Policy Research Working Papers
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The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. Titles are submitted from units around the World Bank for internal review and inclusion in this series which is managed by the Development Economics Research Support unit. These are pre-print drafts prior to review and publication in formal journals.
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Publication Two Decades of Top Income Shares in Honduras(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-19) Del Carmen, Giselle; Garriga, Santiago; Nuñez, Wilman; Scot, ThiagoThis paper presents distributional national accounts for Honduras over 2003–2019, using survey microdata, administrative tax records, and national account aggregates. It assembles comprehensive data on formal income for high-income individuals, including information on corporate shareholders, which allows corporate profits to be assigned to their owners. The estimates suggest a high and persistent inequality in the country: the top 1 percent highest earners received approximately 30 percent of the total income over the period, placing Honduras among the most unequal countries in the world. Undistributed corporate profits are the overwhelming income source at the very top of the distribution, highlighting its importance in the measurement of income inequality. Finally, using a panel of tax records, the paper also documents that not only is inequality persistent, but the same individuals are often observed at the top, suggesting that the observed inequality has deep roots.Publication Empowering Adolescent Girls through Safe Spaces and Accompanying Measures in Côte d’Ivoire(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-13) Boulhane, Othmane; Boxho, Claire; Kanga, Désiré; Koussoube, Estelle; Rouanet, LéaThis study uses a cluster-randomized controlled trial to investigate the effects of a large-scale women and girls empowerment program on sexual and reproductive health and empowerment outcomes in Côte d’Ivoire. The study assesses and compares the impact of diverse strategies aimed at equipping girls with life skills and sexual and reproductive health knowledge, provided through well-established safe spaces, in isolation or in combination with livelihood support interventions, or with initiatives designed to engage boys and men and community and religious leaders. The findings show that one year after the end of the interventions, safe spaces alone have a moderate impact on girls’ empowerment, while safe spaces combined with husbands’ and future husbands’ clubs are the most impactful. Combining safe spaces with livelihood support interventions leads to improvements in adolescent girls’ employment outcomes, as expected. Finally, the findings show that engaging leaders in the context of safe spaces interventions yields mixed results on girls’ empowerment.Publication Right to Education: Forced Migration and Child Education Outcomes(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-12) Vargas, Juan F.; Rozo, Sandra V.About a third of the 7.7 million Venezuelans who have left their country due to political and economic turmoil have settled in neighboring Colombia. The extent to which the Colombian schooling system can absorb the massive demand for education of Venezuelan children is key for their future trajectory of human capital accumulation, as well as that of Colombian students in receiving communities. This paper estimates the effect of Venezuelan migration on educational outcomes of children living in settlement municipalities in Colombia, distinguish between the effect of the migration shock on native and migrant students. Specifically, it estimates the effect of the migration shock on school enrollment, dropout/promotion rates and standardized test scores. The identification relies on a plausibly exogenous measure of the predicted migration shock faced by each Colombian municipality every year. The findings show that the migration shock increased the enrollment of Venezuelan students in both public and private schools and in all school grades, but also generated negative spillovers related to failing promotion rates and increasing dropout. This paper documents that these negative effects are explained by the differential enrollment capacity of schools, as well as by the deterioration of key school inputs.Publication Flood Protection and Land Value Creation: Not All Resilience Investments Are Created Equal(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-11) Avner, Paolo; Viguié, Vincent; Jafino, Bramka Arga; Hallegatte, StephaneThis paper investigates the land value creation potential from flood mitigation investments in a theoretical and applied setting, using the urban area of Buenos Aires as a case study. It contributes to the literature on the wider economic benefits of government interventions and the dividends of resilience investments. Using a simple urban economics framework that represents land and housing markets, it finds that not all flood mitigation interventions display the same potential for land value creation: where land is more valuable (city centers for example), the benefits of resilience are higher. The paper also provides ranges for land value creation potential from the flood mitigation works in Buenos Aires under various model specifications. Although the estimates vary largely depending on model parameters and specifications, in many cases the land value creation would be sufficient to justify the investments. This result is robust even in the closed city configuration with conservative flood damage estimates, providing that the parameters remain reasonably close to the values obtained from the calibration. Finally, acknowledging that fully calibrating and running an urban simulation model is data greedy and time intensive—even a simple model as proposed here—this research also proposes reduced form expressions that can provide approximations for land value creation from flood mitigation investments and can be used in operational contexts.Publication Environmental Policy under Weak Institutions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-11) Karayalcin, Cem; Onder, HarunDeveloping countries are facing mounting pressures to incorporate environmental concerns into their policy reform agendas. This paper finds that common environmental policies, such as levying taxes to reduce the excessive exploitation of natural assets, can be self-defeating when (i) institutions are weak and (ii) the general equilibrium effects of such policy actions are overlooked. This seemingly paradoxical result is driven by fundamental mechanisms in structural transformation frameworks, without the need for strong assumptions. It also carries a clear policy implication: environmental policies should be considered within a country’s broader development context, rather than in isolation.Publication Reviewing Assessment Tools for Measuring Country Statistical Capacity(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-11) Pullinger, John; Serajuddin, Umar; Stacy, Brian; Dang, Hai-Anh H.Country statistical capacity is increasingly recognized as crucial for development, but no academic study exists that reviews the available assessment tools. This paper offers the first review study that fills this gap, paying particular attention to data and practical measurement challenges. It compares the World Bank’s recently developed Statistical Performance Indicators and Index with other widely used indexes, such as the Open Data Inventory index, the Global Data Barometer index, and other regional and self-assessment tools. The findings show that each index brings advantages in data sources, number of indicators, measurement focus, coverage of countries and time periods, and correlation with common development indexes. The Open Data Inventory index covers the most countries, the Global Data Barometer index collects data through its surveys, and the Statistical Performance Indicators and Index offer a broader framework for assessing statistical systems. The paper offers further thoughts on the potential mechanisms through which these tools can bring positive impacts on economic activities and some political economy concerns, as well as future directions for development.Publication The Quality and Price of Africa’s Imports of Digital Goods(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-08) Bastos, Paulo; Castro, Lucio; Cruz, MarcioImported digital goods are critical for productivity growth in low-income countries. Using detailed data on international trade flows and tariffs, this paper finds that African nations tend to import relatively low quality, low price digital goods. It also finds that digital goods in Africa are subject to relatively higher tariffs, along with other factors that contribute to their higher cost in the domestic market compared to other regions, especially in some low-income countries. The findings show that the African Continental Free Trade Area will do little to reduce this tariff burden, as most digital goods are sourced from higher income nonmembers. In contrast, unilateral tariff liberalization toward all countries would significantly increase the imports of digital goods in Africa.Publication Reviewing Assessment Tools for Measuring Country Statistical Capacity(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-06) Dang, Hai-Anh H.; Pullinger,John James; Serajuddin,Umar; Stacy,Brian WilliamCountry statistical capacity is increasingly recognized as crucial for development, but no academic study exists that reviews the available assessment tools. This paper offers the first review study that fills this gap, paying particular attention to data and practical measurement challenges. It compares the World Bank’s recently developed Statistical Performance Indicators and Index with other widely used indexes, such as the Open Data Inventory index, the Global Data Barometer index, and other regional and self-assessment tools. The findings show that each index brings advantages in data sources, number of indicators, measurement focus, coverage of countries and time periods, and correlation with common development indexes. The Open Data Inventory index covers the most countries, the Global Data Barometer index collects data through its surveys, and the Statistical Performance Indicators and Index offer a broader framework for assessing statistical systems. The paper offers further thoughts on the potential mechanisms through which these tools can bring positive impacts on economic activities and some political economy concerns, as well as future directions for development.Publication High Temperature and Learning Outcomes: Evidence from Ethiopia(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05) Srivastava, Bhavya; Hirfrfot, Kibrom Tafere; Behrer, Arnold PatrickThis paper uses data from 2003–19 on 2.47 million test takers of a national high stakes university entrance exam in Ethiopia to study the impacts of temperature on learning outcomes. It finds that high temperatures during the school year leading up to the exam reduce test scores, controlling for temperatures when the exam is taken. The results suggest that the scores of female students are less impacted by higher temperatures compared to their male counterparts. Additionally, the analysis finds that the scores of students from schools located in hotter regions are less impacted by higher temperatures compared to their counterparts from cooler regions. The evidence suggests that the adverse effects of temperature are driven by impacts from within-classroom temperatures, rather than from indirect impacts on agriculture.Publication Environmental Hazards, Climate, and Health in Cambodia: The Shield of Sanitation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05) Aguilar Gomez, Sandra; Baquie, Sandra; Robyn, Paul JacobEnvironmental degradation is the largest public health challenge of the century and is likely to be exacerbated by climate change. This study undertakes a comprehensive examination of the health implications of environmental hazards in Cambodia, simultaneously addressing extreme temperatures, precipitation patterns, and air pollution. It leverages data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and satellite-derived metrics on temperature, precipitation, and fine particulate matter. The analysis identifies a positive association between temperature and the occurrence of diarrhea and cough among children and a nonlinear relationship between precipitation and these health outcomes. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that pollution significantly impacts cough incidence. To anticipate future trends, climate simulations are employed to forecast the incidence of child diarrhea in Cambodia under different climate and development scenarios. The projections indicate that diarrhea incidence could increase to 19 percent by 2040 without significant adaptation measures that would lessen the adverse impact of weather. For instance, the acceleration in toilet ownership over the last decade reduced diarrhea incidence by at least 1.2 to 1.4 percentage points. Nevertheless, the path ahead requires proactive efforts to improve sanitation and hygiene. The forecasts suggest that, without additional strategies to counter climate change’s adverse effects, only universal toilet ownership would contain the climate-driven increase in diarrhea incidence expected by 2040.