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Global Practice on Water

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Global Practice on Water

Last updated: January 31, 2023

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Gendered Laws and Women’s Financial Inclusion
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-01) Perrin, Caroline; Hyland, Marie
This paper documents the relationship between legal gender equality and the use of financial services, using individual-level data from 148 developed and developing economies. The analysis, which combines data from the Global Findex and Women, Business and the Law databases, highlights the existence of a significant and positive correlation between gender equality in the law and women’s access to financial products. The results show that greater legal equality alleviates women’s involuntary financial exclusion. The findings also suggest that prevailing adverse social norms can 0ify the beneficial effects of legal equality, and that better implementation of the law can facilitate a stronger relationship between legal frameworks and women’s financial inclusion.
The Evolution of Maternity and Paternity Leave Policies over Five Decades: A Global Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10) Hyland, Marie
This research analyzes the evolution of maternity and paternity leave across the world, covering 190 countries over 52 years. The data show striking differences both within and between countries in how leave distribution for parents upon the birth of a child has evolved. The study finds that, across all regions, there have been notable increases in the number of leave days a mother can take. The absolute increase in the number of leave days for mothers has been greatest in Europe and Central Asia, followed by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development high-income economies. However, apart from the high-income economies, the number of leave days allocated to fathers has increased by only a fraction of the amount for mothers. An analysis of the correlations between relative leave allocation and women’s labor market outcomes suggests that where the disparity in the allocation of leave days is greater, women’s participation in the labor market may be lower. However, the study finds no evidence of any association between the gender gap in leave allocation and other labor market outcomes, including the gender wage gap and women’s representation at the managerial level.
Gendered Laws, Informal Origins, and Subsequent Performance
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08) Hyland, Marie; Islam, Asif
This research explores the relationship between laws that discriminate on the basis of gender and the probability that a female-owned business begins operating in the informal sector. This is achieved by tracing the origins of formal businesses surveyed in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and merging this with information on the level of legal equality between genders as measured by the Women, Business and the Law database. In addition, the research explores whether starting a business informally has any differential effect on subsequent firm performance depending on the gender of the owner(s). The results show that gender discriminatory laws increase the likelihood that firms with female owners will begin operations in the informal sector; as expected, this does not hold for enterprises that are solely owned by men. Furthermore, the research provides evidence that firms that began operations informally have poorer performance years later—a relationship that exists both for firms with female owners and for firms fully owned by men. The results show notable variation by region.
Female-Owned Firms during the COVID-19 Crisis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-29) Hyland, Marie; Muzi, Silvia; Viganola, Domenico
This brief use firm-level data collected between May 2020 and May 2021 in 41 countries, to provide descriptive evidence on the differential effect of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis on female- and male-owned firms. Data suggest that while female-owned and male-owned businesses closed permanently at the same rates, female-owned firms were more likely to have temporarily closed during the crisis and to have closed for a longer duration. When able to stay in business, female-owned firms were more likely to experience a decrease in demand for their products or services and supply of intermediate inputs than male-owned firms. They also reduced the size of their workforce more than their male counterparts and were more likely to reduce hours worked. Finally, female-owned firms suffered deeper financial distress than male-owned firms. Nevertheless, female and male-owned firms show similar optimism of returning to normal levels of sales or workforce in the near future.
Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-09-16) Ciani, Andrea; Hyland, Marie Caitriona; Karalashvili, Nona; Keller, Jennifer L.; Ragoussis, Alexandros; Tran, Trang Thu
Economic and social progress requires a diverse ecosystem of firms that play complementary roles. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms constitutes one of the most up-to-date assessments of how large firms are created in low- and middle-income countries and their role in development. It argues that large firms advance a range of development objectives in ways that other firms do not: large firms are more likely to innovate, export, and offer training and are more likely to adopt international standards of quality, among other contributions. Their particularities are closely associated with productivity advantages and translate into improved outcomes not only for their owners but also for their workers and for smaller enterprises in their value chains. The challenge for economic development, however, is that production does not reach economic scale in low- and middle-income countries. Why are large firms scarcer in developing countries? Drawing on a rare set of data from public and private sources, as well as proprietary data from the International Finance Corporation and case studies, this book shows that large firms are often born large—or with the attributes of largeness. In other words, what is distinct about them is often in place from day one of their operations. To fill the “missing top” of the firm-size distribution with additional large firms, governments should support the creation of such firms by opening markets to greater competition. In low-income countries, this objective can be achieved through simple policy reorientation, such as breaking oligopolies, removing unnecessary restrictions to international trade and investment, and establishing strong rules to prevent the abuse of market power. Governments should also strive to ensure that private actors have the skills, technology, intelligence, infrastructure, and finance they need to create large ventures. Additionally, they should actively work to spread the benefits from production at scale across the largest possible number of market participants. This book seeks to bring frontier thinking and evidence on the role and origins of large firms to a wide range of readers, including academics, development practitioners and policy makers.
Discriminatory Environment, Firms' Discriminatory Behavior, and Women's Employment in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-04) Muzi, Silvia; Hyland, Marie; Islam, Asif
This paper contributes to better understanding firms' discriminatory behavior in the presence of gender-based legal discrimination and its linkages with labor market outcomes for women in a developing country setting. Using data collected through the World Bank Enterprise Surveys in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the paper documents the existence of nonnegligible employer discrimination and limitations in women's autonomy in the presence of a discriminatory environment. Interestingly, these are more pervasive outside the capital city, Kinshasa, which suggests that cultural norms or differences in regulation enforcement may be at play. The paper also finds that firms' discriminatory behavior harms women's labor market outcomes, in their representation among the upper echelons of management and participation in the overall workforce. The negative relationship between restrictions from discriminatory behaviors and female employment is particularly strong in the manufacturing sector.
Gendered Laws
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) Djankov, Simeon; Hyland, Marie Caitriona; Goldberg, Pinelopi Koujianou
This paper offers for the first time a global picture of gender discrimination by the law as it affects women's economic opportunity and charts the evolution of legal inequalities over five decades. Using the World Bank's newly extended Women, Business and the Law database, the paper documents large and persistent gender inequalities, especially with regard to equal pay and treatment of parenthood. The paper finds positive associations between improvements in the law and several labor market outcomes, and establishes a small, but over time increasing, causal impact of more equal laws on higher female labor force participation.
Are Management Practices Failing or Aiding the Private Sector in South America ?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03) Francis, David C.; Hyland, Marie; Rodriguez Meza, Jorge
An expanding body of literature has shown that better management practices can offer significant boosts to firms' productivity; this research illustrates that firms in South America are no exception. Using recent Enterprise Survey data from seven countries in South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay), the paper explores the various dimensions and drivers of management practices and analyzes how they are related to productivity. This is an important topic to investigate, given the lagging levels of productivity growth in the region. If management practices can boost firms’ productivity, this may be a cost-effective way to accelerate economic growth. The results show that improved management practices are associated with higher levels of productivity in all countries, and it is the impact of improved management specifically in larger firms that is driving the overall results. Indeed, in some countries, specifically Argentina, Paraguay, and Peru, it is only among larger firms that there is a positive link between management practices and productivity.
The Drivers and Impacts of Water Infrastructure Reliability: A Global Analysis of Manufacturing Firms
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-11) Islam, Asif; Hyland, Marie
Inadequate infrastructure impedes the productivity of manufacturing firms, with negative consequences for the wider economy. This study examines how water infrastructure copes with severe weather fluctuations and analyzes the effect of unreliable water supplies on the productivity of manufacturing firms, focusing predominately on firms in developing economies. This is achieved using firm-level data from World Bank Enterprise Surveys covering more than 16,000 manufacturing firms in a cross-section of 103 countries between 2009 and 2015. The study finds that periods of significantly low rainfall lead to higher water outages, and that the overall impact is driven by the effects of drought on low-income and lower-middle-income economies, with upper-middle-income and high-income economies benefitting from more resilient water infrastructure. Furthermore, the study finds that incidents of water outages lead to lower firm productivity for firms in less developed economies. For the average firm located in a low-income or lower-middle-income economy, one additional water outage incident per day in a typical month can lead to losses of approximately 8.2 percent of annual sales. This finding calls for increased policy focus on water infrastructure services, particularly in poorer countries where water infrastructure and firms seem to be particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of rainfall.
Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-10-24) Damania, Richard; Desbureaux, Sébastien; Hyland, Marie; Islam, Asif; Rodella, Aude-Sophie; Russ, Jason; Zaveri, Esha
The 21st century will witness the collision of two powerful forces – burgeoning population growth, together with a changing climate. With population growth, water scarcity will proliferate to new areas across the globe. And with climate change, rainfall will become more fickle, with longer and deeper periods of droughts and deluges. This report presents new evidence to advance understanding on how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity, impacts farms, firms, and families. On farms, the largest consumers of water in the world, impacts are channeled from declining yields to changing landscapes. In cities, water extremes especially when combined with unreliable infrastructure can stall firm production, sales, and revenue. At the center of this are families, who feel the impacts of this uncertainty on their incomes, jobs, and long-term health and welfare. Although a rainfall shock may be fleeting, its consequences can become permanent and shape the destiny of those who experience it. Pursuing business as usual will lead many countries down a “parched path” where droughts shape destinies. Avoiding this misery in slow motion will call for fundamental changes to water policy around the globe. Building resilience to rainfall variability will require using different policy instruments to address the multifaceted nature of water. A key message of this report is that water has multiple economic attributes, each of which entail distinct policy responses. If water is not managed more prudently—from source, to tap, and back to source—the crises observed today will become the catastrophes of tomorrow.