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 81

Conditional Cash Transfers and HIV/AIDS Prevention : Unconditionally Promising?

(Washington, DC: Oxford University on behalf of the World Bank, 2012-06-01) Kohler, Hans-Peter ; Thornton, Rebecca L.

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have recently received considerable attention as a potentially innovative and effective approach to the prevention of HIV/AIDS. We evaluate a conditional cash transfer program in rural Malawi which offered financial incentives to men and women to maintain their HIV status for approximately one year. The amounts of the reward ranged from zero to approximately 3–4 months wage. We find no effect of the offered incentives on HIV status or on reported sexual behavior. However, shortly after receiving the reward, men who received the cash transfer were 9 percentage points more likely and women were 6.7 percentage points less likely to engage in risky sex. Our analyses therefore question the “unconditional effectiveness” of CCT program for HIV prevention: CCT Programs that aim to motivate safe sexual behavior in Africa should take into account that money given in the present may have much stronger effects than rewards offered in the future, and any effect of these programs may be fairly sensitive to the specific design of the program, the local and/or cultural context, and the degree of agency an individual has with respect to sexual behaviors.
How Much of Observed Economic Mobility is Measurement Error? IV Methods to Reduce Measurement Error Bias, with an Application to Vietnam

(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2012-06-01) Glewwe, Paul

Research on economic growth and inequality inevitably raises issues concerning economic mobility because the relationship between long-run inequality and short-run inequality is mediated by income mobility; for a given level of short-run inequality, greater mobility implies lower long-run inequality. But empirical measures of both inequality and mobility tend to be biased upward due to measurement error in income and expenditure data collected from household surveys. This paper examines how to reduce or remove this bias using instrumental variable methods, and provides conditions that instrumental variables must satisfy to provide consistent estimates. This approach is applied to panel data from Vietnam. The results imply that at least 15 percent, and perhaps as much as 42 percent, of measured mobility is upward bias due to measurement error. The results also suggest that measurement error accounts for at least 12 percent of measured inequality.
Inequality of Opportunity in Egypt

(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2012-06-01) Hassine, Nadia Belhaj

The article evaluates the contribution of inequality of opportunity to earnings inequality in Egypt and analyzes its evolution across three time periods and different population groups. It provides parametric and nonparametric estimates of a lower bound for the degree of inequality of opportunity for wage and salary workers. On average, the contribution of opportunity-shaping circumstances to earnings inequality declined from 22 percent in 1988 to 15 percent in 2006. Levels of inequality of opportunity were fairly stable while earnings differentials widened markedly, leading to a decline in the share of inequality attributable to opportunities. Father's background and geographic origins had the largest effect on earnings, although the impact of mother's education has risen in recent years. The degree of inequality of opportunity did not differ significantly by gender or rural–urban area, although the incidence was lower for men and for rural areas. The results indicate an increase in inequality of opportunity across age groups, but there is some evidence that opportunity differentials have been declining for the oldest generation.
An Axiomatic Approach to the Measurement of Corruption : Theory and Applications

(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2012-06-01) Foster, James E. ; Horowitz, Andrew W. ; Méndez, Fabio

No generally accepted framework exists for constructing and evaluating measures of corruption. This article shows how the axiomatic approach of the poverty and inequality literature can be applied to the measurement of corruption. A conceptual framework for organizing corruption data is developed, and three aggregate corruption measures consistent with axiomatic requirements are proposed. The article also provides guidelines for empirical applications of corruption measures and discusses data requirements. A brief empirical example illustrates how each of the measures captures a distinct view of corruption that yields a different ranking. To the authors' knowledge, this article provides the first analysis of corruption measurement using an axiomatic framework.
Development’s Denial of Social Justice

(Taylor and Francis, 2012-05-22) Blunt, Peter ; Lindroth, Henrik

Resistance to criticism in the field of development has prevented systemic change and has led to a denial of social justice. This has been a function of the language of development; establishment control over forms of critical discourse; selective crises reportage; and normal scientific behavior. Following Popper (1970), these defenses should be lowered so that bold alternative conjectures concerning social injustice can be set against prevailing orthodoxies. The work of Arundhati Roy is used to help make this case, and it is suggested that the search for alternatives needs to extend beyond the architects and agents of the neoliberal paradigm.
Can Skill Diversification Improve Welfare in Rural Areas? Evidence from Bhutan

(Taylor and Francis, 2012-05-04) Chun, Natalie ; Watanabe, Makiko

Income growth in rural areas is a considerable challenge to further poverty reduction and economic development. Using a survey of rural Bhutanese households, we investigate the impacts of a vocational skills training programme that was intended to diversify incomes outside agriculture. We find that the programme had limited positive impacts along various economic and psychosocial dimensions, but that it diversified household incomes into the basic construction skill areas that it provided. Notably, the programme did raise incomes for trainees in non-competitive labour markets where trainees accounted for only a small percentage of the overall population. The results and findings from qualitative assessments suggest that: a greater emphasis on creating a mechanism to connect the training programme with income-generating opportunities via job placement services, entrepreneurship or mentoring services is needed – especially in competitive labour markets where there are too many trainees in relation to the population; refining the curriculum and extending the training time to allow trainees to develop their skills may be important; and encouraging greater equality in the skill development process may require providing more female-friendly training that has flexibility in training time and venues and focuses on other skill areas.
The Politics and Governance of Public Services in Developing Countries

(Taylor and Francis, 2012-03-06) Batley, Richard ; McCourt, Willy ; Mcloughlin, Claire

Politics and governance have become central to explanations of the widespread under-provision of public services in developing countries. Political analysis offers an understanding of what might otherwise appear to be exclusively managerial or capacity problems. The articles in this special issue of PMR contribute to three main aspects of this new literature on the political economy of service provision: how the incentives of elites are formed and affect whether, to whom and how services are provided; how top–down and bottom–up systems of accountability may act and also interact to affect incentives; and the effect of service provision on state–society relations. The analysis in this and the following articles suggests that the politics of service provision should be understood as a cycle of causation: politics affect the policy, governance and implementation of services, but in turn service provision is a theatre of politics and affects citizen formation and the development of state capacity and legitimacy. Taken as a whole, the articles suggest that a political perspective enables new insights into the causes of weak service provision, and how it can be improved.
Rising Food Prices and Coping Strategies : Household-level Evidence from Afghanistan

(Taylor and Francis, 2012-02-28) D’Souza, Anna ; Jolliffe, Dean

This article investigates the impact of rising wheat prices on household food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting a unique nationally-representative household survey, we find evidence of large declines in the real value of per capita food consumption. Smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption suggest that households trade off quality for quantity as they move away from nutrient-rich foods such as meat and vegetables toward staple foods. Our work improves upon country-level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household food security during a price shock in one of the world's poorest, most food-insecure countries.
Mashup Indices of Development

(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2012-02-01) Ravallion, Martin

Countries are increasingly being ranked by some new “mashup index of development,” defined as a composite index for which existing theory and practice provides little or no guidance for its design. Thus the index has an unusually large number of moving parts, which the producer is essentially free to set. The parsimony of these indices is often appealing—collapsing multiple dimensions into just one, yielding seemingly unambiguous country rankings, and possibly reducing concerns about measurement errors in the component series. But the meaning, interpretation, and robustness of these indices and their implied country rankings are often unclear. If they are to be properly understood and used, more attention needs to be given to their conceptual foundations, the tradeoffs they embody, the contextual factors relevant to country performance, and the sensitivity of the implied rankings to the changing of the data and weights. In short, clearer warning signs are needed for users. But even then, nagging doubts remain about the value-added of mashup indices, and their policy relevance, relative to the “dashboard” alternative of monitoring the components separately. Future progress in devising useful new composite indices of development will require that theory catches up with measurement practice.
Is Economic Volatility Detrimental to Global Sustainability?

(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2012-01-18) Huang, Yongfu

In a dynamic panel data model allowing for error cross-section dependence, output volatility is found to impede sustainable development. Through a financial development channel (liquidity liability ratio), output volatility exerts a significant effect on depletion of natural resources, a key component of sustainability. Low-income countries, low energy-intensity countries, and low trade-share countries tend to be especially vulnerable to macroeconomic volatility and shocks. The findings highlight the interaction between global financial markets and the wider economy as a key factor influencing sustainable development, with important implications for macroeconomic and environmental policies in an integrated global green economy.