03. Journals

2,963 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2210

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

Now showing 1 - 10 of 21

Income and Wealth Inequality in Hong Kong, 1981–2020: The Rise of Pluto-Communism?

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-10-08) Piketty, Thomas ; Yang, Li

The objective of this paper is to better understand the evolution and institutional roots of Hong Kong's growing economic inequality and political cleavages. By combining multiple sources of data (household surveys, fiscal data, wealth rankings, national accounts) and methodological innovations, two main findings are obtained. First, he evidence suggests a very large rise in income and wealth inequality in Hong Kong over the last four decades. Second, based on the latest opinion poll data, business elites, who carry disproportionate weight in Hong Kong's Legislative Council, are found to be more likely to vote for the pro-establishment camp (presumably to ensure that policies are passed that protect their political and economic interests). This paper argues that the unique alliance of government and business elites in a partially democratic political system is the plausible institutional root of Hong Kong's rising inequality and political cleavages.
Finding the Poor vs. Measuring Their Poverty: Exploring the Drivers of Targeting Effectiveness in Indonesia

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-10) Bah, Adama ; Bazzi, Samuel ; Sumarto, Sudarno ; Tobias, Julia

Centralized targeting registries are increasingly used to allocate social assistance benefits in developing countries. There are two key design issues that matter for targeting accuracy: (i) which households to survey for inclusion in the registry; and (ii) how to rank surveyed households. We attempt to identify their relative importance by evaluating Indonesia's Unified Database for Social Protection Programs (UDB), among the largest targeting registries in the world, used to provide social assistance to over 25 million households. Linking administrative data with an independent household survey, we find that the UDB system is more progressive than previous, program-specific targeting approaches. However, simulating an alternative targeting system based on enumerating all households, we find a one-third reduction in undercoverage of the poor compared to focusing on households registered in the UDB. Overall, there are large gains in targeting performance from improving the initial registration stage relative to the ranking stage.
Empowering Cities: Good for Growth? Evidence from the People's Republic of China

(The MIT Press, 2018-03) Mukim, Megha ; Zhu, T. Juni

This paper utilizes a countrywide process of county-to-city upgrading in the 1990s to identify whether extending the powers of urban local governments leads to better firm outcomes. The paper hypothesizes that since local leaders in newly promoted cities have an incentive to utilize their new administrative remit to maximize gross domestic product and employment, there should be improvements in economic outcomes. In fact, aggregate firm-level outcomes do not necessarily improve after county-to-city graduation. However, state-owned enterprises perform better after graduation, with increased access to credit through state-owned banks as a possible explanation. Importantly, newly promoted cities with high capacity generally produce better aggregate firm outcomes compared with newly promoted cities with low capacity. The conclusions are twofold. First, relaxing credit constraints for firms could lead to large increases in their operations and employment. Second, increasing local government's administrative remit is not enough to lead to better firm and economic outcomes; local capacity is of paramount importance.
Migrant Labor Markets and the Welfare of Rural Households in the Developing World: Evidence from China

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-02-01) de Brauw, Alan ; Giles, John

Increased ability to migrate from China’s rural villages contributed to significant increases in the consumption per capita of both non-durable and durable goods, and these effects were larger in magnitude for households that were relatively poor before the easing of restrictions to migration. With increased out-migration, poorer households invested more in housing and durable goods than rich households,while richer households invested significantly more in non-agricultural production assets. As migration became easier, increased participation in migrant employment was greater among poorer households on both the extensive and intensive margins, and poorer households reduced labor days in agriculture.
The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-02-01) Eggleston, Karen ; Sun, Ang ; Zhan, Zhaoguo

We study the impact of China’s new rural pension program on promoting migration of labor by applying a regression discontinuity analysis to this new pension program. The results reveal a perceptible difference in labor migration among adult children whose parents are just above and below the age of pension eligibility: The adult children with a parent just attaining the pension-eligible age are more likely to be labor migrants compared with those with a parent just below the pension-eligible age. We also find that with a pension-eligible parent, the adult children are more likely to have off-farm jobs. These abrupt changes in household behavior at the cutoff suggest that these households are credit constrained. In addition, we find that the pension’s effect on migration is greater among adult children with a parent in poor health; pension-eligible elderly report that they are more likely to use inpatient services when needed and less likely to rely on adult children for care when they are ill. These results suggest that (expectations regarding) providing care for elderly parents has constrained labor migration from China's rural areas to some extent, and that the new rural pension program has helped to relax this constraint.
Privatization in Developing Countries: What Are the Lessons of Recent Experience?

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-02-01) Estrin, Saul ; Pelletier, Adeline

This paper reviews the recent empirical evidence on privatization in developing countries, with particular emphasis on new areas of research such as the distributional impacts of privatization. Overall, the literature now reflects a more cautious and nuanced evaluation of privatization. Thus, private ownership alone is no longer argued to automatically generate economic gains in developing economies; pre-conditions (especially the regulatory infrastructure) and an appropriate process of privatization are important for attaining a positive impact. These comprise a list which is often challenging in developing countries: well-designed and sequenced reforms; the implementation of complementary policies; the creation of regulatory capacity; attention to poverty and social impacts; and strong public communication. Even so, the studies do identify the scope for efficiency-enhancing privatization that also promotes equity in developing countries.
How and Why Does Immigration Affect Crime? Evidence from Malaysia

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-02-01) Ozden, Caglar ; Testaverde, Mauro ; Wagner, Mathis

The perception that immigration fuels crime is an important source of anti-immigrant sentiment. Using Malaysian data for 2003-10, this paper provides estimates of the overall impact of economic immigration on crime, and evidence on different socio-economic mechanisms underpinning this relationship. The IV estimates suggest that immigration decreases crime rates, with an elasticity of around −0.97 for property and -1.8 violent crimes. Three-quarters of the negative causal relationship between immigration and property crime rates can be explained by the impact of immigration on the underlying economic environment faced by natives. The reduction in violent crime rates is less readily explained by these factors.
The Long-term Impacts of International Migration: Evidence from a Lottery

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-02-01) Gibson, John ; McKenzie, David ; Rohorua, Halahingano ; Stillman, Steven

We examine the long-term impacts of international migration by comparing immigrants who had successful ballot entries in a migration lottery program, and first moved almost a decade ago, with people who had unsuccessful entries into those same ballots. The long-term gain in income is found to be similar in magnitude to the gain in the first year despite migrants upgrading their education and changing their locations and occupations. This results in large sustained benefits to their immediate family who have substantially higher consumption, durable asset ownership, savings, and dietary diversity. In contrast we find no measurable impact on extended family.
The Rise of the Middle Class and Economic Growth in ASEAN

(Elsevier, 2018-01-05) Brueckner, Markus ; Dabla-Norris, Era ; Gradstein, Mark ; Lederman, Daniel

We present instrumental variables estimates of the relationship between the share of income accruing to the middle class and GDP per capita. The increase in GDP per capita that ASEAN economies experienced during 1970–2010 significantly contributed to a higher share of income accruing to the middle class in these countries. Econometric model estimates show that the impact of a rise of the middle class on economic growth depends on initial levels of GDP per capita. In the majority of ASEAN countries, a rise of the middle class that is unrelated to GDP per capita growth would have had a significant negative effect on economic growth for levels of ASEAN economies' GDP per capita in 1970. In contrast, for recent values of GDP per capita a rise of the middle class would positively contribute to growth of GDP per capita in ASEAN. We show that investment is an important channel through which the income share of the middle class affects economic growth.
Hayek, Local Information, and Commanding Heights: Decentralizing State-Owned Enterprises in China

(American Economic Association, 2017-08) Huang, Zhangkai ; Li, Lixing ; Ma, Guangrong ; Xu, Lixin Colin

Hayek (1945) argues that local information is key to understanding the efficiency of alternative economic systems and whether production should be centralized or decentralized. The Chinese experience of decentralizing SOEs confirms this insight: when the distance to the government is farther, the SOE is more likely to be decentralized, and this distance-decentralization link is more pronounced with higher communication costs and greater firm-performance heterogeneity. However, when the Chinese central government oversees SOEs in strategic industries, the distance-decentralization link is muted. We also consider alternative agency-cost-based explanations, and do not find much support.