03. Journals
2,963 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 - 10 of 29
-
Publication
Games as Boundary Objects: Charting Trade-offs in Sustainable Livestock Transformation
(Taylor and Francis, 2020-03-27)Attempts to structurally transform segments of the agri-food system inevitably involve trade-offs between the priorities of actors with different incentives, perspectives and values. Trade-offs are context-specific, reflecting different socio-economic and political realities. We investigate the potential of structured boundary objects to facilitate exposing and reconciling these trade-offs within the context of multi-stakeholder social learning processes with pastoral and mixed crop-livestock communities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Building on boundary objects as items flexible enough to be understood by all without having one common definition, structured boundary objects visualize actors’ input in a comparable format to facilitate knowledge sharing. Stakeholders in each country used a simulation tool and board game to explore the implications of changing livestock stocking and management practices for the environment and for actors’ future socio-economic priorities. Using structured boundary objects elicited trade-offs between household food and animal feed, and between livestock for income, labor, and/ or cultural functions, reflecting the context-specific and subjective evaluations actors make when attempting to plan livelihood changes. Our findings suggest to policy and decision-makers that sustainable transition plans can be developed when stakeholders in local agri-food systems employ approaches that allow shared understandings of trade-offs inherent to sustainable agriculture to emerge. -
Publication
Economic Transformation in Africa from the Bottom Up: New Evidence from Tanzania
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)Tanzania's rapid labor productivity growth has been accompanied by a proliferation of small, largely informal firms. Using Tanzania's first nationally representative survey of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)—this paper explores the nature of these businesses. It finds that these firms are located in both rural and urban areas and that they operate primarily in trade services and manufacturing. Roughly half of all business owners say they would not leave their job for a full-time salaried position. Fifteen percent of these small businesses contribute significantly to economy-wide labor productivity. The most important policy implication of the evidence presented in this paper is that if the goal is to grow MSMEs with the potential to contribute to productive employment, policies must be targeted at the most promising firms. -
Publication
Cash Transfers and Health: Evidence from Tanzania
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-06)How do cash transfers conditioned on health clinic visits and school attendance impact health-related outcomes? Examining the 2010 randomized introduction of a program in Tanzania, this paper finds nuanced impacts. An initial surge in clinic visits after 1.5 years—due to more visits by those already complying with program health conditions and by non-compliers—disappeared after 2.5 years, largely due to compliers reducing above-minimal visits. The study finds significant increases in take-up of health insurance and the likelihood of seeking treatment when ill. Health improvements were concentrated among children ages 0–5 years rather than the elderly, and took time to materialize; the study finds no improvements after 1.5 years, but 0.76 fewer sick days per month after 2.5 years, suggesting the importance of looking beyond short-term impacts. Reductions in sick days were largest in villages with more baseline health workers per capita, consistent with improvements being sensitive to capacity constraints. These results are robust to adjustments for multiple hypothesis testing. -
Publication
What Drives Local Food Prices? Evidence from the Tanzanian Maize Market
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02)We examine the drivers of monthly changes in maize prices across 18 Tanzanian markets. Local prices respond three to four times faster to the main regional market (Nairobi) than to the international benchmark (US Gulf). More importantly, shocks from Nairobi account for only one third of the explained variation in domestic prices; the remaining two-thirds is accounted for by domestic influences (including harvest cycles, weather shocks, and trade policies). Further, we show that remoteness and the local agroecology systematically influence the behavior of food prices. -
Publication
Decomposing the Contribution of Migration to Poverty Reduction: Methodology and Application to Tanzania
(Taylor and Francis, 2019)In an economy with migration, poverty changes are composed of a number of forces, including the income gains and losses realized by the various migration streams. We present a simple but powerful decomposition methodology that uses panel data to measure the contributions of different migration streams to overall poverty change. An application to Tanzania shows the new insights that are provided – in particular on the role of migration to secondary towns in poverty reduction. -
Publication
From Stumbling Block to Enabler: The Role of Public Financial Management in Health Service Delivery in Tanzania and Zambia
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-11-06)The way governments manage resources through the budget cycle has important implications for health policy and whether governments achieve societal objectives such as efficiency, equity, quality, and accountability. Studies found a positive association between health service delivery outcomes and good governance of public finance; however, the mechanisms through which public financial management affects service delivery remain underexplored. This article maps the three stages of the budget cycle to common performance criteria used in health service delivery. It applies this approach to experiences in Tanzania and Zambia. The findings point to a number of stumbling blocks, including the lack of flexibility to provide additional resources for unexpected demand for care, misalignment between budgeting and planning, fragmented funding sources, rigid internal controls, insufficient budget provision leading to arrears, and a budget evaluation system that is excessively compliance driven and gives inadequate attention to issues of equity, quality, and efficiency in service delivery. -
Publication
Progressive Pathway to Universal Health Coverage in Tanzania: A Call for Preferential Resource Allocation Targeting the Poor
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-10-31)Universal health coverage (UHC) can be a vehicle for improving equity, health outcomes, and financial well-being. After publication of the World Health Organization’s report in 2010, many countries declared their goal of achieving UHC. A key lesson from research evidence and country experience in implementation of pro-poor UHC is that public budget plays a crucial role in financing the poor. It has long been recognized that if a country wants to reduce the gap between the poor and non-poor, deprived groups should receive preferential allocation of health care resources to achieve more rapid improvements in their health. Based on a technical analysis of public funds allocation mechanisms in Tanzania, we argue that these mechanisms should prioritize the poor more explicitly and give them preferential treatment to close the gap with the non-poor in service utilization and health outcomes. -
Publication
Not Your Average Job: Measuring Farm Labor in Tanzania
(Elsevier, 2018-01)Understanding the constraints to agricultural growth in Africa relies on the accurate measurement of smallholder labor. Yet, serious weaknesses in these statistics persist. The extent of bias in smallholder labor data is examined by conducting a randomized survey experiment among farming households in rural Tanzania. Agricultural labor estimates obtained through weekly surveys are compared with the results of reporting in a single end-of-season recall survey. The findings show strong evidence of recall bias: people in traditional recall-style modules reported working up to four times as many hours per person-plot as those reporting labor on a weekly basis. Recall bias manifests both in the intensive and extensive margins of labor reporting: while hours are over-reported in recall, the number of people and plots active in agricultural work are under-reported. The evidence suggests that this recall bias is driven not only by failures in memory, but also by the mental burdens of reporting on highly variable agricultural work patterns to provide a typical estimate. All things equal, studies suffering from this bias would understate agricultural labor productivity. -
Publication
Roads and Rural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)This paper assesses the relationship between access to markets and land cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a geo-referenced panel over four decades (1970–2010) during which the road network was significantly improved, we find a modest impact of improved market accessibility on local cropland expansion – especially in places that are exposed to better agricultural production conditions – as well as suggestive evidence of an increase in the local intensity of cultivation. Suggestive evidence of a positive association between improved market accessibility and local GDP growth beyond the impact of cropland expansion could reflect the stimulation of non-agricultural activities. -
Publication
Prevalence, Economic Contribution, and Determinants of Trees on Farms across Sub-Saharan Africa
(Elsevier, 2017-11)Trees on farms are often overlooked in agricultural and natural resource research and policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. This article addresses this gap using data from the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture in five countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. Trees on farms are widespread. On average, almost a third of rural smallholders grow trees. They account for an average of 17% of total annual gross income for tree-growing households and 6% for all rural households. Gender, land and labor endowments, and especially forest proximity and national context are key determinants of on-farm tree adoption and management. These new, national-scale insights on the prevalence, economic contribution and determinants of trees on farms in Africa lay the basis for exploring the interaction of agriculture, on-farm tree cultivation, and forestry to gain a more complete picture of the dynamics of rural livelihoods across the continent and beyond.