03. Journals

2,932 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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Regional Convergence in Bangladesh Using Night Lights (Published online: 10 Jul 2022)

(Taylor and Francis, 2023-10-12) Basher, Syed Abul ; Rashid, Salim ; Uddin, Mohammad Riad

We analyse economic convergence across 64 districts of Bangladesh using newly harmonized satellite night light data over 1992–2018. The growth in night lights – taken as a proxy for regional economic activity – reveals overwhelming evidence of absolute convergence. Regional differences in night light (or income) growth have been shrinking at an annual convergence rate of 4.57%, corresponding to a half-life of 15 years. Net migration plays a relatively prominent role in the regional convergence process.
Relationships between Christian Schools and the State: A Comparative Analysis for Five sub-Saharan African Countries

(Taylor and Francis, 2022-01-28) Scheunpfluga, Annette ; Wenz, Mark ; Rubindamayugi, Mimii Brown ; Lutswambac, Jean Kasereka ; Njobatid, Frederick ; Nyiramanae, Christine ; Mutabazi, Samuel ; Njoyaf, Claude Ernest ; Raharijaonag, Onja ; Wodonh, Quentin

This article provides a comparative analysis of Christian faith-based schooling in five African countries, including data on the proportions of faith-based schools, financing models, and forms of organization vis-à-vis the state. The case studies represent different forms and models. In all of the countries, at least one in six schools is run by a church. Christian churches do not see themselves as ‘private schools’ but as public providers working for the public common good. Faith-based schools contribute not only to making sure that children go to school and learn while in school, but also to sharing ideals ranging from social justice and equity, to peace and democracy, and social participation and inclusion. The article concludes with some reflections on future challenges for faith-based schools, mainly related to their funding and the lack of data to assess challenges and opportunities.
Siting Priorities for Congestion-Reducing Projects in Dhaka: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Traffic Congestion, Travel Times, Air Pollution, and Exposure Vulnerability

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-08-30) Dasgupta, Susmita ; Wheeler, David ; Khaliquzzaman, M. ; Huq, Mainul

Traffic congestion increases travel time and is a major source of pollution and health damage in developing-country cities. Data scarcity frequently confines traffic improvement projects to sites where congestion can be easily measured. This article uses spatiotemporal data from new global sources to revisit the siting problem in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where local congestion measures are augmented by estimates of citywide travel time, pollution exposure, and pollution vulnerability. We combine Google Traffic data with an econometric model linking traffic, pollution readings from a local monitoring station, and weather data to estimate the spatial distribution of vehicular pollution. We explore pollution-vulnerability implications by incorporating spatial distributions of poor households, children, and the elderly. Using the Open Source Routing Machine and OpenStreetMaps, we estimate systemwide travel-time gains from reducing congestion at each point in a grid covering the Dhaka metro area. We find a large divergence of siting priorities in single-dimensional exercises that focus exclusively on local congestion, citywide travel time, vehicular pollution, or vulnerable-resident pollution exposure. By implication, optimal siting requires a social objective function with explicit weights assigned to each of the four dimensions. The new global information sources permit extending this multidimensional approach to many cities throughout the developing world.
Regional Electricity Trade for Hydropower

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-05) Timilsina, Govinda R.

This study examines the importance of enhancing cross-border transmission interconnections and regional electricity trade to promote hydropower in the South Asia region and it quantifies the potential of hydropower development and trade under alternative scenarios. The paper shows that regional electricity trade is critical for the exploitation of the untapped hydropower resources in South Asia. It finds that hydropower capacity would increase by 2.7 times over the next two decades if a regional electricity market is developed. If a moderate carbon tax is added on top of it, hydropower capacity would be more than three times higher than the current level.
Mobile Phones, Household Welfare and Women's Empowerment: Evidence from Rural Off-grid Regions of Bangladesh

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-04) Hossain, Monzur ; Samad, Hussain

Using household survey data from off-grid regions of rural Bangladesh, this study attempts to assess the impacts of mobile phone use on household welfare and women’s empowerment. Using two propensity score-based weighted regressions (IPW and AIPW), this study finds that mobile phone use increases household income (3 to 10 percent) from different sources, such as small businesses and remittances; improves women’s empowerment; and facilitates consumption smoothing during periods of shocks. Thus, favorable policies on investment in mobile telephone technologies, tariffs on talk time and internet usage, and mobile innovations, such as mobile financial services could reduce communication bottlenecks and digital divide in rural lagging regions that will help achieve a balanced regional development. Simultaneously, policies to avoid adverse impact of mobile phone usage should also be in place.
Pathways to Better Nutrition in South Asia: Evidence on the Effects of Food and Agricultural Interventions

(Elsevier, 2021-03) Dizon, Felipe ; Josephson, Anna ; Raju, Dhushyanth

In South Asia, nearly half a billion people are malnourished. This paper examines the links of food and agriculture with nutrition in South Asia, with the goal of informing policy to reduce hunger and malnutrition in the region. We investigate pathways including public food transfer programs, agricultural diversification, and different methods of food fortification. We find that public food transfer programs, used to make food available and affordable to poor households, are often unable to significantly protect or promote nutrition. But several supply-side food and agricultural interventions show promise in improving nutrition, although their effects have yet to be well identified. These include the cultivation of home gardens, animal agriculture, and use of biofortification and post-harvest fortification. All these efforts to reduce hunger and malnutrition will be futile, however, without parallel efforts to mitigate rising challenges in the region, including those posed by climate change, urbanization, food loss and food waste, and food safety hazards.
Delivering Education to the Underserved through a Public-Private Partnership Program in Pakistan

(MIT Press, 2020-12-20) Barrera-Osorio, Felipe ; Blakeslee, David S. ; Hoover, Matthew ; Linden, Leigh ; Raju, Dhushyanth ; Ryan, Stephen P.

We evaluate a program that recruited local entrepreneurs to open and operate new schools in 200 underserved villages in Sindh, Pakistan. School operators received a per-student subsidy to provide tuition-free primary education, and in half the villages received a higher subsidy for females. The program increased enrollment by 32 percentage points, and test scores by 0.63 standard deviations, with no difference across the two subsidy schemes. Estimating a structural model of the demand and supply for school inputs, we find that program schools selected inputs similar to those of a social planner who internalizes all the education benefits to society.
Curse of the Mummy-ji: The Influence of Mothers-in-Law on Women in India

(John Wiley and Sons, 2020-08-23) Anukriti, S ; Herrera-Almanza, Catalina ; Pathak, Praveen K. ; Karra, Mahesh

Restrictive social norms and strategic constraints imposed by family members can limit women's access to and benefits from social networks, especially in patrilocal societies. We characterize young married women's social networks in rural India and analyze how inter-generational power dynamics within the household affect their network formation. Using primary data from Uttar Pradesh, we show that co-residence with the mother-in-law is negatively correlated with her daughter-in-law's mobility and ability to form social connections outside the household, especially those related to health, fertility, and family planning. Our findings suggest that the mother-in-law's restrictive behavior is potentially driven by the misalignment of fertility preferences between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law. The lack of peers outside the household lowers the daughter-in-law's likelihood of visiting a family planning clinic and of using modern contraception. We find suggestive evidence that this is because outside peers (a) positively influence daughter-in-law's beliefs about the social acceptability of family planning and (b) enable the daughter-in-law to overcome mobility constraints by accompanying her to health clinics. Wiley Terms and Conditions, https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/self-archiving.html
Water and Sanitation in Dhaka Slums: Access, Quality, and Informality in Service Provision

(Taylor and Francis, 2020-07-16) Haque, Sabrina ; Yanez-Pagans, Monica ; Arias-Granada, Yurani ; Joseph, George

Slum populations are commonly characterized to have poorly developed water and sanitation systems and speculated to access services through informal channels. However, there are limited representative profiles of water and sanitation services in slums, making it difficult to prioritize interventions that will make services safer for residents. This cross-sectional study examines quality and provision of access to water and sanitation services in government slums across Dhaka, Bangladesh. Access is overall high but is subject to quality issues related to safety, reliability, and liability. Services are often operated by informal middlemen at various stages of provision.
Education Spillovers in Farm Productivity: Revisiting the Evidence

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Gille, Véronique

This paper exploits the social organization of India to revisit the question of education spillovers in farm productivity. The fact that social interactions mainly occur within castes in rural India provides tools to show that the observed correlation between farm productivity and neighbors’ education is likely to be a spillover effect. In particular, there are no cross-caste and no cross-occupation effects, which underlines that, under specific assumptions, which are stated and explored in the paper, the education of neighbors does not capture the effect of group unobservables. This evidence is complemented by separate estimations by crops, which show results that are consistent with education spillovers. The strategy used in this paper helps understand and interpret previous findings from the literature.