03. Journals

3,134 items available

Permanent URI for this community

These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 22
  • Publication
    Water wars, conflict and cooperation - how the virtual water concept helped change the discourse
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-10-17) Jägerskog, Anders; Lundqvist, Jan
    Professor Tony Allan used to remind his students that for new ideas or scientific concepts to take hold – no matter how right they are – usually takes decades and, sometimes, longer (Allan 2001, 2011). Building on the work of Kuhn (1962) showing how slowly scientific paradigms change, and inspired by French philosophers such as Foucalt and Bourdieu, he highlighted how prevailing discourses are entrenched and, therefore, sanctioned through a process in which power – in all its forms – underpins the basic tenets of the discourse.
  • Publication
    Agriculture Production and Transport Connectivity: Evidence from Mozambique
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-10-10) Iimi, Atsushi
    Despite relative richness of the existing literature, it remains a challenge to consistently estimate the impacts of transport connectivity on agricultural production. The paper constructs pseudo-panel data with transport infrastructure defined at high resolution in two periods of time and examines spatially heterogeneous impacts of improved transport connectivity. The paper takes advantage of the unique circumstances in Mozambique where the Government invested intensively in road infrastructure during a relatively short period of time in the 2010s. Combining the highly disaggregated location-specific fixed effects with the instrumental variable method, the paper controls for the endogeneity to show that the improved road connectivity increased agricultural production significantly. Rural connectivity and domestic market accessibility are found to be of particular importance, but substantial heterogeneity exists across regions. The northern provinces, where transport connectivity is limited, have the potential for agricultural growth, exhibiting increasing returns to scale.
  • Publication
    Cutting Special Interests by the Roots: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon
    (Elsevier, 2022-10-01) Braganca, Arthur; Dahis, Ricardo
    Government policies may impact economic outcomes directly but also indirectly through effects on political incentives. This paper examines the effects of the PPCDAm, a centralized set of environmental policies that effectively raised the expected cost of illegal deforestation, on the behavior of a powerful special-interest group operating in the Brazilian Amazon: farmers. Using different identification strategies, we document that municipalities governed by farmer politicians experienced larger declines in deforestation, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and violence than municipalities governed by other politicians after this set of policies was implemented. Our findings suggest the PPCDAm had indirect and persistent effects on political incentives, amplifying its impact on environmental and social outcomes.
  • Publication
    Gender norms, landholdership, and rural land use fee and agricultural income tax in Ethiopia
    (Elsevier, 2022-10-01) Komatsu, Hitomi; Ambel, Alemayehu A.; Koolwal, Gayatri; Yonis, Manex Bule
    Area-based land taxes, a form of property tax, exist where rural land markets do not exist or do not function well. Understanding how these taxes affect different groups of landholders, including by men and women, is important since a tax based on the land size is likely to have an outsized effect on smaller landholders. However, survey data allowing for an individual- and household-disaggregated analysis has been scarce. Using newly available data on tax payments and self-reported individual land ownership from the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey 2018/2019, this paper assessed the gender implications of an area-based rural land use fee and agricultural income tax in Ethiopia. We found that female adult-only households were more likely than dual adult households to be smallholders with less than 0.5 hectare of land, and these smallholders faced the largest per-hectare tax rates. Female-headed- and female adult-only households faced a tax incidence that was 37 percent higher than it was for male-headed and dual-adult households. The gender land ownership patterns, norms limiting women’s role in agriculture, household structures, and gender agricultural productivity gaps are likely to result in lower consumption, and consequently, a higher tax burden for women. Finally, we simulated the effect of a hypothetical tax schedule with progressive per-hectare tax rates and exemptions for smallholders and found that while this would reduce women’s tax burdens, the tax remained to be regressive because of the prevalence of landholder ship among poor households. Our study highlights the difficulty of area-based land taxes to be progressive.
  • Publication
    Effectiveness of Fertiliser Policy Reforms to Enhance Food Security in Kenya: A Macro-Microsimulation Analysis
    (Taylor and Francis, 2022-02) Boulanger, Pierre; Dudu, Hasan; Ferrari, Emanuele; Mainar, Alfredo J.; Ramos, Maria Priscila
    Food security represents a key challenge in most Sub-Saharan African countries and in Kenya in particular where still a relevant share of the population lives below a minimum dietary energy consumption. Kenya addresses this concern with a noteworthy policy mix, aiming at giving to the agricultural sector a leading task in improving food security. This paper evaluates the impacts on food security of expanding fertilizer capacities in Kenya, combined with a set of additional policy changes targeting fertilizer use. In a top-down analysis, a specific Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is linked with a microsimulation approach. Scenarios present overall positive effects on key food security aggregates. The same is true for welfare. Nevertheless, the heterogeneity of households across and within regions suggests that improving input productivity through better market access and service extension are critical to reducing possible discrepancies across farmers, households and regions. The paper concludes on the need for a sound policy mix since increasing fertilizer production alone is not enough to enhance food security evenly. Among accompanying measures, intensifying extension services are essential especially for smallholders in their acquisition of better knowledge on the use of agricultural inputs.
  • Publication
    Knowledge and Adoption of Complex Agricultural Technologies: Evidence from an Extension Experiment
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2021-12-09) Hörner, Denise; Bouguen, Adrien; Frölich, Markus; Wollni, Meike
    In most of Sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural extension models have become more decentralized and participatory and thus rely on effective farmer-to-farmer learning, while increasingly including nontraditional forms of education. At the same time, agricultural technologies become more complex and are now often promoted as integrated packages, which are likely to increase the complexity of the diffusion process. Based on a randomized controlled trial, this study assesses the effects of “farmer-to-farmer” extension and a video intervention on adoption of a complex technology package among 2,382 smallholders in Ethiopia. Both extension-only and extension combined with video increase adoption and knowledge of the package, especially of its more complex components; on average, however, the video intervention has no additional effect on adoption. Knowledge and the number of adopted practices also increase among farmers not actively participating in extension activities, which suggests information diffusion. For this group, the additional video intervention has a reinforcing effect, and particularly fosters adoption of the integrated package.
  • Publication
    Cereal Prices and Child Undernutrition in Ethiopia
    (Taylor and Francis, 2021-07-06) Brenton, Paul
    This paper looks at how changing cereal prices affect child undernutrition in Ethiopia. It derives height for age (stunting) and weight for height (wasting) as indicators of child undernutrition from the two most recent years of the Livings Standards Measurement Survey and utilizes market prices for key cereals, teff, wheat, and maize at the enumeration area across all regions of the country. Using a panel data fixed effects model, the analysis finds that, contrary to previous studies, rising cereal prices are positively associated with improved child stunting rates for children between ages 6 months and 5 years. There is no evidence to suggest that cereal prices have a significantly greater impact on height for age for children that come from households who are net sellers of these crops. Cereal prices do not appear to be associated with wasting, which is a shorter-term negative health outcome.
  • Publication
    The Spillover Impact of Index Insurance on Agricultural Investment by Cotton Farmers in Burkina Faso
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2021-06-04) Stoeffler, Quentin; Carter, Michael; Guirkinger, Catherine; Gelade, Wouter
    This paper examines whether agricultural insurance can boost investment by small scale farmers in West Africa. It is based on a randomized evaluation designed to analyze the impacts of index insurance for cotton farmers in Burkina Faso. No impact of insurance was found on cotton, but, consistent with microeconomic theory, significant spillover impacts on investment in other agricultural activities were measured. Furthermore, the effects of insurance payouts on farmers hit by a shock confirm the potential of index insurance as a risk management tool. However, this research uncovers important flaws in the implementation of the project that limited its impact on cotton. Overall, this study suggests a promising role for index insurance in stimulating investment, but also draws attention to key challenges to the efficient delivery of insurance to small farmers. Finally, the study’s hybrid, mixed methods RCT offers lessons for the evaluation of complex interventions where trust, understanding, and timing are all important.
  • Publication
    Mobilizing P2P Diffusion for New Agricultural Practices: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2021-05-11) Fafchamps, Marcel; Islam, Asad; Malek, Abdul; Pakrashi, Debayan
    This paper uses a randomized controlled experiment in which farmers trained on a new rice cultivation method teach two other farmers. The results show that the intervention increases yields and farm profits among treated farmers. Teacher-trainees are effective at spreading knowledge and inducing adoption relative to just training. Incentivizing teacher-trainees improves knowledge transmission but not adoption. Matching teacher-trainees with farmers who list them as role models does not improve knowledge transmission and may hurt adoption. Using mediation analysis, the study finds that the knowledge of the teacher-trainee is correlated with that of their students, consistent with knowledge transmission. The paper also finds that systems of rice intensification (SRI) knowledge predicts adoption of some SRI practices, and that adoption by teacher-trainees predicts adoption by their students, suggesting that students follow the example of their teacher. With cost-benefit estimates of social returns in excess of 100 percent, explicitly mobilizing peer-to-peer (P2P) transmission of knowledge seems a cost-effective way of inducing the adoption of new profitable agricultural practices.
  • Publication
    Pathways to Better Nutrition in South Asia: Evidence on the Effects of Food and Agricultural Interventions
    (Elsevier, 2021-03) Dizon, Felipe; Josephson, Anna; Raju, Dhushyanth
    In South Asia, nearly half a billion people are malnourished. This paper examines the links of food and agriculture with nutrition in South Asia, with the goal of informing policy to reduce hunger and malnutrition in the region. We investigate pathways including public food transfer programs, agricultural diversification, and different methods of food fortification. We find that public food transfer programs, used to make food available and affordable to poor households, are often unable to significantly protect or promote nutrition. But several supply-side food and agricultural interventions show promise in improving nutrition, although their effects have yet to be well identified. These include the cultivation of home gardens, animal agriculture, and use of biofortification and post-harvest fortification. All these efforts to reduce hunger and malnutrition will be futile, however, without parallel efforts to mitigate rising challenges in the region, including those posed by climate change, urbanization, food loss and food waste, and food safety hazards.