03. Journals

2,963 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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Development with a Human Face

( 2011-04) NdunGabonne, Njongonkulu

Archbishop Njongonkulu NdunGabonne is Head of African Monitor, a pan-African nonprofit or Gabonnization that monitors development funding, delivery, and impact and helps bring African voices to the development agenda.
Demographics and Development Policy

( 2011-04) Bloom, David E. ; Canning, David

By late 2011 there will be more than 7 billion people in the world, with 8 billion in 2025 and 9 billion before 2050. New technologies and institutions, and a lot of hard work have enabled us to avoid widespread Malthusian misery. Global income per capita has increased 150 percent since 1960, outpacing the growth of population. But we cannot be sure that incomes will continue to grow.
South Meets South : Enriching the Development Menu

( 2010-10) Maruri, Enrique ; Fraeters, Han

African countries, like Nigeria, with an emerging information technology (IT) industry, are examples of how globalization has opened up vast new opportunities. Information technology and business process outsourcing is a multibillion dollar talent-driven industry with a market that is still untapped. Africa is keen on exploring this new frontier which has the potential to create thousands of quality jobs for its young people. But to do so, it must nurture the right skills. Where can these be found?
The Bogotá Spirit : South-South Peers and Partners at the Practice-Policy Nexus

( 2010-10) Schulz, Nils-Sjard

On a warm evening in late March of this year, more than 500 enthusiastic delegates from around the world poured out of the Chamber of Commerce building in Bogot�, with a shared vision that South-South cooperation would reshape today�s development cooperation landscape. Despite the Colombian capital�s dizzying altitude of 2,800 meters, their zeal for effective South-South knowledge exchange and mutual learning left the participants of the Bogot� High Level Event on South-South cooperation and Capacity Development clear headed and with a long list of ideas, projects and plans, for their countries and regions, and for their multilateral, parliamentary, civil society, and research organizations.
Managing Knowledge in Organizations : Summary of an Interview with Marshall Van Alstyne and Hind Benbya

( 2010-10) Leonard, Aaron

Knowledge exchange among practitioners in low- and middle-income countries is now at the forefront of global development policy formulation. But the question of how to connect the right people with the right knowledge at the right time isn�t new. Knowledge Management (KM) has been an established discipline since the 1990s. We talked with MIT�s Marshall Van Alstyne and Montpellier�s Hind Benbya about the state of knowledge management and information exchange in organizations today, and how new practices like knowledge markets can help us find better solutions to some of today�s trickiest development challenges.
China's International Poverty Reduction Center as a Platform for South-South Learning

( 2010-10) Wu, Zhong ; Karp, Philip ; Wang, Yan

After attending a South-South experience-sharing event in China, a number of African officials wondered: "How come China is able to develop and retain its implementation capacity, whereas our countries suffer from brain-drain?"
Agricultural Employment Trends in Asia and Africa

(World Bank, 2010-02-01) Headey, Derek ; Bezemer, Dirk ; Hazell, Peter B.

Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and agricultural employment is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such as Asia and Africa. Due to its labor-intensive Green Revolution and strong farm–nonfarm linkages, Asia's development path is mostly characterized by fast growth with relatively slow agricultural exits. In contrast to Asia, urban biased policies, low rural population density, and high rates of population growth have led a number of African countries down a path of slow economic growth with surprisingly rapid agricultural exits. Despite this divergence both continents now face daunting employment problems. Asia appears to be increasingly vulnerable to rising inequality, slower job creation, and shrinking farm sizes, suggesting that Asian governments need to refocus on integrating smallholders and lagging regions into increasingly commercialized rural and urban economies. Africa, in contrast, has yet to achieve its own Green Revolution, which would still be a highly effective tool for job creation and poverty reduction. However, the diversity of its endowments and its tighter budget constraints mean that agricultural development strategies in Africa need to be highly context specific, financially sustainable, and more evidence-based.
Gender, Poverty and Demography

(World Bank, 2009-11-30) Buvinic, Mayra ; Gupta, Monica Da ; Casabonne, Ursula

Much has been written on gender inequality and how it affects fertility and mortality outcomes as well as economic outcomes. What is not well understood is the role of gender inequality, embedded in the behavior of the family, the market, and society, in mediating the impact of demographic processes on economic outcomes. This article reviews the empirical evidence on the possible economic impacts of gender inequalities that work by exacerbating demographic stresses associated with different demographic scenarios and reducing the prospects of gains when demographic conditions improve. It defines four demographic scenarios and discusses which public policies are more effective in each scenario in reducing the constraints that gender inequality imposes on poverty reduction
Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction

(World Bank, 2009-11-30) de Janvry, Alain ; Sadoulet, Elisabeth

Agricultural growth has long been recognized as an important instrument for poverty reduction. Yet, measurements of this relationship are still scarce and not always reliable. The authors present additional evidence at both the sectoral and household levels based on recent data. Results show that rural poverty reduction has been associated with growth in yields and in agricultural labor productivity, but that this relation varies sharply across regional contexts. GDP growth originating in agriculture induces income growth among the 40 percent poorest, which is on the order of three times larger than growth originating in the rest of the economy. The power of agriculture comes not only from its direct poverty reduction effect but also from its potentially strong growth linkage effects on the rest of the economy. Decomposing the aggregate decline in poverty into a rural contribution, an urban contribution, and a population shift component shows that rural areas contributed more than half the observed aggregate decline in poverty. Finally, using the example of Vietnam, the authors show that rapid growth in agriculture has opened pathways out of poverty for farming households. While the effectiveness of agricultural growth in reducing poverty is well established, the effectiveness of public investment in inducing agricultural growth is still incomplete and conditional on context.
Evaluating Recipes for Development Success

(World Bank, 2007-09-30) Dixit, Avinash

Evaluating Recipes for Development Success Avinash Dixit This article offers a provocative critique of the ability of research on the impact of institutions on growth to offer immediate and practical recommendations for reforming and redesigning institutions in developing countries and transition economies. The article suggests a Bayesian diagnostic procedure to identify the causes of economic failure in an individual country as a first step toward remedying the failure. The main purpose of the most scholarly research, both theoretical and empirical, is to improve our understanding of the phenomena and processes being studied. In the concluding section, I suggest a framework or methodology of research that combines general conceptual and empirical findings from academic research and the experience of practitioners to help narrow or identify the causes of failures in individual countries. Besley and Burgess (2002), using panel data from India, find that an informed and active electorate leads to effective incentives for governments to respond to economic problems and that mass media play an important part. Acemoglu (2003) argues that the lack of third-party enforcement in political contracts makes it harder to make credible commitments, and that this explains the absence of a Coase theorem ensuring efficient outcomes in political bargaining. Finally, the theoretical literature, using a repeated-game framework, shows how a partial improvement of an imperfect formal system, by providing a better outside alternative and thereby lessening the harmful consequences of breaking a relational contract, can worsen the outcomes of the informal system (Baker, Gibbons, and Murphy 1994; Dixit 2004). They find that a country's initial conditions are more important than policy changes in determining its economic performance during the first few years of transition; that is, whether the reforms are rapid or gradual is less important. Pmn Avinash Dixit 151 If we observe a particular effect, say E7, then the Bayesian posterior probability that a particular cause, say C5, is present becomes p P Pm 5 5;7 : i 1 pi Pi;7 If we want to be nearly certain whether a cause, say C5, is present, we need to find an outcome, say E7, which will more typically be a cluster of outcomes or symptoms and might be called a "syndrome," such that It is very unlikely to occur when the underlying cause is any other cause, that is, Pi7 is close to It is very likely to occur when C5 is present, that is, P5,7 is close to one, so the rest of the P5,j's are close to zero, and if some other effect is observed, the posterior probability of C5 becomes close to zero.