C. Journal articles published externally
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These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
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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
Economic Growth, Convergence, and World Food Demand and Supply
(Elsevier, 2020-08)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. -
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
The Health Gains, Financial Risk Protection Benefits, and Distributional Impact of Increased Tobacco Taxes in Armenia
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-01)The majority of Armenian adult males smoke, yet tobacco taxes in Armenia are among the lowest in Europe and Central Asia. Increasing taxes on tobacco is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions, but many opponents often cite regressivity as an argument against tobacco taxation. We use a mixed-methods approach to study the potential regressivity of tobacco taxation and the extent to which the regressivity argument hindered increases in tobacco taxation in Armenia. First, we pursued an extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA) to assess the health, financial, and distributional consequences (by consumption quintile) of increases in the excise tax on cigarettes in Armenia. We simulated a hypothetical price hike leading to a tax rate of about 75% of the retail price of cigarettes, which would be fully passed on to consumers. Second, we conducted a series of stakeholder interviews to examine the importance of the regressivity argument and identify the factors that allowed tobacco tax increases to be adopted as public policy in Armenia. We show that increased excise taxes would bring large health and financial benefits to Armenian households. Half of tobacco-related premature deaths and 27% of associated poverty cases averted would be concentrated among the bottom 40% of the population. Though regressivity was raised as a concern at the initial stages of the policy adoption process, our qualitative stakeholder analysis indicates that the recent accession to the Eurasian Economic Union and the fiscal constraints faced by the government created a window of opportunity for tobacco taxation to be placed on the policy agenda and adopted as government policy, and the ECEA findings were an important input into the process. -
Publication
No Condition Is Permanent: Middle Class in Nigeria in the Last Decade
(Taylor and Francis, 2017-09-21)The economic debate on the existence and definition of the middle class has become particularly lively in many developing countries. Building on a recently developed framework called the Vulnerability Approach to Middle Class (VAMC) to define the middle class, this paper tries to estimate the size of the Nigerian middle class in a rigorous quantitative manner and to gauge its evolution over time. Using the VAMC method, the middle class group can be defined residually from the vulnerability analysis as those for which the probability of falling into poverty is below a certain threshold. The results show that there has been considerable improvement in the size of the Nigerian middle class from 13 per cent in 2003/4 to 19 per cent in 2012/13. However, the rate has been slower than expected given the high growth rates experienced in the country over the same period. The results also paint a heterogeneous picture of the middle class in Nigeria with large spatial differences. The southern regions have a higher share and experienced more growth of the middle class compared with the northern regions. -
Publication
Lessons from 20 Years of Capacity Building for Health Systems Thinking
(Taylor and Francis, 2016-08-24)In 2016, the Flagship Program for improving health systems performance and equity, a partnership for leadership development between the World Bank and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other institutions, celebrates 20 years of achievement. Set up at a time when development assistance for health was growing exponentially, the Flagship Program sought to bring systems thinking to efforts at health sector strengthening and reform. Capacity-building and knowledge transfer mechanisms are relatively easy to begin but hard to sustain, yet the Flagship Program has continued for two decades and remains highly demanded by national governments and development partners. In this article, we describe the process used and the principles employed to create the Flagship Program and highlight some lessons from its two decades of sustained success and effectiveness in leadership development for health systems improvement. -
Publication
Striving for Balance in Economics: Towards a Theory of The Social Determination of Behavior
(Elsevier, 2016-06)This paper is an attempt to broaden economic discourse by importing insights into human behavior not just from psychology, but also from sociology and anthropology. Whereas in standard economics the concept of the decision-maker is the rational actor, and in early work in behavioral economics it is the quasi-rational actor influenced by the context of the moment of decision, in some recent work in behavioral economics, the decision-maker could be called the enculturated actor. This actor's preferences, perception, and cognition are subject to two deep social influences: (a) the social contexts to which he has become exposed and, especially, accustomed; and (b) the cultural mental models—including categories, identities, narratives, and worldviews—that he uses to process information. The paper traces how these factors shape behavior through the endogenous determination of preferences and the lenses through which individuals see the world—their perception and interpretation of situations. The paper offers a tentative taxonomy of the social determinants of behavior and describes the results of controlled and natural experiments that only a broader view of these determinants can plausibly explain. The perspective suggests more realistic models of human behavior for explaining outcomes and designing policies. -
Publication
Beginning with the End in Mind: Implications for Project Design
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-10-22)As with other donor agencies, the World Bank uses an objectives-based approach to monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of projects. When projects run into problems and fail to meet their objectives, experience suggests that many of the problems could have been avoided or mitigated through a more systematic focus, from the outset, on the project’s objectives, the outcomes embedded in those objectives and the associated results framework. This article discusses how to improve the prospects of achieving sustainable outcomes by addressing specific questions from the very start of project design, or, in other words, by beginning with the end in mind.