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 173

Borrower Leakage from Costly Screening: Evidence from SME Lending in Peru

(Elsevier, 2021-11) Arraiz, Irani ; Bruhn, Miriam ; Roth, Benjamin N. ; Ruiz-Ortega, Claudia ; Stucchi, Rodolfo

We provide evidence that commercial lenders in Peru suffer leakages in their loan approval process. Leveraging a discontinuity in the loan approval process of a large bank, we find that receiving a loan approval from the bank causes loan applicants to receive offers from other financial institutions as well. Competing lenders captured almost three quarters of the new loans to previously financially excluded borrowers. Importantly, many of these borrowers never took a loan from our partner bank, even after our partner bank approved them. Lenders may therefore underinvest in screening new borrowers and expanding financial inclusion, as their competitors reap some of the benefit. Our results highlight that information spillovers between lenders may operate outside of credit registries.
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.
Prioritizing Job Creation without Undermining Public Works Construction among Road Improvement Projects in Rural Nicaragua

(Taylor and Francis, 2021-04-20) Garz, Seth ; Perova, Elizaveta

We evaluate the impacts of a road rehabilitation workfare project in Nicaragua. Our results reveal that the substitution of labour-intensive manual paving of dirt roads for commercial paving technology did not undermine the primary goal of increasing access to a paved road, which grew by 16.4 percentage points. The project did not increase overall employment, but was associated with an increase in working as a labourer; though, we do not find specific substitution away from agriculture or self-employment as identified in other work. We also find impacts on education and health, extending similar findings from African and Asian regions.
Persistent Misallocation and the Returns to Education in Mexico

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Levy, Santiago ; López-Calva, Luis F.

Over the last two decades, Mexico has experienced macroeconomic stability, an open trade regime, and substantial progress in education. Yet average workers’ earnings have stagnated, and earnings of those with higher schooling have fallen, compressing the earnings distribution and lowering the returns to education. This paper argues that distortions that misallocate resources toward less-productive firms explain these phenomena, because these firms are less intensive in well-educated workers compared with more-productive ones. It shows that while the relative supply of workers with more years of schooling has increased, misallocation of resources toward less-productive firms has persisted. These two trends have generated a widening mismatch between the supply of, and the demand for, educated workers. The paper breaks down worker earnings into observable and unobservable firm and individual worker characteristics, and computes a counterfactual earnings distribution in the absence of misallocation. The main finding is that in the absence of misallocation average earnings would be higher, and that earnings differentials across schooling levels would widen, raising the returns to education. A no-misallocation path is constructed for the wage premium. Depending on parameter values, this path is found to be rising or constant, in contrast to the observed downward path. The paper concludes arguing that the persistence of misallocation impedes Mexico from taking full advantage of its investments in the education of its workforce.
Training to Teach Science: Experimental Evidence from Argentina

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Albornoz, Facundo ; Anauati, María Victoria ; Furman, Melina ; Luzuriaga, Mariana ; Podestá, María Eugenia ; Taylor, Inés

This paper evaluates the learning impact of different teacher training methods using a randomized controlled trial implemented in 70 state schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A control group receiving standard teacher training was compared with two alternative treatment arms: providing a structured curriculum unit or receiving both the unit and weekly coaching. Following a 12-week intervention, there are substantial learning gains for students whose teachers were trained using structured curriculum units, as well as for those whose teachers received coaching (between 55 percent and 64 percent of a standard deviation more than those students in the control group). Coaching teachers does not appear to be cost-effective, as the unit cost per 0.1 standard deviation is more than twice the cost of using only the structured curriculum unit. However, additional coaching is particularly beneficial for inexperienced teachers with less than two years of teaching science. Coaching teachers also showed specific gains for girls, who both learned and declared to enjoy science lessons more. High-performing students especially benefited from both interventions, with students from coached teachers performing particularly well in harder questions. Using structured curriculum units and providing coaching also affected teacher perceptions: teachers expressed that they enjoyed teaching science more and taught more hours of science, and that their students developed more skills. Results from a follow-up survey suggest persistent change in teacher practice, with the vast majority reporting using the structured curriculum unit one year after the intervention.
Informed Trading in Business Groups

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Pedraza, Alvaro

Business groups, which are collections of legally independent companies with a significant amount of common ownership, dominate private sector activity in developing countries. This paper studies information flows within these groups by examining the trading performance of institutional investors in firms that belong to the same group. Using a novel dataset with complete transaction records in Colombia, this paper estimates the difference in returns between trades of asset managers in group-affiliated companies and trades of non-affiliated managers in the same stocks during the same period. The data show that affiliated managers display superior timing ability and that their trades outperform those of non-affiliated managers by 0.85 percent per month. The evidence suggests that institutional investors with group affiliation access information that is only available to members of the group. In order to limit the use of private information, financial authorities might need to expand their disclosure rules to monitor the trades of group-affiliated investors.
Gender, Informal Employment and Trade Liberalization in Mexico

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Yahmed, Sarra Ben ; Bombarda, Pamela

This paper studies how import liberalization affects formal employment across gender. The theory offers a mechanism to explain how male and female formal employment shares can respond differently to trade liberalization through labor reallocation across tradable and nontradable sectors. Using Mexican data over the period 1993–2001, we find that Mexican tariff cuts increase the probability of working formally for both men and women within four-digit manufacturing industries. The formalization of jobs within tradable sectors is driven by large firms. Constructing a regional tariff measure, we find that regional exposure to import liberalization increases the probability of working formally in the manufacturing sector for both men and women, and especially for men. However in the service sectors, the probability of working formally decreases for low-skilled women.
Do Information Technologies Improve Teenagers’ Sexual Education? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Colombia

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Chong, Alberto ; Gonzalez-Navarro, Marco ; Karlan, Dean ; Valdivia, Martín

This study reports results from a randomized evaluation of a mandatory six-month Internet-based sexual education course implemented across public junior high schools in 21 Colombian cities. Six months after finishing the course, the study finds a 0.4 standard deviation improvement in knowledge, a 0.2 standard deviation improvement in attitudes, and a 55 percent increase in the likelihood of redeeming vouchers for condoms as a result of taking the course. The data provide no evidence of spillovers to control classrooms within treatment schools. However, the analysis provides compelling evidence that treatment effects are enhanced when a larger share of a student's friends also takes the course. The low cost of the online course along with the effectiveness the study documents suggests this technology is a viable alternative for improving sexual education in middle-income countries.
Saving Water with a Nudge (or Two): Evidence from Costa Rica on the Effectiveness and Limits of Low-Cost Behavioral Interventions on Water Use

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06) Miranda, Juan Jose ; Datta, Saugato ; Zoratto, Laura

The study uses a randomized controlled trial to test the impact of simple, inexpensive, and nonpersonalized behavioral interventions (or “nudges”) on water consumption in the context of a developing country. A descriptive social norm intervention using neighborhood comparisons reduces average water consumption in the first two postintervention months by 4.9 percent relative to the control group, while a planning postcard intervention reduces consumption by 4.8 percent. A descriptive social norm intervention using a town-level comparison also reduces water consumption by 3.2 percent, but this effect is not statistically significant. Finally, the study's one-time interventions continue to generate statistically significant reductions in water use for up to four months after they are implemented.
Intra-Household Labour Allocation, Migration, and Remittances in Rural El Salvador

(Taylor and Francis, 2020-05) Acosta, Pablo

Migration can affect labor participation decisions back home, either by stimulating work to replace foregone labor, or reducing it through the role of remittances. Using evidence from a rural panel for El Salvador with a comprehensive module on agricultural income shocks, this study finds that migration and remittances generate only minor labor reallocation effects within households. Contradicting previous evidence based on cross section data, no impact is registered for off-farm labor supply. However, remittances and migration tend to increase female participation and hours worked in agricultural activities, and reduce time dedicated to off-farm and domestic activities. No major effects are found on self-employment.