C. Journal articles published externally
2,064 items available
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These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 2064
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Publication
Long-Lived Consequences of Rapid Scale-Up? The Case of Free Primary Education in Six Sub-Saharan African Countries
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-31)This study explores whether Free Primary Education reforms in 6 Sub-Saharan Africa countries affected the quality of teachers in a way that can be detected several years after the reform. It does so by analyzing student- and teacher-level data collected between 5 (Togo) and 16 (Uganda) years after FPE was implemented and comparing outcomes for teachers were hired just before versus just after the policy. Across the 6 countries in the study, grade 4 students of teachers who were hired after the FPE reform perform worse on language and math tests than students of teachers who were hired before the reform. The effects are statistically significant for the language test. Teachers who were hired just after the reform also perform worse on tests of subject content knowledge than those hired before the reform. These average effects mask substantial variation across countries: the gaps are large and significant in some countries but negligible in others. There are few systematic differences associated with being hired pre- or post-reform in teacher demographic characteristics, education and training, or teacher classroom-level behaviors. -
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The Importance of Political Selection for Bureaucratic Effectiveness (First published: 19 April 2023)
(John Wiley and Sons, 2023-08-14)Bureaucratic effectiveness has come to the fore in research as necessary for economic growth and development. This paper contributes empirical evidence to understand the building blocks of bureaucracy by gathering rich survey data in a typical institutional environment of the developing world. The data reveal a robust correlation between the selection of local politicians and bureaucratic effectiveness. In districts in Uganda where locally elected politicians have higher survey-based measures of integrity (or honesty), the bureaucracy is more effective in delivering public heath services. This evidence supports current research, and encourages future research on how the selection of political agents into government is an important determinant of bureaucratic effectiveness. -
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Funding Dam Safety Regulation: An International Comparative Analysis and Example Application in Australia (Published online: 27 Aug 2022)
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-08-11)Dam failures that cause significant adverse downstream impacts continue to occur globally. Hence, effective, adequately resourced dam safety regulation is critical for the safety of dams and downstream communities. This paper explores options for regulatory funding and resourcing according to a selected set of relevant key factors along a continuum of dam safety assurance. An international comparative analysis of 15 jurisdictional case studies against the key factors identifies trends representing indicative precedents. A procedure is developed to help identify increasingly relevant precedents for guiding target jurisdictions on potentially suitable options. Illustrative application to a real case in Australia is provided. -
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Can Perceptions of Reduction in Physical Water Availability Affect Irrigation Behaviour? Evidence from Jordan (Published online: 23 Jun 2022)
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-08-11)Frequent droughts and rapidly depleting groundwater reserves have deepened the water scarcity crisis in Jordan. Even though most farms use ‘water-saving' technologies, groundwater depletion continues at an alarming rate. We investigate how farmers' past experiences of physical water availability are related to their current behaviour, by examining the frequency of irrigation and how farmers determine irrigation needs. Data came from a primary survey of 414 commercial farms. Using the seemingly unrelated regression estimator, we find that respondents who perceived a reduction in physical water availability and agricultural losses in the past irrigated more frequently and were more likely to use self-judgement in determining irrigation needs. These relationships were more pronounced for smaller farms than larger farms, farms with sandy soil, mono-cropping farms, and owner-managed farms. These effects were lower for farms that preferred in-person approaches for receiving irrigation advice. While the frequency of irrigation was higher among stone fruit farms, the probability of using self-judgement in determining irrigation needs was higher in olive farms and vegetable farms. We argue that farmers' irrigation behaviour must be considered for groundwater management policy and planning in Jordan, an important component of the country’s ability to adapt to climate change. -
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The Portfolio Theory of Inflation and Policy (In)Effectiveness: A Revisitation (Published online: 14 Sep 2021)
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-08-11)This article revisits the Portfolio Theory of Inflation (PTI), with a view to further articulating its findings and implications. The article adds to the micro-foundations of the PTI, framing more rigorously the role of global investors as international allocators of capital resources, and providing richer analysis of their interaction with macroeconomic policies at country level. The article explores how country credibility enters the capital allocation choice process of global investors and how global investor choices shape the space available to country policy making, determining the extent to which the effect of macro-policies dissipates into exchange rate depreciation and higher inflation. -
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Women in Paid Employment: A Role for Public Policies and Social Norms in Guatemala
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-05-03)With only 32% of women in the labor market, Guatemala has one of the lowest rates of female labor force participation (FLFP) in the Latin America and Caribbean region and in the world. We explore information from different micro data sets, including the most recent population censuses (2002 and 2018) to assess the drivers of recent progress. Between 2002 and 2018, FLFP increased from an average of 26% to 32% nationwide. This increase was partly explained by increases in the school attainment of women, reduction in fertility and the country’s structural transformation towards services. However, a large part of the increase remains unexplained. Exploring 2018 data, we show that social norms, attitudes towards women and public policies are important determinants of FLFP. The analysis suggests that, taken together, these factors can all become an important source of increased participation of women in the labor market moving forward. -
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Government Social Protection Programme Spending and Household Welfare in Lesotho
(John Wiley and Sons, 2023-03-16)Lesotho has notably high levels of poverty and inequality despite a high level of government spending on social protection programmes. We assess the performance of this spending in reducing consumption poverty and inequality, applying benefit incidence and microsimulation methods to 2017/2018 household survey data. We investigate the distributional effects of actual spending as well as those of a hypothetical alternative in which the spending is targeted through a proxy means test (PMT) formula used by the government for some programmes. We find that government spending on social protection programmes in Lesotho substantially reduces poverty and inequality. For most programmes, the hypothetical alternative of targeting spending to poorer households through the government's PMT formula would have no better distributional effects than current programme spending. The exception is postsecondary education bursaries, which are costly and regressive. Retaining bursaries only for poorer students, and reallocating the outlay this saves to a transfer targeted to poorer households through the government's PMT formula, could reduce poverty and inequality significantly. -
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Did a successful fight against COVID-19 come at a cost?: Impacts of the pandemic on employment outcomes in Vietnam
(Elsevier, 2023-01)Despite its low middle-income status, Vietnam has been widely praised for its success in the fight against early waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a low mortality rate of approximately 100 deaths out of a population of less than 100 million by the end of 2020. We add to the emerging literature on COVID-19 effects on the labor market for poorer countries by analyzing rich individual-level data from Vietnam’s Labor Force Surveys spanning 2015 to 2020. We find post-pandemic increases in unemployment and temporary layoff rates alongside decreases in employment quality. Monthly wages declined even as the proportion of workers receiving below-minimum wages substantially increased, contributing to sharply rising wage inequality. Our findings suggest that more resources should be allocated to protect vulnerable workers, especially as the pandemic continues to cause increasingly severe damage to the global economy. -
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Measuring Human Capital in Middle Income Countries
(Elsevier, 2022-12)This paper develops an indicator that measures the level of human capital to address the specific education and health challenges faced by middle income countries. We apply this indicator to countries in Europe and Central Asia, where productive employment requires skills that are more prevalent among higher education graduates, and where good health is associated to low levels of adult health risk factors. The Europe and Central Asia Human Capital Index (ECA-HCI) extends the World Bank's Human Capital Index by adding a measure of quality-adjusted years of higher education to the original education component, and it includes the prevalence of three adult health risk factors—obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking—as an additional proxy for latent health status. The results show that children born today in the average country in Europe and Central Asia will be almost half as productive as they would have had they reached the benchmark of complete education and full health. Countries with good basic education outcomes do not necessarily have good higher education outcomes, and high prevalence of adult health risk factors can offset good education indicators. This extension of the Human Capital Index could also be useful for assessing the state of human capital in middle-income countries in general. -
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The value of lost output and cost of illness of noncommunicable diseases in the Pacific
(Elsevier, 2022-12-01)The Pacific Island Countries face some of the highest rates of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs). This study estimates the economic costs of NCDs for each year from 2015 to 2040, focusing on eleven Pacific Island nations. Data and Methods: two methods were used to estimate the mortality and morbidity costs using a ‘value of lost output’ and ‘cost of illness’ approach respectively. Results: Five results stand out in terms of projected economic costs of NCD mortality and morbidity analyses in the Pacific: (i) the economic burden of NCDs in the Pacific is greater than expected for middle‐income countries; (ii) although cardiovascular disease is the biggest contributor to the mortality burden in the region, diabetes plays a far greater role in the Pacific countries compared to the global average; (iii) the economic burden of NCDs is increasing with time, especially as incomes rise; (iv) the biggest driver of lost output is the potential loss of labor due to early death from NCDs; and (v) the cost of illness due to diabetes is high across the Pacific countries, with highest among the Polynesian countries. NCDs alone can put enormous threat to the small Pacific economies. Targeted interventions to reduce disease prevalence, as outlined in the Pacific NCDs Roadmap, are vital to reduce the long-term costs associated with NCD mortality and morbidity.