03. Journals
2,963 items available
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These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
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Publication
Myth-Busting? Confronting Six Common Perceptions about Unconditional Cash Transfers as a Poverty Reduction Strategy in Africa
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-08)This paper summarizes evidence on six perceptions associated with cash transfer programming, using eight rigorous evaluations conducted on large-scale government unconditional cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa under the Transfer Project. Specifically, it investigates if transfers: 1) induce higher spending on alcohol or tobacco; 2) are fully consumed (rather than invested); 3) create dependency (reduce participation in productive activities); 4) increase fertility; 5) lead to negative community-level economic impacts (including price distortion and inflation); and 6) are fiscally unsustainable. The paper presents evidence refuting each claim, leading to the conclusion that these perceptions—insofar as they are utilized in policy debates—undercut potential improvements in well-being and livelihood strengthening among the poor, which these programs can bring about in sub-Saharan Africa, and globally. It concludes by underscoring outstanding research gaps and policy implications for the continued expansion of unconditional cash transfers in the region and beyond. -
Publication
What Really Works to Improve Learning in Developing Countries?: An Analysis of Divergent Findings in Systematic Reviews
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-08)Over the course of just two years, at least six reviews have examined interventions that seek to improve learning outcomes in developing countries. Although the reviews ostensibly have the same objective, they reach sometimes starkly different conclusions. The first objective of this paper is to identify why reviews diverge in their conclusions and how future reviews can be more effective. The second objective is to identify areas of overlap in the recommendations of existing reviews of what works to improve learning. This paper demonstrates that divergence in the recommendations of learning reviews is largely driven by differences in the samples of research incorporated in each review. Of 229 studies with student learning results, the most inclusive review incorporates less than half of the total studies. Across the reviews, two classes of programs are recommended with some consistency. Pedagogical interventions that tailor teaching to student learning levels—either teacher-led or facilitated by adaptive learning software—are effective at improving student test scores, as are individualized, repeated teacher training interventions often associated with a specific task or tool. Future reviews will be most useful if they combine narrative review with meta-analysis, conduct more exhaustive searches, and maintain low aggregation of intervention categories. -
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
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.