03. Journals

2,911 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 120

Addressing declining female labor force participation in India: Does political empowerment make a difference?

(Taylor & Francis, 2022-02)

Despite income growth, fertility decline, and educational expansion, female labour force participation in rural India dropped precipitously over the last decade. Nation-wide individual-level data allow us to explore if random reservation of village leadership for females affected women’s access to job opportunities, their demand for participation in the labour force, and income as well as intra-household bargaining in the short-and medium term. Gender reservation of local leadership affected female but not male participation in public works and regular labour markets, their income, and their influence on key household decisions with a lag, suggesting that such reservation affected social norms and stereotypes.
Transnational Terrorist Recruitment: Evidence from Daesh Personnel Records

(MIT Press, 2022-01-25) Brockmeyer, Anne ; Do, Quy-Toan ; Joubert, Clement ; Bhatia, Kartika ; Abdel Jelil, Mohamed

Global terrorist organizations attract radicalized individuals across borders and constitute a threat for both sending and receiving countries. We use unique personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) to show that unemployment in sending countries is associated with the number of transnational terrorist recruits from these countries. The relationship is spatially heterogeneous, which is most plausibly attributable to travel costs. We argue that poor labor market opportunities generally push more individuals to join terrorist organizations, but at the same time limit their ability to do so when longer travel distances imply higher migration costs.
Violence and Newborn Health: Estimates for Colombia

(John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 2021-10-15) Rodriguez, Laura

This paper examines the relationship between maternal exposure to violence during pregnancy and newborn birthweight. The identification strategy exploits variation in the timing of exposure and in the geographic location of expectant mothers across Colombian municipalities. Exposure to violence in early pregnancy had a large negative impact on birthweight, primarily for boys, and the effect was mitigated by their mothers' education. Girls' birthweight was affected mainly by shocks in later stages of gestation. Furthermore, their mothers were more likely to engage in potentially harmful behaviors during the pregnancy. This evidence exposes the importance of parental responses in shaping the effect of exposure to violence on newborn health.
Growth in Syria: Losses from the War and Potential Recovery in the Aftermath

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-07-05) Devadas, Sharmila ; Elbadawi, Ibrahim ; Loayza, Norman V.

This paper addresses three questions: (1) what would have been the growth and income trajectory of Syria in the absence of war; (2) given the war, what explains the reduction in economic growth; and (3) what potential growth scenarios for Syria there could be in the aftermath of war. Conflict impact estimates point to negative GDP growth of −12% on average over 2011–2018, with output contracting to about one-third of the 2010 level. In post-conflict simulation scenarios, the growth drivers are affected by the assumed levels of reconstruction assistance, repatriation of refugees, and productivity improvements associated with three political settlement outcomes: a baseline (Sochi-plus) moderate scenario, an optimistic (robust political settlement) scenario, and a pessimistic (de facto balance of power) scenario. Respectively for these scenarios, GDP per capita average growth in the next two decades is projected to be 6.1%, 8.2%, or 3.1%, assuming a final and stable resolution of the conflict.
Does Pluralism Matter for the Fulfillment of the Right to Education? Exploring New Indices

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-06-09) Wodon, Quentin

There is not a lot of support in the international community today for the role played by the private sector, including faith-based schools, towards achieving the fourth sustainable development goal (SDG), which calls for ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education. Yet, education pluralism is called for in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In a separate paper published in this journal, a measure of education pluralism was suggested to reflect this idea. In this paper, that measure is combined with data on educational outcomes to assess whether taking pluralism seriously may affect assessments of the fulfillment of the right to education.
Long-term Well-being Among Survivors of the Rwandan and Cambodian Genocides

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-05-17) Milazzo, Annamaria ; Cuesta, Jose

This paper adds to the thin empirical literature estimating the long-term effects of exposure to conflict from in utero to adolescence on adult well-being. The effects through adolescence of the two worst genocides in recent history—those occurring in Rwanda (1994) and Cambodia (1975–79)—are examined. The Rwandan genocide is shown to have produced long-term health outcomes among women exposed to the conflict during adolescence. A further contribution is the analysis of gendered effects during adolescence, which is enabled by the availability of data on men’s height for Rwanda. The long-term effects are confirmed for men, however this appears to be the consequence of exposure during adolescence later than for women, a result that is consistent with the biological literature on the differential timing of the onset of puberty by gender. No significant effects are detected in the case of the Cambodian genocide and we discuss some issues that may influence this result. Although more research and better data are needed, our results are suggestive of adolescent-specific effects of the Rwandan genocide, which may be comparable or larger than those previously found for younger children.
Disrupted Service Delivery? The Impact of Conflict on Antenatal Care Quality in Kenya

(Frontiers Media, 2021-02-28) Chukwuma, Adanna ; Wong, Kerry L.M. ; Ekhator-Mobayode, Uche Eseosa

African countries facing conflict have higher levels of maternal mortality. Understanding the gaps in the utilization of high-quality maternal health care is essential to improving maternal survival in these states. Few studies have estimated the impact of conflict on the quality of health care. In this study, we estimated the impact of conflict on the quality of health care in Kenya, a country with multiple overlapping conflicts and significant disparities in maternal survival. Our study demonstrates the importance of designing maternal health policy based on the context-specific evidence on the mechanisms through which conflict affects health care. In Kenya, deterioration of equipment and infrastructure does not appear to be the main mechanism through which conflict has affected ANC quality. Further research should focus on better understanding the determinants of the gaps in process quality in conflict-affected settings, including provider motivation, competence, and incentives.
Trust to Pay? Tax Morale and Trust in Africa

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-02-14) Kouamé, Wilfried A.K.

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.
The Globalization of Refugee Flows

(Elsevier, 2021-01-21) Devictor, Xavier ; Do, Quy-Toan ; Levchenko, Andrei A.

This paper analyzes the spatial distribution of refugees over 1987–2017 and establishes several stylized facts about refugees today compared with past decades. Refugees still predominantly reside in developing countries neighboring their country of origin. However, compared to past decades, refugees today (i) travel longer distances, (ii) are less likely to seek protection in a neighboring country, (iii) are less geographically concentrated, and (iv) are more likely to reside in a high-income OECD country. The findings bring new evidence to the debate on refugee responsibility-sharing.
Clientelism and Identity

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-01) Habyarimana, James ; Houser, Daniel ; Khemani, Stuti ; Brech, Viktor ; Choi, Ginny Seung ; Roy, Moumita

Electoral clientelism or vote buying has been regarded as undermining democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of the state towards its citizens, especially the poor. Social identity as a form of political mobilization may contribute to this, enabling support to be won with clientelist transfers. This paper reports data from a novel laboratory experiment designed to examine whether clientelism can be sustained as a political strategy, and whether identity impacts the nature or efficacy of clientelism. Specifically, we design a voting and leadership game in order to examine whether individuals vote for clientelist allocations by a leader even at the expense of more efficient and egalitarian allocations. We find group identity does not significantly impact the prevalence of clientelist plans. Leaders are more likely, however, to choose allocations that provide fewer benefits (lower rents) to themselves when they are part of the majority in-group than when they are in the minority.