Journal Issue: World Bank Economic Review, Volume 38, Issue 3
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Volume
38
Number
3
Issue Date
2024-08-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
1564-698X
Journal
World Bank Economic Review
1564-698X
Journal Volume
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Articles
How Much Are Government Jobs in Developing Countries Worth?
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-01-22) Mangal, Kunal
Government jobs in developing
countries are valuable not just because they pay relatively
higher wages, but also because they provide many valuable
amenities. How does the value of these amenities compare
with the nominal wage itself The observed search behavior of
candidates preparing for competitive exams for government
jobs is used to infer a lower bound on the total value of a
government job, including amenities. Based on a sample of
147 candidates preparing for civil service exams in Pune,
India, the amenity value of a government job is estimated to
comprise at least two-thirds of total compensation. The high
amenity value is not driven by misinformed beliefs about the
nominal wage, nor by a high value placed on the process of
studying itself. Insights from focus group discussions help
explain which government job amenities are most valued in
this setting.
Crime and Gender Segregation
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-01-08) Knight, Brian; Ponce de Leon, Maria Mercedes; Tribin, Ana
The city of Bogota implemented a
lockdown during the pandemic under which only men were
allowed out on odd days and only women were allowed out on
even days. Crime rates in Bogota increased, relative to a
synthetic Bogota and relative to the pre-period, during this
gender-based lockdown. Moreover, this increase is driven by
more crime on men-only days and, more specifically, more
robberies with male victims on men-only days. There is no
evidence that higher crime rates on men-only days are offset
by lower crime rates on women only days. In fact, there is
evidence of some increases in crimes with female victims on
women-only days. There was an increase in robberies
involving female victims on women-only days during the
second half of the lockdown, when some restrictions were
eased and more men, and thus more potential perpetrators,
were on the streets. Overall, the gender-based lockdown, if
anything, increased crime.
Infrastructure and Structural Change in Africa
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-03-08) Herrera Dappe, MatÃas; Lebrand, Mathilde
Past investments in electricity,
Internet, and road infrastructure, in isolation and bundled,
have contributed to structural transformation and economic
development in Africa. Using new data on the expansion of
the road, electricity, and Internet networks over the past
two decades, the paper shows that having access to both
paved roads and electricity has led to a significant
reallocation of labor from agricultural to both
manufacturing and services. Adding access to fast Internet
has had a major impact on structural change, with an even
larger impact on reallocating labor away from agriculture.
The paper then uses a spatial general-equilibrium model to
quantify the impacts of future regional transport
investments, bundled with electricity and Internet
investments, on economic development in countries in the
Horn of Africa and Lake Chad region.
Religious Leaders’ Compliance with State Authority
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-05-21) Vyborny, Kate
A randomized controlled trial in
Pakistan tests whether one-on-one engagement with community
religious leaders can encourage them to instruct congregants
to follow government regulations. Treated religious leaders
are 25 percent more likely to comply with government
requirements to tell congregants they should wear a mask to
prevent COVID transmission when attending prayers. Treatment
effects do not depend on the religious content of the
message. Effects are driven by respondents who already
understand the mechanics of COVID transmission at baseline,
suggesting the treatment does not work by correcting basic
knowledge about the disease, but rather through a mechanism
of persuasion.
Effect of Moderate and Radical Rules on High-Caste Behavior and Norms in India
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-01-04) Govindan, Pavithra
Development and legal researchers
hypothesize that a moderate law may be more effective than a
radical one in changing behavior. This study tests this
hypothesis in the context of discriminatory sharing norms
practiced by high-caste individuals against low-caste
individuals in India. The study employs a lab-in-the-field
experiment in which it influences (a) high-caste
participants’ social norms of sharing money with a low-caste
participant and (b) introduces either a moderate or a
radical rule, that is, a rule that is closer or further away
from the social norm and requires high-caste participants to
share a minimum amount of their money with the low- caste
participant. Breaking the rule entails incurring a small
fine. This study finds that the effectiveness of the
moderate versus radical rule in changing behavior and norms
depends on the status quo social norm. This paper provides
causal empirical evidence on how social norms influence
laws’ effectiveness in inducing behavioral and norm change.
Job Loss and Household Labor Supply Adjustments in Developing Countries
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-01-17) Ciaschi, Matias; Guido Neidhofer
Using longitudinal data for
Argentina, this paper estimates the labor supply reaction of
spouses and children, as well as the interactions between
them, following the job loss of their husband or father. The
findings show that job loss by the household head has a
positive and significant impact on the labor supply of other
household members. However, it increases the likelihood of
spouses to switch to informal and downgraded employment, and
of children to drop out from education. While effects are
stronger among vulnerable households, coverage of social
security does not provide enough support in coping with
unemployment shocks. Mothers’ labor participation, however,
may allow their daughters to continue their education.
Heuristics on Call
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-02-22) Cole, Shawn; Joshi, Mukta; Schoar, Antoinette
There is growing evidence that
business training for micro-entrepreneurs can be effective.
However, in-person training can be expensive and imposes
costs on the target beneficiaries. This paper presents the
results of a two-site randomized evaluation of a
light-touch, mobile-phone-based business-training service
for microentrepreneurs in India and the Philippines. The
results show that the training had a statistically
significant impact on the adoption of improved business
practices, with an increase of 0.06 to 0.12 standard
deviation points when considering a binary indicator of
business practices. The study finds no evidence of impacts
on business sales or profits, though the confidence
intervals are wide enough to include meaningful effect sizes
(positive or negative). These results suggest that
mobile-phone-based training can be a cost-effective and
scalable way to impart business skills to micro-entrepreneurs.
The Causal Effect of Early Marriage on Women's Bargaining Power
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2024-01-09) Tauseef, Salauddin; Sufian, Farha Deba
Early marriage restrains women’s
agency and bargaining strength in post marital households,
impairing their ability to make meaningful contributions to
household decision making. This paper employs a
comprehensive measure of women’s empowerment in the domestic
and productive spheres, and isolates the causal effect of
age at marriage, instrumented by age at menarche, on their
bargaining strength, using nationally representative data
from Bangladesh. Results suggest that delayed marriages
result in significantly higher empowerment scores and
probability of being empowered for women, because of higher
likelihood in achieving adequacy in their autonomy in
agricultural production, control over income, ownership of
assets and rights in those assets, and ability to speak in
public. Favorable impacts of delayed marriage are also found
on women’s freedom of mobility, fertility choices, and their
ability to decide on household expenses and investments,
with the impacts likely coming via improvements in education
and labor market outcomes when women married later.
Addressing Social Desirability Bias When Measuring Child Labor Use
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2023-09-19) Jouvin, Marine
This paper proposes new estimates of
child labor use in Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa farms that are
certified free of child labor. The study relies on list
experiments (LE) to overcome social desirability bias
associated with measuring sensitive issues, implemented on a
sample of 4,458 Ivorian cocoa farmers. Findings show that 24
percent of them were helped by at least one child under 16
for harvesting and breaking the cocoa pods during the past
12 months, 21 percent for preparing their farm, and 25
percent employed and paid at least one child to perform any
task on their cocoa farm. These results are twice as high as
those declared by farmers when directly questioning them
about their child labor use. This study provides evidence
that the LE method, while more cognitively demanding than
the direct questioning method, can be successfully
understood by populations with low levels of education.
Findings further show that, in this setting, the LE
estimates are robust to specific LE design changes.
Making Data Count
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2023-11-01) Lain, Jonathan; Schoch, Marta; Vishwanath, Tara
Monitoring poverty reduction requires
frequent microdata on household welfare that can be compared
over time. Such data are unavailable in many countries,
given limited statistical capacity, shocks that prevent data
collection, and regular improvements to survey methodology.
This paper demonstrates how jointly deploying back casting
and survey-to-survey imputations can help to overcome this
in a setting where estimating a poverty trend is badly
needed, given the scale of the poverty-reduction challenge,
but where survey-to-survey imputations are more likely to
succeed and can be directly tested. In Nigeria, the most
recent official survey that can be used to construct an
imputation model was collected through the same methodology
and in the same year as the target survey. This data
landscape could arise in other settings where the
methodology for smaller, interstitial surveys is updated
more quickly than for larger, official consumption surveys.
Naively comparing Nigeria’s last two official consumption
surveys would suggest that the poverty rate fell by 17
percentage points between 2009 and 2019. Yet the methods
presented in this paper both suggest a much smaller
reduction in poverty of between 3 and 7 percentage points,
echoing Nigeria’s performance on nonmonetary welfare
indicators over the same period. The paper therefore
provides guidance on when and how back casting and
survey-to-survey imputation techniques can be most valuable
for monitoring poverty reduction.