PREM Notes
176 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
This note series is intended to summarize good practices and key policy findings on poverty reduction and economic management (PREM) topics.
Items in this collection
1 - 3 of 3
-
Publication
The Economic Participation of Adolescent Girls and Young Women : Why Does It Matter?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-12)This note summarizes available research on the impact of schooling and employment of adolescent girls and young women on earnings and poverty reduction, demographic outcomes, child development outcomes, and female empowerment. It identifies key implications of this research for the formulation of public policy. -
Publication
Estimating Financing Needs for Local Services in Madagascar
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-11)This note presents the methodology and findings of a field study on the financing needs of Madagascar's communes-the country's lowest but most institutionally advanced level of subnational government. Following a first round of municipal elections in 1995, more than 1,500 communes are now formally responsible for maintaining basic administrative services and social and economic infrastructure, including local waste disposal and sanitation. In addition, communes are responsible for identifying and coordinating local investments and for supporting implementation of the national Poverty Reduction Strategy at the local level. To finance these activities, communes receive population-based transfers and small conditional transfers, and can collect revenue from property, market, and consumption taxes as well as user charges. Yet little is known about how much these fiscal assignments satisfy local needs. As part of its policy dialogue with the government of Madagascar, the World Bank is engaged in extensive research that includes geographic mapping of social spending and a review of opportunities and obstacles to fiscal and sectoral decentralization. This research generated the following analysis of local and cross-sectoral service needs and available financing. -
Publication
Conditionality Revisited : A New Approach in Burkina Faso
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-01)Donors have typically linked quick-disbursing assistance programs to conditions related to policy reforms. But there is growing frustration with how conditionality has worked in practice. Research has shown that traditional conditionality usually does not "buy" reforms. Moreover, because aid funds are fungible within government budgets, a results-based approach is needed to enhance aid effectiveness. At the initiative of the European Commission, the Strategic Partnership with Africa is piloting a new approach to conditionality in Burkina Faso to explore changes that enhance donor coordination, foster country ownership of reforms, and smooth aid flows--and so increase aid effectiveness. A driving feature of the approach is a focus on the outcomes of government reforms and policies.