03. Journals

1,616 items available

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2210

These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 54

The Effect of Publicly Provided Health Insurance on Education Outcomes in Mexico

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-04-21) Alcaraz, Carlo ; Chiquiar, Daniel ; Orraca, Maria Jose ; Salcedo, Alejandrina

In this paper we study the causal effect of a large expansion of publicly provided health insurance on school enrollment rates and on children’s academic performance using the case of Mexico. Access to free health insurance could improve education outcomes directly by making household members healthier or indirectly by raising the amount of resources available for education expenses. Using a panel of municipalities from 2007 to 2010, we find that the expansion of the Mexican public health insurance program, Seguro Popular, had a large positive, statistically significant effect on school enrollment rates and on standardized test scores.
ICT Use, Competitive Pressures, and Firm Performance in Mexico

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-04-21) Iacovone, Leonardo ; Pereira-Lopez, Mariana ; Schiffbauer, Marc

In this paper the authors present a set of stylized facts regarding the relation between information and communication technologies (ICT) use, firm performance, and competition. Taking advantage of a novel firm-level data set regarding ICT for Mexico, the authors find that firms facing higher competition appear to be the ones that have more incentives to increase their use of ICT. Accordingly, even though there is indeed a positive relation between ICT use and firm performance, this effect is greater for firms that face higher competition pressures, which is consistent with the theoretical predictions of the trade-induced technical change hypothesis.
From Firm Productivity Dynamics to Aggregate Efficiency

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-04-12) Lopez-Martin, Bernabe

The author constructs a quantitative framework to evaluate how financial constraints can reduce productivity growth at the firm level and result in lower aggregate productivity. The author considers a model where firms are able to invest in innovation in order to increase their productivity, or knowledge capital. This investment is a costly and uncertain enterprise. As the capacity to obtain external funds is diminished, resources allocated to this effort will be reduced due to different mechanisms at work. First, the return of this investment in the case of success may be diminished by the inability to quickly increase production capacity if the credit necessary to do so is scarce (i.e., if entrepreneurs cannot rent the optimal level of physical capital). Second, financial constraints reduce profits obtained by entrepreneurs and therefore the amount of assets they are able to accumulate in every period. Finally, financially underdeveloped economies will be characterized by a lower average ability of entrepreneurs. This is due to the lower equilibrium wage in the economy, which results in a larger mass of individuals opting to set up firms. In the margin, these individuals tend to have lower ability to manage a firm and relatively low prospects of generating firm productivity growth through innovation.
Cross-Sector Misallocation with Sector-Specific Distortions

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-04-10) Leal, Julio

In this paper, the author seeks to sharpen the understanding of the economic channels through which sector-specific distortions affect aggregate outcomes. Thea author pay special attention on how cross-sector misallocation might arrive as a result of these distortions, and clarify how models of resource misallocation across heterogeneous firms differ from models of resource misallocation across sectors. The author present facts that suggest the presence of such distortions in Mexico, a noteworthy developing country. The paper highlights the importance of understanding the origin and nature of sector-specific distortions for policy design.
Opportunity versus Necessity: Understanding the Heterogeneity of Female Micro-Entrepreneurs

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-04-01) Calderon, Gabriela ; Iacovone, Leonardo ; Juarez, Laura

Entrepreneurs that voluntarily choose to start a business because they are able to identify a good business opportunity and act on it opportunity entrepreneurs might be different along various dimensions from those who are forced to become entrepreneurs because of lack of other alternatives necessity entrepreneurs. To provide evidence on these differences, this article exploits a unique data set covering a wide array of characteristics, including cognitive skills, noncognitive skills, and managerial practices, for a large sample of female entrepreneurs in Mexico. Descriptive results show that on average opportunity entrepreneurs have better performance and higher skills than necessity entrepreneurs. A discriminant analysis reveals that discrimination is difficult to achieve based on these observables, which suggests the existence of unobservables driving both the decision to become an opportunity entrepreneur and performance. Thus, an instrumental variables estimation is conducted, using state economic growth in the year the business was set up as an instrument for opportunity, to confirm that opportunity entrepreneurs have higher performance and better management practices.
License to Sell : The Effect of Business Registration Reform on Entrepreneurial Activity in Mexico

(MIT Press, 2011-02) Bruhn, Miriam

This paper estimates the economic effects of a recent reform that simplified business entry regulation in Mexico. The reform was introduced in different municipalities at different points in time. Using microlevel data, I find that the reform increased the number of registered businesses by 5%. This increase was due to former wage earners' opening businesses. Former unregistered business owners were not more likely to register their business after the reform. The reform also increased wage employment by 2.2%. Finally, the results imply that the competition from new entrants decreased the income of incumbent businesses by 3%.
Climate Variability and Child Height in Rural Mexico

( 2011) Skoufias, E. ; Vinha, K.

We examine the impacts of weather shocks, defined as rainfall or growing degree days, a cumulative measure of temperature, more than a standard deviation from their respective long run mean, on the stature of children between 12 and 47 months of age in Mexico. We find that after a positive rainfall shock children are shorter regardless of their region or altitude. Negative temperature shocks have a negative impact on height in the central and southern parts of the country as well as in higher altitudes. Although on average there are no statistically significant impacts from positive temperature shocks, certain sub-populations - namely boys, children between 12 and 23 months at the time of measurement, and children of less educated mothers - in some of the regions are negatively impacted. The results also suggest that potentially both agricultural income and communicable disease prevalence contribute to the effects.
Remittances and Banking Sector Breadth and Depth: Evidence from Mexico

( 2011) Demirguc-Kunt, Asli ; Cordova, Ernesto Lopez ; Martinez Peria, Maria Soledad ; Woodruff, Christopher

Despite the importance of remittances to developing countries, their impact on banking sector breadth and depth in recipient countries has been largely unexplored. We examine this topic using municipality-level data on the fraction of households receiving remittances and on measures of banking breadth and depth for Mexico. We find that remittances are strongly associated with greater banking breadth and depth, increasing the number of branches and accounts per capita and the amount of deposits to GDP. These effects are significant both statistically and economically, and are robust to the potential endogeneity of remittances, inclusion of a wide range of controls and even municipal fixed effects specifications using an alternative panel data set from a sample of municipalities.
Development Marketplace Winners : On the Pathway to Replication and Sustainability

( 2010-07) Grubisich, Tom

Even before Panos Varangis and his team of World Bank, insurance practitioners, and academics competed for a US$117,000 grant in Development Marketplace 2000, they were, like chess players, already planning how to fund and test their concept in countries beyond the scope of their DM application.
Changes in Returns to Education in Latin America : The Role of Demand and Supply of Skills

( 2010) Manacorda, Marco ; Sanchez-Paramo, Carolina ; Schady, Norbert

Using micro data for the urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, the authors document trends in men's returns to education during the 1980s and the 1990s and estimate the role of supply and demand factors in explaining the changes in skill premia. They propose a model of demand for skills with three production inputs, corresponding to workers with primary-, secondary-, and university-level education. Further, the authors demonstrate that an unprecedented rise in the supply of workers having completed secondary-level education depressed their wages relative to workers with primary-level education throughout Latin America. This supply shift was compounded by a generalized shift in the demand for workers with tertiary education.