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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Now showing 1 - 10 of 15

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.
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.
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.
Early Rainfall Shocks and Later-Life Outcomes: Evidence from Colombia

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02) Carrillo, Bladimir

This paper uses birth cohorts spanning several hundred locations over 40 years to examine the long-term consequences of in utero exposure to abnormal rainfall events in Colombia. The identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in extreme droughts or floods experienced by individuals while in utero in their birth location. The results indicate that individuals prenatally exposed to adverse rainfall shocks are more likely to report serious mental illness, have fewer years of schooling, display increased rates of illiteracy, and are less likely to work. These results are larger in magnitude for individuals born in areas with a higher risk of malaria, which is consistent with the notion that exposure to infectious and parasitic diseases may play an important role.
The More Stringent, the Better? Rationing Car Use in Bogotá with Moderate and Drastic Restrictions

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-06) Bonilla, Jorge A.

Rationing car use based on license plate number has become a popular policy in several cities around the world to address traffic congestion and air pollution. This paper studies the effects of the moderate and drastic driving restrictions imposed as part of the Pico y Placa program on car use and air pollution in Bogotá. Using data on ambient carbon monoxide, gasoline consumption, and vehicle sales and registrations, no evidence of an improvement in air quality or a reduction in car use is found in either phase of the program. On the contrary, there is some indication that, relative to the moderate phase, gasoline consumption, vehicle ownership, and carbon monoxide in the morning peak tended to increase slightly when drastic restrictions were implemented.
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.
Civil Conflict and Conditional Cash Transfers: Effects on Demobilization

(Elsevier, 2017-11) Pena, Paola ; Urrego, Joaquin A. ; Villa, Juan M.

Cash transfer programs have been successful in helping millions of people afford better livelihoods. While this is well known, little research has yet been conducted to examine the power of such programs to influence outcomes in times of conflict, especially in countries where anti-poverty programs are implemented amidst disputes against illegal armed groups. This paper focuses on the implementation of Familias en Accion, a flagship anti-poverty cash transfer program in Colombia, during the early 2000s when the country was still experiencing its long-lasting internal conflict. Impact evaluations have already shown the important effects of this program on household poverty levels and children’s time allocation, including a higher incidence of school attendance and a lower incidence of child labor. Our hypothesis here is that such outcomes imply changes in the dynamics of the civil conflict, since 50% of the demobilised combatants are children mostly eligible for the transfers. We take advantage of a natural experiment that occurred during the first stage of implementation of the program in the period 2001–04 when the transfers were gradually rolled out across eligible municipalities. By setting out a difference-in-differences approach, our results indicate that the program had positive effects on the demobilization of combatants. These findings are observed for a length of three years since the program started.
On the Effects of Enforcement on Illegal Markets: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Colombia

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2017-06-01) Mejía, Daniel ; Restrepo, Pascual ; Rozo, Sandra V.

This paper studies the effects of enforcement on illegal behavior in the context of a large aerial spraying program designed to curb coca cultivation in Colombia. In 2006, the Colombian government pledged not to spray a 10 km band around the frontier with Ecuador due to diplomatic frictions arising from the possibly negative collateral effects of this policy on the Ecuadorian side of the border. We exploit this variation to estimate the effect of spraying on coca cultivation by regression discontinuity around the 10 km threshold and by conditional differences in differences. Our results suggest that spraying one additional hectare reduces coca cultivation by 0.022 to 0.03 hectares; these effects are too small to make aerial spraying a cost-effective policy for reducing cocaine production in Colombia.
Strategic Interactions and Portfolio Choice in Money Management: Theory and Evidence

(Wiley, 2015-12) Pedraza, Alvaro

I study portfolio choice of strategic fund managers in the presence of a peer-based underperformance penalty. While the penalty generates herding behavior, correlated trading among managers is exacerbated when a strategic setting is considered. The equilibrium portfolios are driven by the least restricted manager, who may vary according to the realization of returns. I compare model predictions to evidence from the Colombian pension fund management industry, where six asset managers are in charge of portfolio allocation for the mandatory contributions of the working population. These managers are subject to a peer-based underperformance penalty, which is known as the minimum return guarantee (MRG). I study trading behavior by managers before and after a change in the strictness of the MRG in June 2007. The evidence suggests that a tighter MRG results in more trading in the direction of peers, a behavior that is more pronounced for underperforming managers. I show that these findings are consistent with the qualitative and quantitative predictions of the theoretical model. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions. http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html
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.