C. Journal articles published externally

1,144 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 220

Aggregate Income Shocks and Infant Mortality in the Developing World

(MIT Press, 2011-08) Baird, Sarah ; Friedman, Jed ; Schady, Norbert

Health and income are strongly correlated both within and across countries, yet the extent to which improvements in income have a causal effect on health status remains controversial. We investigate whether short-term fluctuations in aggregate income affect infant mortality using an unusually large data set of 1.7 million births in 59 developing countries. We show a large, negative association between per capita GDP and infant mortality. Female infant mortality is more sensitive than male infant mortality to negative economic shocks, suggesting that policies that protect the health status of female infants may be especially important during economic downturns.
Migration and Economic Mobility in Tanzania : Evidence from a Tracking Survey

(MIT Press, 2011-08) Beegle, Kathleen ; De Weerdt, Joachim ; Dercon, Stefan

This study explores to what extent migration has contributed to improved living standards of individuals in Tanzania. Using a thirteen-year panel survey, we find that migration between 1991 and 2004 added 36 percentage points to consumption growth. Although moving out of agriculture resulted in much higher growth than staying in agriculture, growth was always greater in any sector if the individual physically moved. As to why more people do not move given the high returns to geographical mobility, analysis finds evidence consistent with models in which exit barriers set by home communities prevent the migration of some categories of people.
Purchasing Power Parity Exchange Rates for the Global Poor

( 2011-04) Deaton, Angus ; Dupriez, Olivier

The global poverty count uses a common global poverty line, often referred to as the dollar-a-day line, currently $1.25 at 2005 international prices, whose construction and application depends on purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates for consumption. The price indexes that underlie the PPPs used for this purpose are constructed for purposes of national income accounting, using weights that represent patterns of aggregate consumption, not the consumption patterns of the global poor. We use household surveys from 62 developing countries to calculate global poverty-weighted PPPs and to calculate global poverty lines and new global poverty counts.
Transactional Sex as a Response to Risk in Western Kenya

( 2011) Robinson, Jonathan ; Yeh, Ethan

Though formal and informal sex work has long been identified as crucial for the spread of HIV/AIDS, the nature of the sex-for-money market remains poorly understood. Using a unique panel dataset constructed from 192 self-reported diaries, we find that women who engage in transactional sex substantially increase their supply of risky, better compensated sex to cope with unexpected health shocks, particularly the illness of another household member. These behavioral responses entail significant health risks for these women and their partners, and suggest that these women are unable to cope with risk through other consumption smoothing mechanisms.
Assessing the Impact of Migration on Food and Nutrition Security

( 2011) Zezza, Alberto ; Carletto, Calogero ; Davis, Benjamin ; Winters, Paul

Migration has become a key component in the livelihood strategies of an increasing number of households across the developing world and remittances have expanded dramatically in the last decade. This has come at a time when an increased emphasis has been placed on reducing malnutrition to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. While this is the case, there has been little attention on the interface between migration and nutrition even though migration can influence nutrition through a number of channels. The objective of this special issue is to present state-of-the-art analyses of the link between migration and nutrition in developing countries. In this paper, an overview of the conceptual and empirical issues in identifying the link between migration and nutrition are considered. Further, the results from seven country case studies are synthesized and policy implications are drawn.
Do Value-Added Estimates Add Value? Accounting for Learning Dynamics

( 2011) Andrabi, Tahir ; Das, Jishnu ; Khwaja, Asim Ijaz ; Zajonc, Tristan

This paper illustrates the central role of persistence in estimating and interpreting value-added models of learning. Using data from Pakistani public and private schools, we apply dynamic panel methods that address three key empirical challenges: imperfect persistence, unobserved heterogeneity, and measurement error. Our estimates suggest that only one-fifth to one-half of learning persists between grades and that private schools increase average achievement by 0.25 standard deviations each year. In contrast, value-added models that assume perfect persistence yield severely downward estimates of the private school effect. Models that ignore unobserved heterogeneity or measurement error produce biased estimates of persistence.
Energy Poverty in Rural Bangladesh

( 2011) Barnes, Douglas F. ; Khandker, Shahidur R. ; Samad, Hussain A.

Energy poverty is a well-established concept among energy and development specialists. International development organizations frequently cite energy-poverty alleviation as a necessary condition to reduce income poverty. Several approaches used to measure energy poverty over the past 20 years have defined the energy poverty line as the minimum quantity of physical energy needed to perform such basic tasks as cooking and lighting. This paper uses a demand-based approach to define the energy poverty line as the threshold point at which energy consumption begins to rise with increases in household income. At or below this threshold point, households consume a bare minimum level of energy and should be considered energy poor. This approach was applied using cross-sectional data from a comprehensive 2004 household survey representative of rural Bangladesh. The findings suggest that some 58 percent of rural households in Bangladesh are energy poor, versus 45 percent that are income poor. The findings also suggest that policies to support rural electrification and greater use of improved biomass stoves might play a significant role in reducing energy poverty.
The Poverty Reduction Strategy Approach Six Years On: An Examination of Principles and Practice in Uganda

( 2011) Canagarajah, Sudharshan ; van Diesen, Arthur

It is over six years since the World Bank and the IMF started promoting a PRS approach to development management in low-income countries. The 2005 review endorsed the approach, but highlighted the need for a renewed focus on the principles underpinning it: country ownership; results orientation; comprehensiveness; partnership focus; and long-term outlook. Uganda is often hailed as one of the best PRS performers. This article finds that Uganda's Poverty Eradicaton Action Plan (PEAP) has brought significant gains to development management, but that its performance against several of the PRS principles is disappointing. A return to these principles could improve the practice of the government and development partners around the PEAP--a finding likely to be applicable to many countries implementing a PRS.
Fungibility and the Impact of Development Assistance: Evidence from Vietnam's Health Sector

( 2011) Wagstaff, Adam

The apparent fungibility of aid is a challenge to the evaluation of donor-funded development projects, requiring a comparison of the observed outcomes with the outcomes that would have occurred if the project had not gone ahead. Where projects are targeted on specific geographic areas, counterfactual outcomes in each can differ from observed outcomes because the amount of government spending (gross of aid) differs, the productivity of government spending differs, or both. This paper estimates the benefits of two concurrent World Bank health projects in Vietnam targeted on specific provinces. Estimates are derived from a model linking outcomes (under-five mortality) to government spending before and after the project and in project and nonproject provinces, and are presented for different assumptions regarding fungibility of funds (zero and full fungibility) and the impacts of the project on the productivity of government spending (the project modifies productivity in both sectors equally and in neither sector). The estimated mortality reductions are highly insensitive to the assumed degree of fungibility, but highly sensitive to the assumed productivity effects (the estimates range from 1 to 25%). The wide range reflects the uncertainty due to the lack of a genuine control group of provinces.
The Microeconomic Determinants of Emigration and Return Migration of the Best and Brightest: Evidence from the Pacific

( 2011) Gibson, John ; McKenzie, David

A unique survey which tracks worldwide the best and brightest academic performers from three Pacific countries is used to assess the extent of emigration and return migration among the very highly skilled, and to analyze, at the microeconomic level, the determinants of these migration choices. Although we estimate that the income gains from migration are very large, not everyone migrates and many return. Within this group of highly skilled individuals the emigration decision is found to be most strongly associated with preference variables such as risk aversion and patience, and choice of subjects in secondary school, and not strongly linked to either liquidity constraints or to the gain in income to be had from migrating. Likewise, the decision to return is strongly linked to family and lifestyle reasons, rather than to the income opportunities in different countries. Overall the data suggest a relatively limited role for income maximization in distinguishing migration propensities among the very highly skilled, and a need to pay more attention to other components of the utility maximization decision.