Journal Issue: World Bank Research Observer, Volume 38, Issue 1
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Volume
38
Number
1
Issue Date
2023-02-01
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The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led Businesses
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-03-29) Torres, Jesica; Maduko, Franklin; Gaddis, Isis; Iacovone, Leonardo; Beegle, Kathleen
The COVID-19 pandemic has struck businesses across the globe with unprecedented impacts. The world economy has been hit hard and firms have experienced a myriad of challenges, but these challenges have been heterogeneous across firms. This paper examines one important dimension of this heterogeneity: the differential effect of the pandemic on women-led and men-led businesses. The paper exploits a unique sample of close to 40,000 mainly formal businesses from 49 countries covering the months between April and September 2020. The findings show that women-led micro-businesses, women-led businesses in the hospitality industry, and women-led businesses in countries more severely affected by the COVID-19 shock were disproportionately hit compared with businesses led by men. At the same time, women-led micro-firms were markedly more likely to report increasing the use of digital platforms, but less likely to invest in software, equipment, or digital solutions. Finally, the findings also show that women-led businesses were less likely to have received some form of public support although they have been hit harder in some domains. In a crisis of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence tracing the impact of the shock in a timely fashion is desperately needed to help inform the design of policy interventions. This real-time glimpse into women-led businesses fills this need for robust and policy-relevant evidence, and due to the large country coverage of the data, it is possible to identify patterns that extend beyond any one country, region, or sector, but at the cost of some granularity for testing more complex economic theories.
Services, Jobs, and Economic Development in Africa
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-08-09) Baccini, Leonardo; Fiorini, Matteo; Hoekman, Bernard; Sanfilippo, Marco
This article presents data and analyzes the structure of employment in 13 African economies at the administrative unit level, with a focus on the role of services. We provide two novel pieces of evidence. First, we present a descriptive snapshot of changes in the composition of employment over time and across geographies. This reveals evidence of structural transformation toward services and service-related occupations at subnational level and provides a fine-grained overview of who works in services and where and how this has changed over time. Second, we provide correlations between services and economic development, using per capita nightlight luminosity as a proxy. We document (1) a strong positive association between high skills services and economic development; (2) substantial heterogeneity across industries within services; and (3) a mediating role of market conditions and technology in the relation between services and economic development. Overall, our work highlights an important role of services activities for employment, skills, and economic development in Africa.
A Puzzle with Missing Pieces
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-07-12) Ashton, Louise; Friedman, Jed; Goldemberg, Diana; Hussain, Mustafa Zakir; Kenyon, Thomas; Khan, Akib; Zhou, Mo
The identification of key determinants of aid effectiveness is a long-standing question in the development community. This paper reviews the literature on aid effectiveness at the project level and then extends the inquiry in a variety of dimensions with new data on World Bank investment project financing. It confirms that the country institutional setting and quality of project supervision are associated with project success, as identified previously. However, many aspects of the development project cycle, especially project design, have been difficult to measure and therefore under-investigated. The paper finds that project design, as proxied by the estimated value added of design staff, the presence of prior analytic work, and other specially collected measures, is a significant predictor of ultimate project success. These factors generally grow in predictive importance as the income level of the country rises. The results also indicate that a key determinant of the staff's contribution is their experience with previous World Bank projects, but not other characteristics such as age, education, or country location. Key inputs to the project production process associated with subsequent performance are not captured in routine data systems, although it is feasible to do so. Further, the conceptualization and measurement of the success of project-based aid should be revisited by evaluative bodies to reflect a project's theorized contribution to development outcomes.
Greater than the Sum of the Parts? Evidence on Mechanisms Operating in Women’s Groups
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-03-25) Díaz-Martin, Lucía; Gopalan, Akshara; Guarnieri, Eleonora; Jayachandran, Seema
Women's groups are a popular approach to promoting women's and girls’ empowerment. Yet, whether and how creating and supporting women's groups and delivering interventions through them offers unique benefits compared to individual-based interventions remains an open question. We review the experimental and quasi-experimental literature on women's livelihoods and financial groups, health groups, and adolescent groups, and analyze the causal mechanisms through which these models improved outcomes for women and girls in low and middle-income countries. We distinguish between mechanisms that leveraged groups as a platform for intervention delivery and mechanisms that leveraged interactions among group members. We conclude that the primary benefit of group models is to offer a platform to reach many women at once with resources, information, and training. Nonetheless, some evidence suggests that group models can achieve positive impacts by fostering or harnessing interactions among group members, which would be harder or impossible to achieve through individual-based interventions. We offer some suggestions regarding the implications of these findings for programming and future research.
Childcare and Mothers’ Labor Market Outcomes in Lower- and Middle-Income Countries
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2022-07-12) Halim, Daniel; Perova, Elizaveta; Reynolds, Sarah
Improving women's labor force participation and the quality of their employment can boost economic growth and support poverty and inequality reduction; thus, it is highly pertinent for the development agenda. However, existing systematic reviews on female labor market outcomes and childcare, which can arguably improve these outcomes, are focused on developed countries. We review 22 studies which plausibly identify the causal impact of institutional childcare on maternal labor market outcomes in lower-and-middle income countries. All but one study finds positive impacts on the extensive or intensive margin of maternal labor market outcomes, which aligns with findings from developed countries. We further analyze aspects of childcare design, including hours, ages of children, coordination with other childcare services that may increase the impacts on maternal labor market outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research.