C. Journal articles published externally

2,064 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

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

These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 46

Transnational Terrorist Recruitment: Evidence from Daesh Personnel Records

(MIT Press, 2022-01-25) Brockmeyer, Anne ; Do, Quy-Toan ; Joubert, Clement ; Bhatia, Kartika ; Abdel Jelil, Mohamed

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.
Assessing Gender Gaps in Employment and Earnings in Africa: The Case of Eswatini

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-07) Brixiova Schwidrowski, Zuzana ; Imai, Susumu ; Kangoye, Thierry ; Yameogo, Nadege Desiree

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.
Cross-Region Transfer Multipliers in a Monetary Union: Evidence from Social Security and Stimulus Payments

(American Economic Association, 2021-05) Pennings, Steven

US federal transfers to individuals are large, countercyclical, vary geographically, and are often credited with helping to stabilize regional economies. This paper estimates the short-run effects of these transfers using plausibly exogenous regional variation in temporary stimulus payments and permanent Social Security benefit increases. States that received larger transfers tended to grow faster contemporaneously, with a multiplier of around 1.5 for permanent transfers and 1/3 for temporary transfers. Results are broadly consistent with an open-economy New Keynesian model. At business cycle frequencies, cross-region transfer multipliers are not large, suggesting only modest gains in regional stabilization from US federal automatic stabilizers.
Getting Practical with Causal Mechanisms: The Application of Process‐Tracing under Real‐World Evaluation Constraints

(Wiley, 2020-10-06) Raimondo, Estelle

Over the past decade, the field of development evaluation has seen a renewed interest in methodological approaches that can answer compelling causal questions about what works, for whom, and why. Development evaluators have notably started to experiment with Bayesian Process Tracing to unpack, test, and enhance their comprehension of causal mechanisms triggered by development interventions. This chapter conveys one such experience of applying Bayesian Process Tracing to the study of citizen engagement interventions within a conditional cash transfer program under real‐world evaluation conditions. The chapter builds on this experience to discuss the benefits, challenges, and potential for the applicability of this approach under real‐world evaluation conditions of time, money, and political constraints. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions. https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/self-archiving.html
Economic Growth, Convergence, and World Food Demand and Supply

(Elsevier, 2020-08) Fukase, Emiko ; Martin, Will

In recent years, developing countries have been growing much more rapidly than the industrial countries. This growth convergence has potentially very important implications for world food demand and for world agriculture because of the increase in demand for agricultural resources as diets shift away from starchy staples and towards animal-based products and fruits and vegetables. Using a resource-based measure of food production and consumption that accounts for the much higher production costs associated with animal-based foods, this article finds per capita demand growth to be a more important driver of food demand than population growth between now and 2050. Using the middle-ground Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenario to 2050 from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, which assumes continued income convergence, the article finds that the increase in food demand (102 percent) would be about a third greater than under a hypothetical scenario of all countries growing at the same rate (78 percent). As convergence increases the growth of food supply by less than demand, it appears to be a driver of upward pressure on world food prices.
The Political Economy of Multidimensional Child Poverty Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Mexico and Uganda

(Taylor and Francis, 2020-03-11) Cuesta, Jose ; Biggeri, Mario ; Hernandez-Licona, Gonzalo ; Aparicio, Ricardo ; Guillen-Fernandez, Yedith

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.
Globalisation and the Gender Earnings Gap: Evidence from Sri Lanka and Cambodia

(Taylor and Francis, 2020) Robertson, Raymond ; Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys ; Savchenko, Yevgeniya

Using household and labor force surveys from Cambodia and Sri Lanka, we find large positive wage premiums and a closing of the male-female wage gap during the Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA) period, but smaller premiums and a widening wage gap after the end of the MFA. Our results suggest that apparel exports continued to benefit women in developing countries post-MFA but women – both in and out of the apparel industry – are susceptible to changes in global apparel prices.
Estimating the Welfare Costs of Reforming the Iraq Public Distribution System: A Mixed Demand Approach

(Taylor and Francis, 2019-12-06) Krishnan, Nandini ; Olivieri, Sergio ; Ramadan, Racha

Through three decades of conflict, food rations delivered through the public distribution system (PDS) have remained the largest safety net among Iraq’s population. Reforming the PDS continues to be politically challenging, notwithstanding the system’s import dependence, economic distortions, and unsustainable fiscal burden. The oil price decline of mid-2014 and recent efforts to rebuild and recover have put PDS reform back on the agenda. The government needs to find an effective way to deliver broad benefits from a narrow economic base reliant on oil. The study described here adopts a mixed demand approach to analyzing household consumption patterns for the purpose of assessing plausible reform scenarios and estimating the direction and scale of the associated welfare costs and transfers. It finds that household consumption of PDS items is relatively inelastic to changes in price, particularly among the poor. The results suggest that any one-shot reform will have sizeable adverse welfare impacts and will need to be preceded by a well-targeted compensation mechanism. To keep welfare constant, subsidy removal in urban areas, for example, would require the poorest and richest households to be compensated for, respectively, 74 per cent and nearly 40 per cent of their PDS expenditures.
How to Target Households in Adaptive Social Protection Systems? Evidence from Humanitarian and Development Approaches in Niger

(Taylor and Francis, 2019-12-06) Schnitzer, Pascale

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.
Social Protection in Contexts of Fragility and Forced Displacement: Introduction to a Special Issue

(Taylor and Francis, 2019-12-06) Bruck, Tilman ; Cuesta, Jose ; De Hoop, Jacobus ; Gentilini, Ugo ; Peterman, Amber

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.