Journal Issue: World Bank Research Observer, Volume 21, Issue 1
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1
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Reducing the Incidence of Low Birth Weight in Low-Income Countries Has Substantial Economic Benefits
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-01-12) Alderman, Harold; Behrman, Jere R.
Reducing the incidence of low birth
weight not only lowers infant mortality rates but also has
multiple benefits over the life cycle. This study estimates
the economic benefits of reducing the incidence of low birth
weight in low-income countries, both through lower mortality
rates and medical costs and through increased learning and
productivity. The estimated economic benefits, under
plausible assumptions, are fairly substantial, at about $510
per infant moved from a low-birth-weight status. The
estimated gains are primarily from increases in labor
productivity (partially through more education) and
secondarily from avoiding costs due to infant illness and
death. Thus there may be many interventions to reduce the
incidence of low birth weight that are warranted purely on
the grounds of saving resources or increasing productivity.
Choosing a System of Unemployment Income Support : Guidelines for Developing and Transition Countries
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-02-14) Vodopivec, Milan
Mounting evidence suggests that
excessive job protection reduces employment and labor market
flows, hinders technological innovations, pushes workers
into the informal sector, and hurts vulnerable groups by
depriving them of job opportunities. Flexible labor markets
stimulate job creation, investment, and growth, but they
create job insecurity and displace some workers. How can the
costs of such insecurity and displacements be minimized
while ensuring that the labor market remains flexible? Each
of the main unemployment income support systems
(unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance,
unemployment insurance savings accounts, severance pay, and
public works) has strengths and weaknesses. Country-specific
conditions, chief among them labor market and other
institutions, the capacity to administer each type of
system, and the size of the informal sector, determine which
system is best suited to developing and transition countries.
Who is Not Poor? Dreaming of a World Truly Free of Poverty
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-01-25) Pritchett, Lant
When the World Bank dreams of 'a
world free of poverty,' what should it be dreaming? In
measuring global income or consumption expenditure poverty,
the World Bank has widely adopted the $1 a day standard as a
lower bound. Because this standard is based on poverty lines
in the poorest countries, anyone with income or expenditures
below this line will truly be poor. But there is no
consensus standard for the upper bound of the global poverty
line: above what level of income or expenditures is someone
truly not poor? This article proposes that the World Bank
compute its lower and upper bounds in a methodologically
equivalent way, using the poverty lines of the poorest
countries for the lower bound and the poverty lines of the
richest countries for the upper bound. The resulting upper
bound global poverty line will be 10 times higher than the
current lower bound and at least 5 times higher than the
currently used alternative lower bound of $2 a day. And in
tracking progress toward a world free of poverty, the World
Bank should compute measures of global poverty using a
variety of weights on the depth and intensity of poverty for
a range of poverty lines between the global lower and upper
bounds. For instance, rather than trying to artificially
force the global population of 6.2 billion (a billion is
1,000 million) into just two categories 'poor' and
'not poor,' with the new range of poverty lines
the estimates would be that 1.3 billion people are
'destitute' (below $1 a day), another 1.6 billion
are in 'extreme poverty' (above $1 a day but below
$2 dollar a day), and another 2.5 billion are in
'global poverty' (above extreme poverty but below
the upper bound poverty line).
Corporate Governance and Development
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-02-23) Claessens, Stijn
The literature shows that good corporate
governance generally pays for firms, for markets, and for
countries. It is associated with a lower cost of capital,
higher returns on equity, greater efficiency, and more
favorable treatment of all stakeholders, although the
direction of causality is not always clear. The law and
finance literature has documented the important role of
institutions aimed at contractual and legal enforcement,
including corporate governance, across countries. Using firm
level data, researchers have documented relationships
between countries corporate governance frameworks on the one
hand and performance, valuation, the cost of capital, and
access to external financing on the other. Given the
benefits of good corporate governance, firms and countries
should voluntarily reform more. Resistance by entrenched
owners and managers at the firm level and political economy
factors at the level of markets and countries partly explain
why they do not.
Enforcement and Good Corporate Governance in Developing Countries and Transition Economies
(Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-02-21) Berglof, Erik; Claessens, Stijn
More than regulations, laws on the
books, or voluntary codes, enforcement is a key to creating
an effective business environment and good corporate
governance, at least in developing countries and transition
economies. A framework is presented to help explain
enforcement, the impact on corporate governance when rules
are not enforced, and what can be done to improve corporate
governance in weak enforcement environments. The limited
empirical evidence suggests that private enforcement tools
are often more effective than public tools. However, some
public enforcement is necessary, and private enforcement
mechanisms often require public laws to function. Private
initiatives are often also taken under the threat of
legislation or regulation, although in some countries
bottom-up, private-led initiatives preceded and even shaped
public laws. Concentrated ownership aligns incentives and
encourages monitoring, but it weakens other corporate
governance mechanisms and can impose significant costs.
Various steps can be taken to reduce these costs and
reinforce other corporate governance mechanisms. But
political economy constraints, resulting from the
intermingling of business and politics, often prevent
improvements in the enforcement environment and the adoption
and implementation of public laws.