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
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Publication
Transnational Terrorist Recruitment: Evidence from Daesh Personnel Records
(MIT Press, 2022-01-25)Global terrorist organizations attract radicalized individuals across borders and constitute a threat for both sending and receiving countries. We use unique personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) to show that unemployment in sending countries is associated with the number of transnational terrorist recruits from these countries. The relationship is spatially heterogeneous, which is most plausibly attributable to travel costs. We argue that poor labor market opportunities generally push more individuals to join terrorist organizations, but at the same time limit their ability to do so when longer travel distances imply higher migration costs. -
Publication
Growth in Syria: Losses from the War and Potential Recovery in the Aftermath
(Taylor and Francis, 2021-07-05)This paper addresses three questions: (1) what would have been the growth and income trajectory of Syria in the absence of war; (2) given the war, what explains the reduction in economic growth; and (3) what potential growth scenarios for Syria there could be in the aftermath of war. Conflict impact estimates point to negative GDP growth of −12% on average over 2011–2018, with output contracting to about one-third of the 2010 level. In post-conflict simulation scenarios, the growth drivers are affected by the assumed levels of reconstruction assistance, repatriation of refugees, and productivity improvements associated with three political settlement outcomes: a baseline (Sochi-plus) moderate scenario, an optimistic (robust political settlement) scenario, and a pessimistic (de facto balance of power) scenario. Respectively for these scenarios, GDP per capita average growth in the next two decades is projected to be 6.1%, 8.2%, or 3.1%, assuming a final and stable resolution of the conflict. -
Publication
Trust to Pay? Tax Morale and Trust in Africa
(Taylor and Francis, 2021-02-14)Although low tax morale hits developing countries hardest, little is known about its determinants in those countries. This paper examines the impact of trust in public institutions and the neighbourhood on individual tax morale in four African countries. First, the paper provides theoretical foundations of such a relationship. Further, the paper uses the World Value Survey to estimate the effects of trust in public institutions and the neighbourhood on individual tax morale. The identification strategy employs the instrumental variables method and relies on historical data on the slave trade and the literature on the cultural heritage of trust. The paper finds that trust in public institutions and the neighbourhood are associated with tax morale in Algeria, Ghana, Morocco, and Nigeria. The findings are robust to an alternative identification strategy, additional controls, and a falsification test. -
Publication
Introduction to the Special Issue “Political economic perspectives of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
(Taylor and Francis, 2020-10-06)The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world’s most protracted contemporary conflict and one which has gained international prominence throughout the years. As a result of the Six Days War in 1967, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip fell under Israeli control. The conflict has evolved through ebbs and flows of violence including two Palestinian uprising against Israeli control (the First and Second Intifada). These have led to tens of thousands of Palestinian and thousands of Israeli victims. There is a growing theoretical and empirical literature analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this review, we discuss a selected number of studies that are most closely related to the topics covered by the articles in this special issue. -
Publication
The Political Economy of Multidimensional Child Poverty Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Mexico and Uganda
(Taylor and Francis, 2020-03-11)As part of the 2030 Agenda, much effort has been exerted in comparing multidimensional child poverty measures both technically and conceptually. Yet, few countries have adopted and used any of these measures in policymaking. This paper explores the reasons for this absence from a political economy perspective. It develops an innovative political economy framework for poverty measurement and a hypothesis whereby a country will only produce and use reliable and sustainable multidimensional child poverty (MDCP) measures if and only if three conditions coalesce: consensus, capacity and polity. We explore this framework with two relevant case studies, Mexico and Uganda. Both countries satisfy the capacity condition required to measure MDCP but only Mexico satisfies the other two conditions. Our proposed political economy framework is normatively relevant because it identifies the conditions that need to change across multiple contexts before the effective adoption and use of an MDCP measure becomes more likely. -
Publication
Social Protection in Contexts of Fragility and Forced Displacement: Introduction to a Special Issue
(Taylor and Francis, 2019-12-06)Effective social protection is increasingly as essential to supporting affected populations in situations of protracted instability and displacement. Despite the growing use of social protection in these settings, there is comparatively little rigorous research on what works, for whom, and why. This special issue contributes by adding seven high-quality studies that raise substantially our understanding of the role of social protection in fragile contexts and in settings of forced displacement and migration. Together, these studies fill knowledge gaps, help support informed decision-making by policy-makers and practitioners, and demonstrate that impact evaluation and the analysis of social protection in challenging humanitarian settings are possible. The studies provide evidence that design choices in implementation, such as which population to target, choice of transfer modality or which messages are delivered with programs, can make a substantial difference in the realization of positive benefits among vulnerable populations. Furthermore, the findings of the studies underline the relevance of tailoring program components to populations, which may benefit more or less from traditional program implementation models. -
Publication
Optimal Targeting Under Budget Constraints in a Humanitarian Context
(Elsevier, 2018-01-05)The paper uses Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves and related indexes to determine the optimal targeting strategy of a food voucher program for refugees. Estimations focus on the 2014 food voucher administered by the World Food Program to Syrian refugees in Jordan using data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The paper shows how to use ROC curves to optimize targeting using coverage rates, budgets, or poverty lines as guiding principles to increase the overall efficiency of a program. As humanitarian organizations operate under increasing budget constraints and increasing demands for efficiency, the proposed approach addresses both concerns. -
Publication
Small Firms' Formalisation: The Stick Treatment
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Firm informality is pervasive throughout the developing world, Bangladesh being no exception. The informal status of many firms substantially reduces the tax basis and therefore impacts the provision of public goods. The literature on encouraging formalization has predominantly focused on reducing the direct costs of formalization and has found negligible impacts of such policies. In this paper, we focus on a stick intervention, which to the best of our knowledge is the first one in a developing country setting that deals with the most direct and dominant form of informality, that is registration with the tax authority with a direct link to the country’s potential revenue base and thus public goods provision. We implement an experiment in which randomly selected firms are visited by tax representatives who deliver an official letter from the Bangladesh National Tax Authority stating that the firm is not registered and the consequential punishment if the firm fails to register. We find that the intervention increases the rate of registration among treated firms, while firms located in the same market but not treated do not seem to respond significantly. We also find that only larger revenue firms at baseline respond to the threat and register. Our findings have at least two important policy implications: i) the enforcement angle, which could be an important tool to encourage formalization; and ii) targeting of government resources for formalization to high-end informal firms. The effects are generally small in levels and this leaves open the question of why many firms still do not register. -
Publication
Does Inducing Informal Firms to Formalize Make Sense?: Experimental Evidence from Benin
(Elsevier, 2018-01)Efforts to bring informal firms into the formal sector are often based on a view that this will bring benefits to the firms themselves, or at least benefit governments through increasing the tax base. A randomized experiment based around the introduction of the entreprenant legal status in Benin is used to test these assumptions, along with supplementary efforts to enhance the presumed benefits of formalizing to firms. Few firms register when just given information about the new regime, but our full package of supplementary efforts boosts formalization by 16.3 percentage points. However, this formalization does not bring firms higher sales or profits, and the cost of formalizing these firms exceeds the added taxation they will pay over the next decade. We show how better targeting of these policies towards firms that look more like formal firms to begin with can increase the formalization rate and improve cost-effectiveness. -
Publication
Organizational Performance with In-group and Out-group Leaders: An Experiment
(Elsevier, 2017-12-02)In this paper, we compare the performance of a homogeneous organization in which group members and the leader belong to the same group, with a heterogeneous organization in which the leader is an outsider. Using a modified public goods game in which leaders’ performance in a real effort task determines the marginal return to the public good we focus on the effect of shared group membership on: i) the effort of the leader in the real effort task, ii) cooperation of group members and iii) group members’ payoffs. When the leaders are selected randomly, we find that homogeneous groups tend to out-perform heterogeneous groups. This is due to lower performance of the out-group leader and not to differences in cooperation. This effect disappears when high-performance leaders are selected. High performance out-group leaders tend to over perform relative to in-group leaders, yet, there are no differences in cooperation once we control for the marginal incentives to invest in the public good. The results of our study have important implications for how organizations can deal with the arrival of out-group leaders.