integrated to reflect both the pace and distribution of economic growth? What has driven inclusive growth in emerging markets?
Investment Financing in the Wake of the Crisis: The Role of Multilateral Development Banks

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) Chelsky, Jeff ; Morel, Claire ; Kabir, Mabruk

Sustained growth in emerging markets and developing economies requires long-term, reliable capital to finance productive investment, including in basic infrastructure. However, the availability and composition of long-term financing is constrained, partly due to fragile market conditions and cyclical weaknesses in parts of the global economy, as well as longer-term trends. This has had a particularly negative impact on developing economies that do not have reliable access to international bond markets and on sectors that have traditionally relied on bank lending (such as infrastructure). At the same time, fiscal space has been eroded by the crisis, and the direct lending capacity of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) remains constrained. This heightens the importance of the catalytic role of the official sector in mobilizing long-term financing from the private sector by drawing on its ability to reduce and share risk. This note explores some of the ways in which MDBs are equipped to serve this purpose.
Changing for the Better: The Path to Upper-Middle-Income Status in Uzbekistan

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) Trushin, Eskender ; Carneiro, Francisco G.

As a low-middle-income country with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of US$1,715 and a population of 30 million (nearly half of all of the Central Asian population), Uzbekistan has seen stable economic progress since the mid-2000s, both in terms of growth and poverty reduction. Growth has averaged 8 percent per year since 2004 and extreme poverty has declined from 27 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2012. Encouraged by this outstanding growth performance, the Uzbek authorities have set an ambitious goal for the country, to join the group of upper-middle-income countries by 2030. This note discusses the main challenges that the government is likely to face and the structural transformations that the economy will have to undergo to achieve this objective.
From Noise to Signal : The Successful Turnaround of Poverty Measurement in Colombia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Azevedo, João Pedro

In the mid-2000s, poverty measurement in Colombia was at a standstill. A dated poverty measurement methodology was clashing with improvements in the national household survey system. As a result, official poverty rates showed volatile trends, and a weak communication strategy produced an unconvincing storyline, which further resulted in the rapid deterioration of indicator credibility. This happened during a period of high and sustained growth that also included a number of poverty reduction interventions, such as the flagship program familias en accion and the unidos strategy. The public debate on poverty lost focus and moved from substantial policy discussions to technical measurement methods.
Can Trade Reduce Poverty in Africa?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04) Le Goff, Maëlan ; Singh, Rajun Jan

While most economists accept that, in the long run, open economies fare better in aggregate than closed ones, many fears that trade could harm the poor. African countries, for example, have realized significant improvements in trade liberalization in recent decades, yet Africa remains the poorest continent in the world. It seems that the large gains expected from opening up to international economic forces have been limited in Africa, especially for poor people. Drawing on the findings of a recently published working paper (Le Goff and Singh 2013), this note argues that the benefits of trade are not automatic, but rather depend on accompanying policies aimed at developing the financial sector, promoting primary education, and improving governance. This accompanying policy agenda allows people to take advantage of the opportunities offered by freer trade, by reallocating resources away from less productive activities to more promising ones. Trade liberalization therefore should not be implemented on its own, but with the necessary complementing policies.
Subnational Debt, Insolvency, and Market Development

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04) Canuto, Otaviano ; Liu, Lili

State and local debt and the debt of quasi-public agencies have grown in importance as a result of fiscal decentralization, rapid urbanization, and the increasing role played by private capital. However, with debt comes the risk of insolvency. This note outlines a set of aligned fiscal incentives that should be in place, as well as the design issues to be considered in debt restructuring frameworks. This note also suggests some broad lessons extracted from several country experiences with subnational debt restructuring, insolvency frameworks, and debt market development. This note suggest a range of possible lessons to consider when designing reforms to align fiscal incentives and develop a robust subnational debt framework that can be used to effectively manage the insolvency risks that will inevitably accompany the new dynamism of subnational finance.
Promoting Shared Prosperity in South Asia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-03) Ghani, Ejaz ; Iyer, Lakshmi ; Mishra, Saurabh

The geography of poverty has changed. More than 70 percent of the world s poor live not in low-income countries, but in middle-income countries. In 2008, nearly 570 million people lived on less than US$1.25 a day in South Asia, compared to 385 million in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, nearly 70 percent of the poor people in South Asia live in the lagging regions. Improving the living standards of these regions is crucial to achieving the goal of shared prosperity. Economic growth is not sufficient to enable the lagging regions of South Asia to catch up with the leading regions, in terms of proportional reductions in poverty rates. Policies must be specifically targeted toward achieving greater growth and poverty reduction in these regions. One particular policy channel to achieve shared prosperity is pro-poor fiscal transfers. For the most part, interstate fiscal transfers in South Asian countries do promote equity through transfer of resources to poorer regions, but this outcome usually occurs when pro-poor redistribution has explicit rules and transparency. Further, simply directing financial resources to lagging regions may not be sufficient, and may need to be complemented with increases in capacity, transparency, and participation to facilitate accountability at the local level. Policy makers need to boost shared prosperity and take another look at the millennium development goal paradigm. A new lens is needed- one that shifts the focus of policy from national to subnational level, and from leading to lagging regions, where poverty, gender disparity, and human misery are concentrated.
The Brazilian Competitiveness Cliff

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-02) Canuto, Otaviano ; Reis, Jose Guilherme ; Cavallari, Matheus

Brazilian exports of goods and services have grown sharply in recent years, with sales nearly three times higher in 2010 than in 2000. However, Brazil faces considerable competitiveness challenges: its export performance depends mostly on favorable geographical and sector composition effects. Such challenges increased after the recent global economic crisis. A recent slowdown in industrial exports, production, and investments seems related to supply-side difficulties stemming from a wide range of inefficiencies and rising costs, rather than insufficient demand. Although a stronger currency is one of the factors behind the lower competitiveness of Brazil's manufacturing exports, sluggish productivity performance, lack of dynamism at the firm level, and a real wage uptrend seem to explain a significant part of the overall loss of competitiveness. This diagnostic reinforces the urgency of resuming the agenda of microeconomic reforms, increasing the investment-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio, and advancing toward better-skilled human capital.
Trade Costs and Development : A New Data Set

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01) Arvis, Jean-François ; Shepherd, Ben ; Duval, Yann ; Utoktham, Chorthip

The World Bank and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) jointly prepared a new global data set of bilateral trade costs based on trade and production data. Accessible on the World Bank Open Data Web site, it opens new analytical possibilities for policy makers and researchers working on trade integration. The data stress the importance of supply chains and connectivity constraints in explaining the higher costs and lower levels of trade integration observed in developing countries. To measure trade costs in the developing world over the 1995-2010 period, UNESCAP and the World Bank embarked on a joint data collection exercise. In addition to data on export and import flows, calculation of trade costs using the inverse gravity methodology also requires information on domestic production in each country. Usage can then be calculated as domestic production less total exports. The result of the data collection exercise is a database covering up to 178 countries, two sectors, and the 1995-2010 period. Based on the available data, trade costs data are calculated for as many bilateral pairs as possible, and interpolation used to fill in missing country- year combinations when feasible.
Public Spending for Long-Run Growth : A Practitioners' View

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12) Gemmell, Norman ; Misch, Florian ; Moreno-Dodson, Blanca

By financing public goods and services that enhance productivity and promote private investment, public spending is widely believed to be critical for long-run growth. Such effects are distinct from any short-run Keynesian response to a public spending stimulus. While a short-run response generally operates through aggregate demand, long-run growth effects alter aggregate supply conditions. While academic literature generally supports the belief that public spending promotes growth in the long run, understanding which public expenditure allocations can trigger such effects in a particular country setting is challenging in practice. The objective of this note1 is to review the trade-offs faced by fiscal policy makers in developing countries who are considering using public expenditure policy as an instrument to promote long run growth, provide guidance from the empirical literature, and review the types of data sources that are helpful in this context.