03. Journals

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These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 33
  • Publication
    The Political Economy of Multidimensional Child Poverty Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Mexico and Uganda
    (Taylor and Francis, 2020-03-11) Cuesta, Jose; Biggeri, Mario; Hernandez-Licona, Gonzalo; Aparicio, Ricardo; Guillen-Fernandez, Yedith
    As part of the 2030 Agenda, much effort has been exerted in comparing multidimensional child poverty measures both technically and conceptually. Yet, few countries have adopted and used any of these measures in policymaking. This paper explores the reasons for this absence from a political economy perspective. It develops an innovative political economy framework for poverty measurement and a hypothesis whereby a country will only produce and use reliable and sustainable multidimensional child poverty (MDCP) measures if and only if three conditions coalesce: consensus, capacity and polity. We explore this framework with two relevant case studies, Mexico and Uganda. Both countries satisfy the capacity condition required to measure MDCP but only Mexico satisfies the other two conditions. Our proposed political economy framework is normatively relevant because it identifies the conditions that need to change across multiple contexts before the effective adoption and use of an MDCP measure becomes more likely.
  • Publication
    Using Satellite Imagery to Create Tax Maps and Enhance Local Revenue Collection
    (Taylor and Francis, 2020) Ali, Daniel Ayalew; Deininger, Klaus
    Although taxes on land and property have many desirable attributes, the challenge of ensuring completeness of tax rolls and currency of valuations preclude their effective use to support urbanization and service provision in many developing countries. The example of Kigali shows how building footprints and heights generated from high-resolution satellite imagery, together with sales prices and routine statistical data, allow to assess and improve coverage and design of property tax systems. We show that only 40% of potential land lease fee revenue (of US$ 4.9 million) was collected and that moving to 1% value-based tax would increase revenue almost 10 times while being less regressive than the current system. While this could allow reducing the tax burden for low-income groups, exemptions should be applied with caution based on careful empirical analysis.
  • Publication
    Agriculture, Aid, and Economic Growth in Africa
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02) McArthur, John W.; Sachs, Jeffrey D.
    How can foreign aid to agriculture support economic growth in Africa? This paper constructs a geographically indexed applied general equilibrium model that considers pathways through which aid might affect growth and structural transformation of labor markets in the context of soil nutrient variation, minimum subsistence consumption requirements, domestic transport costs, labor mobility, and constraints to self-financing of agricultural inputs. Using plausible parameters, the model is presented for Uganda as an illustrative case. We present three stylized scenarios to demonstrate the potential economy-wide impacts of both soil nutrient loss and replenishment, and how foreign aid can be targeted to support agricultural inputs that boost rural productivity and shift labor to boost real wages. One simulation shows how a temporary program of targeted official development assistance (ODA) for agriculture could generate, contrary to traditional Dutch disease concerns, an expansion in the primary tradable sector and positive permanent productivity and welfare effects, leading to a steady decline in the need for complementary ODA for budget support.
  • Publication
    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; Chansa, Collins
    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.
  • Publication
    Dictators Walking the Mogadishu Line: How Men Become Monsters and Monsters Become Men
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-10) Larcom, Shaun; Sarr, Mare; Willems, Tim
    History offers many examples of dictatorswho worsened their behavior significantly over time (like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe) as well as dictators who displayed remarkable improvements (like Rawlings of Ghana).We show that such mutations can result from rational behavior when the dictator’s flow use of repression is complementary to his stock of wrongdoings: past wrongdoings then perpetuate further wrongdoings and the dictator can unintentionally get trapped in a repressive steady state where he himself suffers from ex-post regret. This then begs the question why such a dictator would ever choose to do wrong in the first place. We show that this can be explained from the dictator’s uncertainty over his degree of impunity in relation to wrongdoing, which induces him to experiment along this dimension. This produces a setting where any individual rising to power can end up as either a moderate leader, or as a dreaded tyrant. Since derailment is accidental and accompanied by ex-post regret, increasing accountability can be in the interest of both the public and the dictator.
  • Publication
    Who Benefited from Burundi’s Demobilization Program?
    (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2018-06) D’Aoust, Olivia; Sterck, Olivier; Verwimp, Philip
    This paper assesses the impact of the demobilization, reinsertion and reintegration program in post-war Burundi. Two major rebel groups benefited from cash and in-kind transfers, the CNDD-FDD from 2004, and the FNL from 2010. We combine panel data of households collected in 2006 and 2010 with official records from the National Commission for Demobilization, Reinsertion and Reintegration. We find that the cash payments received by FNL demobilized households had a positive impact on consumption, nonfood spending and investments. The program also generated positive spillovers in the villages where FNL combatants returned. Ex-combatants indeed spent a large part of their allowance on consumption goods and clothing, thereby generating a short-run economic boom in villages. However, the long-run evolution of consumption indicators is negative for CNDD-FDD households, as well as for villages where CNDD-FDD combatants returned, suggesting that the direct impact and the spillovers of the program vanished in the long run.
  • Publication
    Does Inducing Informal Firms to Formalize Make Sense?: Experimental Evidence from Benin
    (Elsevier, 2018-01) Benhassine, Najy; McKenzie, David; Pouliquen, Victor; Santini, Massimiliano
    Efforts to bring informal firms into the formal sector are often based on a view that this will bring benefits to the firms themselves, or at least benefit governments through increasing the tax base. A randomized experiment based around the introduction of the entreprenant legal status in Benin is used to test these assumptions, along with supplementary efforts to enhance the presumed benefits of formalizing to firms. Few firms register when just given information about the new regime, but our full package of supplementary efforts boosts formalization by 16.3 percentage points. However, this formalization does not bring firms higher sales or profits, and the cost of formalizing these firms exceeds the added taxation they will pay over the next decade. We show how better targeting of these policies towards firms that look more like formal firms to begin with can increase the formalization rate and improve cost-effectiveness.
  • Publication
    No Condition Is Permanent: Middle Class in Nigeria in the Last Decade
    (Taylor and Francis, 2017-09-21) Corral Rodas, Paul Andres; Molini, Vasco
    The economic debate on the existence and definition of the middle class has become particularly lively in many developing countries. Building on a recently developed framework called the Vulnerability Approach to Middle Class (VAMC) to define the middle class, this paper tries to estimate the size of the Nigerian middle class in a rigorous quantitative manner and to gauge its evolution over time. Using the VAMC method, the middle class group can be defined residually from the vulnerability analysis as those for which the probability of falling into poverty is below a certain threshold. The results show that there has been considerable improvement in the size of the Nigerian middle class from 13 per cent in 2003/4 to 19 per cent in 2012/13. However, the rate has been slower than expected given the high growth rates experienced in the country over the same period. The results also paint a heterogeneous picture of the middle class in Nigeria with large spatial differences. The southern regions have a higher share and experienced more growth of the middle class compared with the northern regions.
  • Publication
    Explaining Ethiopia’s Growth Acceleration—The Role of Infrastructure and Macroeconomic Policy
    (Elsevier, 2017-08) Moller, Lars Christian; Wacker, Konstantin M.
    Ethiopia has experienced an impressive growth acceleration over the past decade. This was achieved on the back of an economic strategy emphasizing public infrastructure investment supported by heterodox macro-financial policies. This paper identifies the drivers of Ethiopia’s recent growth episode and examines the extent to which they were typical or unique. It combines country-specific information with the results of a cross-country panel regression model. We find that Ethiopia’s growth is explained well by factors correlating with growth in a broad range of countries in recent decades, including public infrastructure investment, restrained government consumption, and a conducive external environment. On the other hand, we argue that the policy mix that supported very high levels of public investment in Ethiopia was, to some extent, unique. Interestingly, macroeconomic imbalances due to this heterodox policy mix only moderately held back growth which helps explain why Ethiopia was able to grow so fast in spite of their presence: their negative effects were quantitatively much less important than the positive growth drivers they helped to achieve. The results suggest that “getting infrastructure right” may outweigh moderate shortcoming in the macro framework at early stages of development. We further relate this country-specific finding to the recent growth literature.
  • Publication
    Transferring the Purchasing Role from International to National Organizations During the Scale-Up Phase of Performance-Based Financing in Cameroon
    (Taylor and Francis, 2017-04-13) Sieleunou, Isidore; Turcotte-Tremblay, Anne-Marie; Yumo, Habakkuk Azinyui; Kouokam, Estelle; Taptue Fotso, Jean-Claude; Magne Tamga, Denise; Ridde, Valery
    The World Bank and the government of Cameroon launched a performance-based financing (PBF) program in Cameroon in 2011. To ensure its rapid implementation, the performance purchasing role was sub-contracted to a consultancy firm and a nongovernmental organization, both international. However, since the early stage, it was agreed upon that this role would later be transferred to a national entity. This explanatory case study aims at analyzing the process of this transfer using Dolowitz and Marsh's framework. We performed a document review and interviews with various stakeholders (n = 33) and then conducted thematic analysis of interview recordings. Sustainability, ownership, and integration of the PBF intervention into the health system emerged as the main reasons for the transfer. The different aspects of transfer from international entities to a national body consisted of (1) the decision-making power, (2) the “soft” elements (e.g., ideas, expertise), and (3) the “hard” elements (e.g., computers, vehicles). Factors facilitating the transfer included the fact that it was planned from the start and the modification of the legal status of the national organization that became responsible for strategic purchasing. Other factors hindered the transfer, such as the lack of a legal act clarifying the conditions of the transfer and the lack of post-transition support agreements. The Cameroonian experience suggests that key components of a successful transfer of PBF functions from international to national organizations may include clear guidelines, co-ownership and planning of the transition by all parties, and post-transition support to new actors.