03. Journals
1,616 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
Sub-collections of this Collection
Items in this collection
1 - 9 of 9
-
Publication
Looking into the performance-based financing black box: Evidence from an impact evaluation in the health sector in Cameroon
(Oxford University Press, 2021-07)Performance-based financing (PBF) is a complex health systems intervention aimed at improving the coverage and quality of care. Several studies have shown a positive impact of PBF on health service coverage, often coupled with improvements in quality, but relatively little is known about the mechanisms driving those results. This article presents results of a randomized impact evaluation in Cameroon designed to isolate the role of specific components of the PBF approach with four study groups: (i) PBF with explicit financial incentives linked to results, (ii) direct financing with additional resources available for health providers not linked to performance, (iii) enhanced supervision and monitoring without additional resources and (iv) a control group. Overall, results indicate that, when compared with the pure control group, PBF in Cameroon led to significant increases in utilization for several services (child and maternal vaccinations, use of modern family planning), but not for others like antenatal care visits and facility-based deliveries. In terms of quality, PBF increased the availability of inputs and equipment, qualified health workers, led to a reduction in formal and informal user fees but did not affect the content of care. However, for many positively impacted outcomes, the differences between the PBF group and the group receiving additional financing not linked to performance are not significant, suggesting that additional funding rather than the explicit incentives might be driving improvements. In contrast, the intervention group offering enhanced supervision, coaching and monitoring without additional funding did not experience significant impacts compared to the control group. -
Publication
Unitary or Noncooperative Intrahousehold Model? Evidence from Couples in Uganda
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-04-05)We present an overview of the evidence regarding the unitary, collective and noncooperative models of household decision making and discuss how they can affect individual and household welfare. We then discuss the results of an artefactual experiment conducted in Uganda with spouses in order to test whether household members maximize common preferences, or instead are willing to pay a significant cost to hide money from their spouse. We find that both the unitary and non-cooperative models exist in the intra-household decision making process and that a “one-size fits all” model of household decision making is unlikely to be satisfactory. -
No Thumbnail AvailablePublication
Does Aid for Education Educate Children? Evidence from Panel Data
(World Bank, 2008-05-30)Most of the aid effectiveness literature has focused on the potential growth effects of aggregate aid, with inconclusive results. Considering that donors have repeatedly stressed the multidimensionality of their objectives, a more disaggregated view on aid effectiveness is warranted. The impact of aid on education is analyzed empirically for almost 100 countries over 1970–2004. The effectiveness of sector-specific aid is assessed within the framework of social production functions. The Millennium Development Goals related to education, particularly the goal of achieving universal primary school enrollment, are considered as outcome variables. The analysis suggests that higher per capita aid for education significantly increases primary school enrollment, while increased domestic government spending on education does not. This result is robust to the method of estimation, the use of instruments to control for the endogeneity of aid, and the set of control variables included in the estimations. -
Publication
Will African Agriculture Survive Climate Change?
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-08-23)Measurement of the likely magnitude of the economic impact of climate change on African agriculture has been a challenge. Using data from a survey of more than 9,000 farmers across 11 African countries, a cross-sectional approach estimates how farm net revenues are affected by climate change compared with current mean temperature. Revenues fall with warming for dryland crops (temperature elasticity of -1.9) and livestock (-5.4), whereas revenues rise for irrigated crops (elasticity of 0.5), which are located in relatively cool parts of Africa and are buffered by irrigation from the effects of warming. At first, warming has little net aggregate effect as the gains for irrigated crops offset the losses for dryland crops and livestock. Warming, however, will likely reduce dryland farm income immediately. The final effects will also depend on changes in precipitation, because revenues from all farm types increase with precipitation. Because irrigated farms are less sensitive to climate, where water is available, irrigation is a practical adaptation to climate change in Africa. -
Publication
What Have We Learned from a Decade of Manufacturing Enterprise Surveys in Africa?
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-08-02)In the early 1990s the World Bank launched the Regional Program on Enterprise Development (RPED) in several African countries, a key component of which was to collect data on manufacturing firms. The data sets built by these and subsequent enterprise surveys in Africa generated considerable research. This article surveys the research on the African business environment, focusing on risk, access to credit, labor, and infrastructure, and on how firms organize themselves and do business. It reviews the research on enterprise performance, including enterprise growth, investment, and exports. The article concludes with a discussion of policy lessons. -
Publication
The Long-Run Economic Costs of AIDS : A Model with an Application to South Africa
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-04-11)Primarily a disease of young adults, Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) imposes economic costs that could be devastatingly high in the long run by undermining the transmission of human capital the main driver of long-run economic growth across generations. AIDS makes it harder for victims' children to obtain an education and deprives them of the love, nurturing, and life skills that parents provide. These children will in turn find it difficult to educate their children, and so on. An overlapping generations model is used to show that an otherwise growing economy could decline to a low level subsistence equilibrium if hit with an AIDS type increase in premature adult mortality. Calibrating the model for South Africa, where the HIV prevalence rate is over 20 percent, simulations reveal that the economy could shrink to half its current size in about four generations in the absence of intervention. Programs to combat the disease and to support needy families could avert such a collapse, but they imply a fiscal burden of about 4 percent of Gross domestic product (GDP). -
Publication
Robust Multidimensional Spatial Poverty Comparisons in Ghana, Madagascar, and Uganda
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-04-06)Spatial poverty comparisons are investigated in three African countries using multidimensional indicators of well-being. The work is analogous to the univariate stochastic dominance literature in that it seeks poverty orderings that are robust to the choice of multidimensional poverty lines and indices. In addition, the study seeks to ensure that the comparisons are robust to aggregation procedures for multiple welfare variables. In contrast to earlier work, the methodology applies equally well to what can be defined as union, intersection, and intermediate approaches to dealing with multidimensional indicators of well-being. Furthermore, unlike much of the stochastic dominance literature, this work computes the sampling distributions of the poverty estimators to perform statistical tests of the difference in poverty measures. The methods are applied to two measures of well-being, the log of household expenditures per capita and children's height-forage z scores, using data from the 1988 Ghana Living Standards Study survey, the 1993 National Household Survey in Madagascar, and the 1999 National Household Survey in Uganda. Bivariate poverty comparisons are at odds with univariate comparisons in several interesting ways. Most important, it cannot always be concluded that poverty is lower in urban areas in one region compared with that in rural areas in another, even though univariate comparisons based on household expenditures per capita almost always lead to that conclusion. -
Publication
An Empirical Analysis of State and Private Sector Provision of Water Services in Africa
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-01-19)Under pressure from donor agencies and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, some developing countries have experimented with the privatization of water services. This article reviews the econometric evidence on the effects of water privatization in developing economies and presents new results using statistical data envelopment analysis and stochastic cost frontier techniques and data from Africa. The analysis fails to show evidence of better performance by private utilities than by state owned utilities. Among the reasons why water privatization could prove problematic in lower-income economies are the technology of water provision and the nature of the product, transaction costs, and regulatory weaknesses. -
Publication
Asymmetries in the Union Wage Premium in Ghana
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05)The article uses a matched employer-employee data set for Ghana and adopts a quantile regression approach that allows the effects of unionization to vary across the conditional wage distribution. It is shown that if there are intrafirm differences in unionization, there does appear to be a premium among poorer paid workers in the formal sector. Although this cannot be given a causal interpretation, it suggests important issues about how unions may affect one part of the labor market.