C. Journal articles published externally
2,064 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
Items in this collection
1 - 6 of 6
-
Publication
Saving for Dowry: Evidence from Rural India
(Elsevier, 2022-01)The ancient custom of dowry, i.e., bride-to-groom marriage payments, remains ubiquitous in many contemporary societies. Using data from 1986–2007, this paper examines whether dowry impacts intertemporal resource allocation and other household decisions in rural India. Utilizing variation in firstborn gender and dowry amounts across marriage markets, we find that the prospect of higher dowry payments at the time of a daughter’s marriage leads parents to save more in advance. The higher savings are primarily financed through increased paternal labor supply. This implies that people are farsighted; they work and save more today with payoff in the distant future. -
Publication
Six Sigma to Reduce Claims Processing Errors in a Healthcare Payer Firm
(Taylor and Francis, 2020-06)As a continuous improvement practice, Six Sigma has been accepted globally across the service industry. In the past one decade, the application and success of Six Sigma in healthcare services has been remarkable. Despite the fact that several papers on Six Sigma have appeared in the erstwhile literature related to healthcare operations, there is a dearth of field studies highlighting the application of Six Sigma in healthcare outsourced firms, in specific to healthcare payers that engage in a non-clinical setup. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of Six Sigma within the healthcare payer outsourced firms, where error-free delivery becomes critical. The article contributes to the literature of Six Sigma in healthcare outsourcing highlighting how “Six Sigma as a methodology” could help reduce claims adjudication errors in a healthcare payer firm. The Six Sigma DMAIC project case study presented as part of the paper delivered a saving of USD 0.53 million and is a classic example of how Six Sigma can bring bottom-line impact to healthcare outsourced organizations. Managerial implications and lessons learned are discussed alongside the concluding notes. -
Publication
Direct and Indirect Effects of Malawi's Public Works Program on Food Security
(Elsevier, 2017-09)Labor-intensive public works programs are important social protection tools in low-income settings, intended to supplement the income of poor households and improve public infrastructure. In this evaluation of the Malawi Social Action Fund, an at-scale, government-operated program, across- and within-village randomization is used to estimate effects on food security and use of fertilizer. There is no evidence that the program improves food security and suggestive evidence of negative spillovers to untreated households. These disappointing results hold even under modifications to the design of the program to offer work during the lean rather than harvest season or increase the frequency of payments. These findings stand in contrast to those from large public works programs in India and Ethiopia, and serves as a reminder that public works programs will not always have significant and measurable welfare effects. -
Publication
Equity Raising by Asian Firms: Choosing Between PIPEs and SEOs
(Elsevier, 2017-08)Why do some firms raise equity capital from a small number of “private” investors (e.g. Private Investment in Public Equities–PIPE), while other firms do so from a large number of small investors (e.g. Seasoned Equity Offering–SEO)? Recent studies list market timing, asymmetric information, and financial distress as the primary motives that drive the choice of equity raising mechanism. However, these results are based exclusively on the experience of US-based firms. This study examines 456 PIPE and 1910 SEO transactions of firms based in nine Asian countries to assess if the results reported for the US-based issuers are applicable to a wider set of firms. While market timing continues to be a significant driver of how firms choose between PIPE and SEO, unlike the US issuers, there is little evidence that Asian firms in our sample make this choice based on either asymmetric information or financial distress. As with the US firms, private investment provides significant certification for PIPE issuers. Finally, we find that both the operating performance as well as the stock price returns show little improvement for both PIPE as well as SEO issuers. Moreover, the difference between performance change of PIPE issuers is statistically indistinguishable from that of SEO issuers. This implies that PIPE investors do not provide meaningful benefits to the firms they invest in. Overall, our findings suggest that determinants for choosing specific equity issuance mechanism for international firms do not overlap completely with those for US-based firms. -
Publication
Tenure Security Premium in Informal Housing Markets: A Spatial Hedonic Analysis
(Elsevier, 2017-01)This paper estimates slum residents’ willingness to pay for formalized land tenure in Pune, India. The results show that the legal assurance of slum residents’ occupancy of their lands could benefit them. Previous studies have discussed the legal and non-legal factors that substantially influence the tenure security of residents in informal settlements; however, it remains unclear how and to what extent the assignment of legal property rights through the formalization of land tenure improves the tenure security of residents in informal settlements and living conditions, even in the presence of other legal and non-legal factors that also contribute to their tenure security. To address this question, this study focuses on the city of Pune, India, where government agencies have formalized slums by legally ensuring the occupancy of the residents under the “slum declaration.” Applying a hedonic price model to an original household survey, this paper investigates how slum residents evaluate formalized land tenure. A spatial econometrics method is also applied to account for spatial dependence and spatially autocorrelated unobserved errors. The spatial hedonic analysis shows that the premium of slum declaration is worth 19.2% of the average housing rent in slums. The associated marginal willingness to pay is equivalent to 6.7% of the average household expenditure, although it is heterogeneous depending on a household’s caste and other legal conditions. This finding suggests that the assurance of occupancy rights is a vital component of land-tenure formalization policy even if it does not directly provide full property rights. -
Publication
Deregulation and Firm Investment: Evidence from the Dismantling of the License System in India
(Taylor and Francis, 2016-11-07)We analyse the impact of deregulatory reforms in India during the 1990s, which eliminated compulsory industrial licensing, on manufacturing firms’ investment decisions. We find an economically and statistically significant positive effect of delicensing on investment. We also show that firms in states with better credit conditions benefitted more from the removal of licences. Moreover, our analysis demonstrates that the increase in investment was predominantly driven by smaller firms.