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 22

Fresh Money for Health? The (False?) Promise of 'Innovative Financing' for Health in Malawi

(Taylor and Francis, 2018-10-29) Chansa, Collins ; Mwase, Takondwa ; Matsebula, Thulani Clement ; Kandoole, Priscilla ; Revill, Paul ; Makumba, John Bosco ; Lindenow, Magnus

Since 2013, the government of Malawi has been pursuing a number of health reforms, which include plans to increase domestic financing for health through “innovative financing.” As part of these reforms, Malawi has sought to raise additional tax revenue through existing and new sources with a view to earmarking the revenue generated to the health sector. In this article, a systematic approach to assessing feasibility and quantifying the amount of revenue that could be generated from potential sources is devised and applied. Specifically, the study applies the Delphi forecasting method to generate a qualitative assessment of the potential for raising additional tax revenues from existing and new sources, and the gross domestic product (GDP)-based effective tax rate forecasting method to quantify the amount of tax revenue that would be generated. The results show that an annual average of 0.30 USD, 0.46 USD, and 0.63 USD per capita could be generated from taxes on fuel and motor vehicle insurance over the period 2016/2017–2021/2022 under the low, medium, and high scenarios, respectively. However, the proposed tax reform has not been officially adopted despite wide consultations and generation of empirical evidence on the revenue potential. The study concludes is that revenue generation potential of innovative financing for health mechanisms in Malawi is limited, and calls for efforts to expand fiscal space for health to focus on efficiency-enhancing measures, including strengthening of governance and public financial management.
The Changing Structure of Africa’s Economies

(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2017-06-01) Diao, Xinshen ; Harttgen, Kenneth ; McMillan, Margaret

Using data from the Groningen Growth and Development Center’s Africa Sector Database and the Demographic and Health Surveys, we show that much of Africa’s recent growth and poverty reduction has been associated with a substantive decline in the share of the labor force engaged in agriculture. This decline is most pronounced for rural females over the age of 25 who have a primary education; it has been accompanied by a systematic increase in the productivity of the labor force, as it has moved from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity services and manufacturing. We also show that, although the employment share in manufacturing is not expanding rapidly, in most of the low-income African countries the employment share in manufacturing has not peaked and is still expanding, albeit from very low levels. More work is needed to understand the implications of these shifts in employment shares for future growth and development in Africa south of the Sahara.
Is Foreign Aid Fungible? Evidence from the Education and Health Sectors

(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2013-06) Van de Sijpe, Nicolas

This paper adopts a new approach to the issue of foreign aid fungibility. Unlike most existing empirical studies, I employ panel data that contain information on the specific purposes for which aid is given. This approach enables me to link aid that is provided for education and health purposes to recipient public spending in these sectors. In addition, I distinguish between aid flows that are recorded on a recipient's budget and those that are not recorded, and I illustrate how the previous failure to differentiate between on- and off-budget aid produces biased estimates of fungibility. Sector program aid is the measure of on-budget aid, whereas technical cooperation serves as a proxy for off-budget aid. I show that the appropriate treatment of off-budget aid leads to lower fungibility estimates than those reported in many previous studies. Specifically, I find that in both sectors and across a range of specifications, technical cooperation, which is the largest component of total education and health aid, leads to, at most, a small displacement of recipient public expenditures.
Producing Home Grown Solutions : Think Tanks and Knowledge Networks in International Development

( 2011-09) Datta, Ajoy ; Young, John

Mainstream international development discourse has long heralded the importance of home grown solutions and national ownership of development policies. Ownership has been seen as the missing link between the significant development aid inflows from the North and poverty reduction outcomes in the South. You only have to look to international agreements such the 2002 Monterrey Consensus or the2005 Paris Declaration for evidence of this.
Development with a Human Face

( 2011-04) NdunGabonne, Njongonkulu

Archbishop Njongonkulu NdunGabonne is Head of African Monitor, a pan-African nonprofit or Gabonnization that monitors development funding, delivery, and impact and helps bring African voices to the development agenda.
16 Things You Didn't Know About Africa

( 2011-04) World Bank

The largest population in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is 151.3 million in NIGERIA. The smallest is 0.1 million (100,000) in Seychelles.
South Meets South : Enriching the Development Menu

( 2010-10) Maruri, Enrique ; Fraeters, Han

African countries, like Nigeria, with an emerging information technology (IT) industry, are examples of how globalization has opened up vast new opportunities. Information technology and business process outsourcing is a multibillion dollar talent-driven industry with a market that is still untapped. Africa is keen on exploring this new frontier which has the potential to create thousands of quality jobs for its young people. But to do so, it must nurture the right skills. Where can these be found?
The South-South Opportunity

( 2010-10) Pradhan, Sanjay

Imagine, just a few years from now, a developing country official who is struggling with a difficult problem: perhaps reintegrating demobilized soldiers back into their communities that have been torn by conflict, or helping the desperately poor climb out of poverty through targeted assistance programs.
Aid Effectiveness : Why Does It Matter to Partners in South-South Cooperation?

( 2010-10) Gurría, Angel

Why should partners in South-South cooperation care about aid effectiveness? What is the relevance of the commitments embodied in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) to development actors? These are questions I frequently hear.
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.