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 40

Nutrient Status of Cattle Grazing Systems in the Western Brazilian Amazon

(Taylor and Francis, 2020-02-09) Rueda, B.L. ; McRoberts, K.C. ; Blake, R.W. ; Nicholson, C.F. ; Valentim, J.F. ; Fernandes, E.C.M. ; Tejada Moral, Manuel

Low-input cultivated pastures to feed cattle have dominated land use after forest clearing for decades in the western Brazilian Amazon. This study was undertaken to help understand the inherent nutrient supply dynamics underwriting cattle performance on three farms in the state of Acre. We assessed soil chemical and physical properties associated over time with different land uses following forest clearing. This information permitted specifying a conceptual model of nutrient stocks and flows under the observed grazing system, which produced insights about the dynamics of soil nutrient degradation. Above ground forage mass, topsoil nutrient concentrations and soil bulk density were measured. Land covers were Brachiaria spp. grasses, a grass-Pueraria phaseoloides mix, cropland and forest. Most soil nutrient parameters initially decreased after clearing, gradually recovering over time with grass-only pastures; however, 20 yr-old pastures had 20% less forage mass. Most pasture system nutrients on these farms resided in topsoil and roots, where large stocks of mature forage supported soil fertility with recycled nutrients from litter. Estimates of partial topsoil nutrient balances were negative. This suggested that corresponding nutrient stocks and the accumulation of forage mass were probably maintained primarily through the sum of inflows from cattle excreta, the subsoil, soil organic matter, and litter mineralization with scant input of commercial fertilizer. Therefore, herd management to increase animal system productivity via higher stocking rates on vegetatively younger forage requires monitoring of nutrient stocks and flows and fertilization that assures replenishment of the nutrients extracted. Otherwise, rapid depletion of soil nutrient stocks will lead to system degradation and failure.
Minimum Age Regulation and Child Labor: New Evidence from Brazil

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-12-19) Bargain, Olivier ; Boutin, Delphine

This study presents new evidence on the effects of minimum age regulations obtained from a natural experiment. In 1998, a constitutional reform in Brazil changed the minimum working age from 14 to 16. The reform was the legislative counterpart of a broad set of measures taken by a government strongly committed to eliminating child labor. This article investigates the role of the minimum working age in this context. The setting allows for improvements upon past approaches based on comparing employment rates of children at different ages. A discontinuity in treatment is exploited, namely the fact that only children who turned 14 after the enactment date (mid-December 1998) are banned from work. According to regression discontinuity and difference-in-discontinuity designs, the null hypothesis of no overall effect of the ban cannot be rejected. Throughout the methods and specifications, an employment effect in a confidence interval of [−0.06,0.03] (in percentage points) is found. A detailed heterogeneity analysis is performed and provides suggestive evidence of diminishing child labor trends in regions characterized by higher labor inspection intensity, which is interpreted as a trace of there being a law. However, contrary to what has been claimed in recent studies, the law seems not to have produced sizeable effects overall, at least in the short run. Power calculations and extensive sensitivity checks support these conclusions.
Evolving Wage Cyclicality in Latin America

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-10) Gambeti, Luca ; Messina, Julian

This paper examines the evolution of the cyclicality of real wages and employment in four Latin American economies, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, during the period 1980–2010.Wages were highly procyclical during the 1980s and early 1990s, a period characterized by high inflation. As inflation declined wages became less procyclical, a feature that is consistent with emerging downward wage rigidities in a low inflation environment. Compositional effects associated with changes in labor participation along the business cycle appear to matter less for estimates of wage cyclicality than in developed economies.
Economy-wide and Sectoral Impacts on Workers of Brazil's Internet Rollout

(Taylor and Francis, 2017-05-03) Dutz, Mark A. ; Ferreira Mation, Lucas ; O'Connell, Stephen D. ; Willig, Robert D.

We study the effect of Brazil’s staggered Internet rollout between 2000 and 2014 on municipality employment and wages. We use a new annual data-set on Internet availability from the Brazil school census, with the assumption that the share of schools that have Internet access in each municipality reflects general accessibility of Internet connections. We combine these data with Brazil’s rich matched employer–employee survey (RAIS), which contains annual occupation and wage earnings information for all formally employed workers in Brazil across all sectors, including primary, secondary, and tertiary industry groups. We consider both contemporaneous and lagged effects. We find that increased Internet access has no statistically significant net effect on aggregate employment and has a negative effect on average wages, with a reduction in measures of wage dispersion. Brazil’s Internet rollout results in employment shifts from sectors with more limited expansion opportunities (wholesale and retail trade, public administration and largely publicly owned utilities, that jointly comprise almost half of the formal workforce in 2010) to sectors with more output expansion opportunities. Employment effects are positive and most pronounced in manufacturing, transport and storage, finance and insurance, and hospitality industry groups. In the manufacturing sector, Internet access induces positive employment and wage effects in both medium- and high-skill occupations.
Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence from Brazil

(Elsevier, 2017-02) Perova, Elizaveta ; Reynolds, Sarah Anne

Although women's police stations have gained popularity as a measure to address intimate partner violence (IPV), there is little quantitative evaluation of their impacts on the incidence of IPV. This paper estimates the effects of women's police stations in Brazil on female homicides, a measure of the most severe form of IPV. Given that a high fraction of female deaths among women ages 15–49 years can be attributed to aggression by an intimate partner, female homicides appear the best proxy for severe IPV considering the scarcity of data on IPV in Brazil. We assemble a panel of 2074 municipalities from 2004 to 2009 and apply a difference-in-differences approach using location and timing to estimate the effect of establishing a women's police station on the municipal female homicide rate. Although we do not find a strong association on average, women's police stations appear to be highly effective among young women living in metropolitan areas. Establishing a women's police station in a metropolitan municipality is associated with a reduction in the female homicide rate by 1.23 deaths per 100,000 women ages 15–49 years (approximately a 17 percent reduction in the female homicide rate in metropolitan municipalities). The reduction in the homicide rate of women ages 15 to 24 is even higher: 5.57 deaths per 100,000 women. Better economic opportunities and less traditional social norms in metropolitan areas may explain the heterogeneous impacts of women's police stations.
The Causal Impacts of Child Labor Law in Brazil: Some Preliminary Findings

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-04-10) Piza, Caio ; Portela Souza, Andre

This paper investigates the causal impact of the change in law of December 1998 that increased the minimum legal age of entry into the labor force from 14 to 16. The authors used a difference-in-differences (DD) approach to estimate the impact of this law change on labor force participation rates as a whole, as well as for the formal and informal sectors separately. The results showed that the ban reduced participation rates for boys by 4 percentage points and that this effect was mostly driven by the informal sector. The authors found no effect on girls.
Effects of the Internet on Participation: Study of a Public Policy Referendum in Brazil

(Taylor and Francis, 2016-03-17) Spada, Paolo ; Mellon, Jonathan ; Peixoto, Tiago ; Sjoberg, Fredrik M.

Does online voting mobilize citizens who otherwise would not participate? During the annual participatory budgeting vote in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil—the world's largest—Internet voters were asked whether they would have participated had there not been an online voting option (i-voting). The study documents an 8.2 percent increase in total turnout with the introduction of i-voting. In support of the mobilization hypothesis, unique survey data show that i-voting is mainly used by new participants rather than just for convenience by those who were already mobilized. The study also finds that age, gender, income, education, and social media usage are significant predictors of being online-only voters. However, technology appears more likely to engage people who are younger, male, of higher income and educational attainment, and more frequent social media users.
Preschool Education in Brazil: Does Public Supply Crowd Out Private Enrollment?

(Elsevier, 2016-02) Bastos, Paulo ; Straume, Odd Rune

Expanding access to preschool education is a particularly important policy issue in developing countries, where enrollment rates are generally much lower, and where private institutions constitute a much larger share of the formal preschool sector, than in developed countries. This paper examines if an expansion in the supply of public preschool crowds-out private enrollment using rich data for municipalities in Brazil from 2000 to 2006, where federal transfers to local governments change discontinuously with given population thresholds. Results from a regression-discontinuity design reveal that larger federal transfers lead to a significant expansion of local public preschool services, but show no evidence of crowding-out of private enrollment, nor of negative impacts on the quality of private providers. This finding is consistent with a theory in which households differ in willingness-to-pay for preschool services, and private suppliers optimally adjust prices in response to an expansion of lower-quality, free-of-charge public supply. In the context of the model, the absence of crowding-out effects of more public preschool providers can be rationalized by the existence of relatively large differences in willingness-to-pay for preschool services across different demand segments. Our theoretical and empirical findings therefore suggest that in developing country settings characterized by relatively high income inequality, an expansion in public preschool supply will likely significantly increase enrollment among the poorest segments of society, and need not have adverse effects on the quantity or quality of local private supply.
A Helping Hand or the Long Arm of the Law?: Experimental Evidence on What Governments Can Do to Formalize Firms

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-01) de Adrade, Gustavo Henrique ; Bruhn, Miriam ; McKenzie, David

We conducted a field experiment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil to test which government actions work to encourage informal firms to register. We find zero or negative impacts of information and free cost treatments and a significant but small increase in formalization from inspections. The local average treatment effect estimates of the inspection impact are larger, providing a 21 to 27 percentage point increase in the likelihood of formalizing. The results show that most informal firms will not formalize unless forced to do so, suggesting that formality offers little private benefit to these firms.
Does Access to Foreign Markets Shape Internal Migration?: Evidence from Brazil

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-01) Hering, Laura ; Paillacar, Rodrigo

This paper investigates how internal migration is affected by Brazil’s increased integration into the world economy.We analyze the impact of regional differences in access to foreign demand on sector-specific bilateral migration rates between the Brazilian states for the years 1995 to 2003. Using international trade data, we compute a foreign market access measure at the sectoral level, which is exogenous to domestic migration. A higher foreign market access is associated with a higher local labor demand and attracts workers via two potential channels: higher wages and new job opportunities. Our results show that both channels play a significant role in internal migration. Further, we find a heterogeneous impact across industries, according to their comparative advantage on the world market. However, the observed impact is driven by the strong reaction of low-educated workers to changes in market access. This finding is consistent with the fact that Brazil is exporting mainly goods that are intensive in unskilled labor.