03. Journals

1,616 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 25

Using Individual-Level Randomized Treatment to Learn about Market Structure

(American Economic Association, 2022-10) Casaburi, Lorenzo ; Reed, Tristan

Interference across competing firms in RCTs can be informative about market structure. An experiment that subsidizes a random subset of traders who buy cocoa from farmers in Sierra Leone illustrates this idea. Interpreting treatment-control differences in prices and quantities purchased from farmers through a model of Cournot competition reveals differentiation between traders is low. Combining this result with quasi-experimental variation in world prices shows that the number of traders competing is 50 percent higher than the number operating in a village. Own-price and cross-price supply elasticities are high. Farmers face a competitive market in this first stage of the value chain.
Development Marketplace : A Sillicon Valley for Development

( 2010-07) Kuraishi, Mari

In 1999, as news of protesters being subdued with pepper spray in Seattle at the WTO Ministerial Conference came drifting in, we sat explaining our plans for the World Bank's first Development Marketplace to a senior member of the International Finance Corporation's innovation team.
Design Thinking for Social Innovation

( 2010-07) Brown, Tim ; Wyatt, Jocelyn

Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.
Mobile Technology : One Core Lesson, Many Possible Solutions

( 2010-07) Quadir, Iqbal Z.

Over half of people in poor countries, including a quarter of those over the age of 14 in Afghanistan, use mobile phones.
Putting Nairobi's Slums on the Map

( 2010-07) Hagen, Erica

The streets of Kibera, one of the largets slums in Africa, are narrowly winding pathways strewn with garbage, divided down the middle by streams of sewage and waste that make walking treacherous.
Financial Institutions and Markets across Countries and over Time

(World Bank, 2010-02-15) Beck, Thorsten ; Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli ; Levine, Ross

This article introduces the updated and expanded version of the Financial Development and Structure Database. The database includes indicators on the size, efficiency, and stability of banks, nonbank financial institutions, and equity and bond markets over 1960–2007. It also contains indicators of financial globalization.
The Effect of Refugee Inflows on Host Communities

(World Bank, 2010-02-15) Alix-Garcia, Jennifer ; Saah, David

Despite the large and growing number of humanitarian emergencies, there is little economic research on the impact of refugees and internally displaced people on the communities that receive them. This analysis of the impact of the refugee inflows from Burundi and Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 on host populations in western Tanzania shows large increases in the prices of nonaid food items and more modest price effects for aid-related food items. Food aid is shown to mitigate these effects, though its impact is smaller than that of the increases in the refugee population. Examination of household assets suggests positive wealth effects of refugee camps on nearby rural households and negative wealth effects on households in urban areas.
Higher Food Prices in Sub-Saharan Africa

(World Bank, 2010-02-01) Wodon, Quentin ; Zaman, Hassan

The spike in global food prices in 2008 led to significantly higher food prices across the developing world. Global commodity prices have since fallen but remain volatile, and local food prices remain high in many countries. The authors review the evidence on the potential impact of higher food prices on poverty, focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, and examine the extent to which policy responses are able to protect the poor. They show that rising food prices are likely to lead to higher poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa as the negative impact on net consumers outweighs the benefits to producers. A recent survey shows that the most common policy response in Sub-Saharan African countries in 2008 was reducing taxes on food, while outside the region subsidies were the most popular measure. Sub-Saharan African countries also have a higher prevalence of food-based safety net programs, some of which were scaled up to respond to rising prices. The review suggests that the benefits from reducing import tariffs on staples are likely to accrue largely to the nonpoor. Safety net programs can be more effective, but geographic targeting and other investments to strengthen safety nets are necessary to ensure that fewer people are affected by future crises.
Policy Reforms Affecting Agricultural Incentives

(World Bank, 2010-02-01) Anderson, Kym

For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduce national and global economic welfare and inhibit agricultural trade and economic growth. They almost certainly add to inequality and poverty in developing countries, since three-quarters of the world's billion poorest people depend on farming for their livelihood. During the past two decades, however, numerous developing country governments have reduced their sectoral and trade policy distortions, while some high-income countries also have begun reducing market-distorting aspects of their farm policies. The author surveys the changing extent of policy distortions to prices faced by developing-country farmers over the past half century, and provides a summary of new empirical estimates from a global economy-wide model that yield estimates of how much could be gained by removing the interventions remaining as of 2004. The author concludes by pointing to the scope and prospects for further pro-poor policy reform in both developing and high-income countries.
Building Capacity to Move Past Conflict and Fragility

(World Bank, 2009-10-01) Pradhan, Sanjay

Capacity building should be an integral part of a country’s national development plan, not an add-on.