Journal Issue: World Bank Economic Review, Volume 18, Issue 2
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Volume
18
Number
2
Issue Date
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
1564-698X
Journal
World Bank Economic Review
1564-698X
Journal Volume
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Articles
Governance Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05) Kaufmann, Daniel; Kraay, Aart; Mastruzzi, Massimo
This article presents estimates of six
dimensions of governance for 199 countries and territories
for 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 developed in the context of
an ongoing project to measure governance across countries.
Section one describes the data used in developing this round
of the governance indicators, which include several new
sources. Data sources used in the earlier studies were
updated forward to 2002 and backward to 1996, and previously
estimated indicators for 1998 and 2000were revised to
reflect the new data. The aggregation procedure, described
in section two, provides not only estimates of governance
for each country but also measures of the precision or
reliability of these estimates. Although the new data have
improved the precision of the governance indicators, the
margins of error remain large relative to the units in which
governance is measured, so that comparisons across countries
and especially over time should be made with caution.
The Distribution of Income Shocks during Crises : An Application of Quantile Analysis to Mexico, 1992-95
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05) Bosch, Mariano; Maloney, William F.; Cunningham, Wendy V.
Moving beyond the simple comparisons of
averages typical of most analyses of household income
shocks, this article employs quantile analysis to generate a
complete distribution of such shocks by type of household
during the 1995 crisis in Mexico. It compares the
distributions across normal and crisis periods to see
whether observed differences were due to the crisis or are
intrinsic to the household types. Alternatively, it asks
whether the distribution of shocks during normal periods was
a reasonable predictor of vulnerability to income shocks
during crises. It finds large differences in the
distribution of shocks by household types both before and
during the crisis but little change in their relative
positions during the crisis. The impact appears to have been
spread fairly evenly. Households headed by people with less
education (poor), single mothers, or people working in the
informal sector do not appear to experience disproportionate
income drops either in normal times or during crises.
Do Macroeconomic Crises Always Slow Human Capital Accumulation?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05) Schady, Norbert R.
The impact of macroeconomic crises on
the investments made by parents in the human capital of
their children is a question of considerable policy
importance. Analysis of the effects of the profound 1988-92
macroeconomic crisis in Peru on the schooling and employment
decisions of school-age children in urban areas finds no
effect on attendance rates but a significant decline in the
fraction of children who are both employed and attend
school. It also finds significantly higher mean educational
attainment for children exposed to the crisis than for those
who were not. These findings may be related: children who
are not employed have more time available and may therefore
put more effort into school.
Agricultural Tariffs or Subsidies : Which Are More Important for Developing Economies?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05) Ng, Francis; Hoekman, Bernard; Olarreaga, Olarreaga
This article assesses the impact of the
world price-depressing effect of agricultural subsidies and
border protection in Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) countries on developing
economies' exports, imports, and welfare. Developing
economy exporters are likely to benefit from reductions in
such subsidies and trade barriers, whereas net importers may
lose as world prices rise. A simple partial equilibrium
model of global trade in commodities that benefit from
domestic support or export subsidies is developed to
estimate the relevant elasticities. Simulation results
suggest that a 50 percent reduction in border protection
will have a much larger positive impact on developing
economies' exports and welfare than a 50 percent
reduction in agricultural subsidies. Although there is
significant heterogeneity across developing economies, the
results suggest that efforts in the Doha round of World
Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations should be directed at
substantially reducing border protection.
The Earnings Effects of Multilateral Trade Liberalization : Implications for Poverty
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05) Hertel, Thomas W.; Ivanic, Maros; Preckel, Paul V.; Cranfield, John A.L.
Most researchers examining poverty and
multilateral trade liberalization have had to examine
average, or per capita effects, suggesting that if per
capita real income rises, poverty will fall. This inference
can be misleading. Combining results from a new
international cross-section consumption analysis with
earnings data from household surveys, this article analyzes
the implications of multilateral trade liberalization for
poverty in Indonesia. It finds that the aggregate reduction
in Indonesia's national poverty headcount following
global trade liberalization masks a more complex set of
impacts across groups. In the short run the poverty
headcount rises slightly for self-employed agricultural
households, as agricultural profits fail to keep up with
increases in consumer prices. In the long run the poverty
headcount falls for all earnings strata, as increased demand
for unskilled workers lifts incomes for the formerly
self-employed, some of whom move into the wage labor market.
A decomposition of the poverty changes in Indonesia
associated with different countries' trade policies
finds that reform in other countries leads to a reduction in
poverty in Indonesia but that liberalization of
Indonesia's trade policies leads to an increase. The
method used here can be readily extended to any of the other
13 countries in the sample.
Asymmetries in the Union Wage Premium in Ghana
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004-05) Blunch, Niels-Hugo; Verner, Dorte
The article uses a matched
employer-employee data set for Ghana and adopts a quantile
regression approach that allows the effects of unionization
to vary across the conditional wage distribution. It is
shown that if there are intrafirm differences in
unionization, there does appear to be a premium among poorer
paid workers in the formal sector. Although this cannot be
given a causal interpretation, it suggests important issues
about how unions may affect one part of the labor market.