C. Journal articles published externally
2,064 items available
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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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Publication
Assessing Gender Gaps in Employment and Earnings in Africa: The Case of Eswatini
(Taylor and Francis, 2021-07)Persistent gender gaps characterize labor markets in many African countries. Utilizing Eswatini’s first three labor market surveys (conducted in 2007, 2010, and 2013), this paper provides first systematic evidence on the country’s gender gaps in employment and earnings. We find that women have notably lower employment rates and earnings than men, even though the global financial crisis had a less negative impact on women than it had on men. Both unadjusted and unexplained gender earnings gaps are higher in self-employment than in wage employment. Tertiary education and urban location account for a large part of the gender earnings gap and mitigate high female propensity to self-employment. Our findings suggest that policies supporting female higher education and rural-urban mobility could reduce persistent inequalities in Eswatini’s labor market outcomes as well as in other middle-income countries in southern Africa. -
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
Using Satellite Imagery to Create Tax Maps and Enhance Local Revenue Collection
(Taylor and Francis, 2020)Although taxes on land and property have many desirable attributes, the challenge of ensuring completeness of tax rolls and currency of valuations preclude their effective use to support urbanization and service provision in many developing countries. The example of Kigali shows how building footprints and heights generated from high-resolution satellite imagery, together with sales prices and routine statistical data, allow to assess and improve coverage and design of property tax systems. We show that only 40% of potential land lease fee revenue (of US$ 4.9 million) was collected and that moving to 1% value-based tax would increase revenue almost 10 times while being less regressive than the current system. While this could allow reducing the tax burden for low-income groups, exemptions should be applied with caution based on careful empirical analysis. -
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How to Target Households in Adaptive Social Protection Systems? Evidence from Humanitarian and Development Approaches in Niger
(Taylor and Francis, 2019-12-06)The methods used to identify the beneficiaries of programs aiming to address persistent poverty and shocks are subject to frequent policy debates. Relying on panel data from Niger, this report simulates the performance of various targeting methods that are widely used by development and humanitarian actors. The methods include proxy-means testing (PMT), household economy analysis (HEA), geographical targeting, and combined methods. Results show that PMT performs more effectively in identifying persistently poor households, while HEA shows superior performance in identifying transiently food insecure households. Geographical targeting is particularly efficient in responding to food crises, which tend to be largely covariate. Combinations of geographical, PMT, and HEA approaches may be used as part of an efficient and scalable adaptive social protection system. Results motivate the consolidation of data across programs, which can support the application of alternative targeting methods tailored to program-specific objectives. -
Publication
Predicting Entrepreneurial Success is Hard: Evidence from a Business Plan Competition in Nigeria
(Elsevier, 2019-11)We compare the absolute and relative performance of three approaches to predicting outcomes for entrants in a business plan competition in Nigeria: Business plan scores from judges, simple ad hoc prediction models used by researchers, and machine learning approaches. We find that i) business plan scores from judges are uncorrelated with business survival, employment, sales, or profits three years later; ii) a few key characteristics of entrepreneurs such as gender, age, ability, and business sector do have some predictive power for future outcomes; iii) modern machine learning methods do not offer noticeable improvements; iv) the overall predictive power of all approaches is very low, highlighting the fundamental difficulty of picking competition winners. -
Publication
Competing Priorities: Women’s Microenterprises and Household Relationships
(Elsevier, 2019-09)Recent studies have suggested that women’s business decisions are influenced by members of their household, especially their spouse, and that these intrahousehold dynamics contribute to gender gaps in entrepreneurship outcomes. This in-depth qualitative study among microentrepreneurs in urban Ghana sought to understand the connections between women’s businesses and their households’ management of economic resources. The findings show that women’s business decisions are influenced by: 1) a desire to reinforce their partner’s responsibilities as a primary provider; 2) attempts to fulfil normative expectations of meeting the daily basic-needs of the family; and 3) a need to prepare for long-term security. To reinforce their husband’s responsibilities as a provider, women hid income and savings, and sometimes explicitly limited business growth. To ensure their ability to smooth household consumption and respond to emergencies, women prioritized savings over business investment. And, to plan for their long-term security, women opted for cautious business investment, instead maintaining pressure on their partner to meet current needs and investing in children and property for the future. Previous studies document gender differences in microenterprise business management. This research builds on those studies by examining how intrahousehold inequalities affect women’s business decisions. The findings demonstrate the contextual importance of social relations for understanding women’s business decisions. More broadly, the findings illustrate that interpersonal interactions concerning the management of economic resources are an integral part of how household members negotiate their rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. -
Publication
Constraints or Complaints? Business Climate and Firm Performance Perceptions in Uganda
(Taylor and Francis, 2019)This paper identifies the business constraints that are most binding for firm performance. Using panel methods on novel quarterly Ugandan business climate data, we exploit perceived changes in business climate constraints to account for changes in firm performance. Not all identified constraints are binding for firm performance. Macroeconomic instability, demand stability, access to finance, corruption/bribery, and weather variability are found to be binding constraints. Firms’ expectations about future performance outcomes are associated with current perceptions about these constraints, alleviating endogeneity concerns to some extent. While taxation constraints are usually highly ranked, we do not find evidence linking them to firm performance. -
Publication
Fresh Money for Health? The (False?) Promise of 'Innovative Financing' for Health in Malawi
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-10-29)Since 2013, the government of Malawi has been pursuing a number of health reforms, which include plans to increase domestic financing for health through “innovative financing.” As part of these reforms, Malawi has sought to raise additional tax revenue through existing and new sources with a view to earmarking the revenue generated to the health sector. In this article, a systematic approach to assessing feasibility and quantifying the amount of revenue that could be generated from potential sources is devised and applied. Specifically, the study applies the Delphi forecasting method to generate a qualitative assessment of the potential for raising additional tax revenues from existing and new sources, and the gross domestic product (GDP)-based effective tax rate forecasting method to quantify the amount of tax revenue that would be generated. The results show that an annual average of 0.30 USD, 0.46 USD, and 0.63 USD per capita could be generated from taxes on fuel and motor vehicle insurance over the period 2016/2017–2021/2022 under the low, medium, and high scenarios, respectively. However, the proposed tax reform has not been officially adopted despite wide consultations and generation of empirical evidence on the revenue potential. The study concludes is that revenue generation potential of innovative financing for health mechanisms in Malawi is limited, and calls for efforts to expand fiscal space for health to focus on efficiency-enhancing measures, including strengthening of governance and public financial management. -
Publication
Maize Value Chain Analysis: A Case of Smallholder Maize Production and Marketing in Selected Areas of Malawi and Mozambique
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-07-25)This article analyzes maize value chain performance in Malawi and Mozambique using data collected from a market study commissioned by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture. The results show that although smallholder maize productivity is slightly higher in Malawi, a maize value chain analysis indicates that smallholder maize in Mozambique is more competitive. Mozambique has a relatively higher competitive advantage with regard to maize production because of the relatively lower input costs, perhaps due to its proximity to the coast, which invariably reduces input costs relative to its land-locked neighbor, Malawi. However, smallholder maize productivity is low in both countries, when compared to the regional average. The article concludes that interventions aimed at raising smallholder productivity would invariably make smallholder farmers more competitive. It proposes policy implications aimed at raising the productivity and trade competitiveness of maize, as this will ensure the overall productivity of the maize-based smallholder farming system in the two countries. -
Publication
Land Ownership and Technology Adoption Revisited: Improved Maize Varieties in Ethiopia
(Elsevier, 2018-03)The lack of land ownership can discourage agricultural technology adoption, yet there is scarce evidence of the impact of land rental contracts on the adoption of improved crop varieties in developing countries. The current study investigates such impact using a nationally representative survey of Ethiopian maize farmers. In contrast to many previous studies, we show in a simple model that cash-renters are as likely to adopt improved maize varieties as owner-operators, while sharecroppers are more likely to adopt given that such varieties are profitable. Empirical analysis reveals a significant impact of sharecropping on improved maize variety adoption, and no significant impact from cash-rental, lending support to the above hypotheses. These results imply that improvements in land rental markets can potentially enhance household welfare through crop variety adoption in agrarian economies where land sales markets are incomplete or missing.