C. Journal articles published externally

1,144 items available

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4401

These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...

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Using Individual-Level Randomized Treatment to Learn about Market Structure

(American Economic Association, 2022-10) Casaburi, Lorenzo ; Reed, Tristan

Interference across competing firms in RCTs can be informative about market structure. An experiment that subsidizes a random subset of traders who buy cocoa from farmers in Sierra Leone illustrates this idea. Interpreting treatment-control differences in prices and quantities purchased from farmers through a model of Cournot competition reveals differentiation between traders is low. Combining this result with quasi-experimental variation in world prices shows that the number of traders competing is 50 percent higher than the number operating in a village. Own-price and cross-price supply elasticities are high. Farmers face a competitive market in this first stage of the value chain.
Catholic and Faith-Based Schools in Africa: Introduction to the Special Issue

(Taylor and Francis, 2022-01-28) Grace, Gerald ; Wodon, Quentin

Africa is the region of the world where Catholic and other faith-based schools have the largest footprint. One in nine students in a primary school in Africa is enrolled in a Catholic school, and students from the region account for more than half of all students in Catholic primary schools globally. Through the role it plays in Africa, the Catholic Church is at the forefront of providing educational opportunities in low-income countries, but challenges abound. In particular, learning poverty defined as the inability of 10-year-old children to read and understand an age-appropriate text, affects nine in ten children in sub-Saharan Africa. Students in Catholic schools are not immune to this crisis. This article introduces a framework from the World Bank on how we could end the learning crisis and summarizes the contributions of the articles included in this issue in terms of that framework.
Teacher Satisfaction and Its Determinants: Analysis Based on Data from Nigeria and Uganda

(Taylor and Francis, 2022-01-28) Nkengne, Patrick ; Pieume, Olivier ; Tsimpo, Clarence ; Ezeugwu, Gilbert ; Wodon, Quentin

Teachers who are satisfied with their job are more likely to teach well, which in turn should enable their students to better learn while in school. Sub-Saharan Africa is currently experiencing a learning crisis, with close to nine out of ten children not able to read and understand a simple text at age 10. This affects all types of schools and students, including students in Catholic and other faith-based schools. Improving working conditions and job satisfaction among teachers is part of the answer to this learning crisis. After a brief discussion of data for Nigeria, this article looks at the level of satisfaction of teachers in Uganda, its determinants, and its impact on the quality teaching. Specifically, four questions are asked: What is the level of teacher job satisfaction in Uganda? How does job satisfaction relate to the characteristics of teachers? What is the impact of teachers’ satisfaction on their performance, as it can be measured through various variables of teacher effort? Finally, what are the main factors affecting satisfaction according to teachers? The answers to these questions have implications for policy and practice in faith-based as well as in other schools.
Koranic Schools in Niger: How Much Can Be Learned from Existing Data?

(Taylor and Francis, 2022-01-28) Male, Chata ; Nayihouba, Ada ; Wodon, Quentin

The term Koranic school is often used to describe schools that are not part of the formal education system and typically place a strong emphasis on memorizing the Koran in Arabic, as well as on knowledge of Islamic religious education and practice. Using data from Niger as a case study, this paper provides data on trends in the share of individuals that have a Koranic education, a formal education, or no education at all, as well as a basic profile (univariate and multivariate) of children with Koranic education, formal education, or no education at all. In addition, the potential impacts of Koranic education in comparison to formal education or no education at all on outcomes such as literacy and numeracy, labor market earnings, household consumption, assets and perceptions of well-being, and infant mortality is analyzed.
Looking into the performance-based financing black box: Evidence from an impact evaluation in the health sector in Cameroon

(Oxford University Press, 2021-07) de Walque, Damien ; Robyn, Paul Jacob ; Saidou, Hamadou ; Sorgho, Gaston ; Steenland, Maria

Performance-based financing (PBF) is a complex health systems intervention aimed at improving the coverage and quality of care. Several studies have shown a positive impact of PBF on health service coverage, often coupled with improvements in quality, but relatively little is known about the mechanisms driving those results. This article presents results of a randomized impact evaluation in Cameroon designed to isolate the role of specific components of the PBF approach with four study groups: (i) PBF with explicit financial incentives linked to results, (ii) direct financing with additional resources available for health providers not linked to performance, (iii) enhanced supervision and monitoring without additional resources and (iv) a control group. Overall, results indicate that, when compared with the pure control group, PBF in Cameroon led to significant increases in utilization for several services (child and maternal vaccinations, use of modern family planning), but not for others like antenatal care visits and facility-based deliveries. In terms of quality, PBF increased the availability of inputs and equipment, qualified health workers, led to a reduction in formal and informal user fees but did not affect the content of care. However, for many positively impacted outcomes, the differences between the PBF group and the group receiving additional financing not linked to performance are not significant, suggesting that additional funding rather than the explicit incentives might be driving improvements. In contrast, the intervention group offering enhanced supervision, coaching and monitoring without additional funding did not experience significant impacts compared to the control group.
The use of video vignettes to measure health worker knowledge: Evidence from Burkina Faso

(Elsevier, 2018-09) Banuri, Sheheryar ; de Walque, Damien ; Keefer, Philip ; Haidara, Ousmane Diadie ; Robyn, Paul Jacob ; Ye, Maurice

The quality of care is a crucial determinant of good health outcomes, but is difficult to measure. Survey vignettes are a standard approach to measuring medical knowledge among health care providers. Given that written vignettes or knowledge tests may be too removed from clinical practice, particularly where “learning by doing” may be an important form of training, we developed a new type of provider vignette. It uses videos presenting a patient visiting the clinic with maternal/early childhood symptoms. We tested these video vignettes with current and future (students) health professionals in Burkina Faso. Participants indicated that the cases used were interesting, understandable and common. Their performance was consistent with expectations. Participants with greater training (medical doctors vs. nurses and midwives) and experience (health professionals vs. students) performed better. The video vignettes can easily be embedded in computers, tablets and smart phones; they are a convenient tool to measure provider knowledge; and they are cost-effective instruction and testing tools.
Electricity Reforms in Mali : A Macro-Micro Analysis of the Effects on Poverty and Distribution

( 2009) Boccanfuso, Dorothee ; Estache, Antonio ; Savard, Luc

This paper uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) micro-simulation model to explore the distributional and poverty-related effects of price reform in the electricity sector of Mali, a poor country in West Africa. In the first part of the paper we analyse the distribution of electricity in Mali by income deciles, showing that few poor households are connected to the electricity grid. We then apply a sequential CGE micro-simulation model to track the transmission mechanisms between increases in electricity prices and changes in poverty and inequality among different household groups. Our results show that direct price increases have a minimal effect on poverty and inequality, whereas the general equilibrium effects of such increases are quite strong and negative. The compensating policies we tested do not help those who lose from the pricing reform. In fact they amplify the negative effects.