Person:
Goldstein, Markus
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Trade,
Agriculture and Rural Development,
Social Development,
Gender
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Africa Gender Practice and Development Research Group, World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Markus Goldstein is a development economist with experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. He is currently the Gender Practice Leader in the Africa Region and a Lead Economist in the Research Group of the World Bank. His current research centers on issues of gender and economic activity, focusing on agriculture and small scale enterprises. He is currently involved in a number of impact evaluations on these topics across Africa. Markus has taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Ghana, Legon, and Georgetown University. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 88
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Publication
Gender and Agriculture : Inefficiencies, Segregation, and Low Productivity Traps
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-02)Women make essential contributions to agriculture in developing countries, where they constitute approximately 43 percent of the agricultural labor force. However, female farmers typically have lower output per unit of land and are much less likely to be active in commercial farming than their male counterparts. These gender differences in land productivity and participation between male and female farmers are due to gender differences in access to inputs, resources, and services. In this paper, the authors review the evidence on productivity differences and access to resources. They discuss some of the reasons for these differences, such as differences in property rights, education, control over resources (e.g., land), access to inputs and services (e.g., fertilizer, extension, and credit), and social norms. Although women are less active in commercial farming and are largely excluded from contract farming, they often provide the bulk of wage labor in the nontraditional export sector. In general, gender gaps do not appear to fall systematically with growth, and they appear to rise with GDP per capita and with greater access to resources and inputs. Active policies that support women's access and participation, not just greater overall access, are essential if these gaps are to be closed. The gains in terms of greater productivity of land and overall production are likely to be large. -
Publication
Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-03)In targeting poverty gains, sub-Saharan African governments have emphasized the alleviation of gender differences in agricultural productivity. The empirical studies on the gender gap, however, have frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic and topical coverage, and/or details on intra-household dynamics. The study provides a nationally-representative analysis of the gender gap in Malawi, and decomposes it, for the first time, at the mean and at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution into (i) a portion driven by gender differences in levels of observable attributes (the endowment effect), and (ii) a portion driven by gender differences in returns to the same set of observables (the structure effect). Sequentially, the authors unpack the relative contributions of different factors towards the gender gap, and suggest future research priorities to inform policy interventions. The authors find that while female-managed plots are, on average, 25 percent less productive, 82 percent of this differential is explained by differences in endowments, mainly due to high-value crop cultivation and levels of household adult male labor inputs. The factors driving the structure effect include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer. The gender gap increases across the productivity distribution, ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent at the 90th percentile. While it is explained predominantly by the endowment effect in the first half of the distribution, the contribution of the structure effect towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median, standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile. -
Publication
Learning from the Experiments That Never Happened : Lessons from Trying to Conduct Randomized Evaluations of Matching Grant Programs in Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)Matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments used by developing country governments to try to foster technological upgrading, innovation, exports, use of business development services and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure private gains, rather than generating the public gains that justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. The authors attempted to implement randomized experiments to evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered in six African countries, but in each case were unable to complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of randomized experiments is publication bias, whereby only those experiments with "interesting" results get published. The hope is to mitigate this bias by learning from the experiments that never happened. This paper describes the three main proximate reasons for lack of implementation: continued project delays, politicians not willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up; and then delves into the underlying causes of these occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility criteria that do not take account of where value-added may be highest, a lack of attention to detail in "last mile" issues, incentives facing project implementation staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all help explain the failure of randomization. Lessons are drawn from these experiences for both the implementation and the possible evaluation of future projects. -
Publication
Lessons for Matching Grant Programs from Failed Attempts to Evaluate Them
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)This note illustrates a case where attempting to do impact evaluations can provide valuable knowledge, even if the impact evaluations ultimately are unable to be completed. -
Publication
Decomposition of Gender Differentials in Agricultural Productivity in Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01)This paper employs decomposition methods to analyze differences in agricultural productivity between male and female land managers in Ethiopia. It employs data from the 2011-2012 Ethiopian Rural Socioeconomic Survey. An overall 23.4 percent gender differential in agricultural productivity is estimated at the mean in favor of male land managers, of which 10.1 percentage points are explained by differences in land manager characteristics, land attributes, and unequal access to resources (the endowment effect). The remaining 13.4 percentage points are explained by unequal returns to productive components, but cannot be easily tied to specific covariates. These results are mainly driven by non-married female managers (mainly single and divorced). Married female managers do not display such disadvantages. Further analysis along the productivity distribution reveals that gender differentials are more pronounced at mid-levels of productivity and that the share of the gender gap explained by the endowment effect declines as productivity increases. Detailed decomposition of estimates at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution provides valuable information for policy intervention purposes. -
Publication
Explaining Gender Differentials in Agricultural Production in Nigeria
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-03)This paper uses data from the General Household Survey Panel 2010/11 to analyze differences in agricultural productivity across male and female plot managers in Nigeria. The analysis utilizes the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, which allows for decomposing the unconditional gender gap into (i) the portion caused by observable differences in the factors of production (endowment effect) and (ii) the unexplained portion caused by differences in returns to the same observed factors of production (structural effect). The analysis is conducted separately for the North and South regions, excluding the west of the country. The findings show that in the North, women produce 28 percent less than men after controlling for observed factors of production, while there are no significant gender differences in the South. In the decomposition results, the structural effect in the North is larger than the endowment at the mean. Although women in the North have access to less productive resources than men, the results indicate that even if given the same level of inputs, significant differences still emerge. However for the South, the decomposition results show that the endowment effect is more important than the structural effect. Access to resources explains most of the gender gap in the South and if women are given the same level of inputs as men, the gap will be minimal. The difference in the results for the North and South suggests that policy should vary by region. -
Publication
The Effect of Absenteeism and Clinic Protocol on Health Outcomes : The Case of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Kenya
(American Economic Association, 2013-04)We show that pregnant women whose first clinic visit coincides with the nurse's attendance are 58 percentage points more likely to test for HIV and 46 percent more likely to deliver in a hospital. Furthermore, women with high pretest expectations of being HIV positive, whose visit coincides with nurse attendance, are 25 and 7.4 percentage points more likely to deliver in a hospital and receive PMTCT medication, and 9 percentage points less likely to breast-feed than women whose visit coincides with nurse absence. The shortcomings that prevent pregnant women from testing on a subsequent visit are common in sub-Saharan Africa. -
Publication
Learning from the Experiments that Never Happened : Lessons from Trying to Conduct Randomized Evaluations of Matching Grant Programs in Africa
(Elsevier, 2014-01-08)Matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments used by developing country governments to try to foster technological upgrading, innovation, exports, use of business development services and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure private gains, rather than generating the public gains that justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. We attempted to implement randomized experiments to evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered in six African countries, but in each case we were unable to complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of development research is publication bias, whereby only “interesting” results get published. Our hope is to mitigate this bias by learning from the experiments that never happened. We describe the three main proximate reasons for lack of implementation: continued project delays, politicians not willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up; and then delve into the underlying causes of these occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility criteria that do not take account of where value-added may be highest, a lack of attention to detail in “last mile” issues, incentives facing project implementation staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all help explain the failure of randomization. We draw lessons from these experiences for both the implementation and the possible evaluation of future projects. -
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AIDS Treatment and Intrahousehold Resource Allocation: Children's Nutrition and Schooling in Kenya
( 2009)The provision of antiretroviral medications is a central component of the response to HIV/AIDS and consumes substantial public resources from around the world, but little is known about this intervention's impact on the welfare of children in treated persons' households. Using longitudinal survey data from Kenya, we examine the relationship between the provision of treatment to adults and the schooling and nutrition outcomes of children in their households. Weekly hours of school attendance increase by over 20% within 6 months after treatment is initiated for the adult patient. We find some weak evidence that young children's short-term nutritional status also improves. These results suggest how intrahousehold allocations of time and resources may be altered in response to health improvements of adults. -
Publication
Assessing Our Work on Impact Evaluation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-08)Over the last several years, the World Bank has increasingly engaged in impact evaluations as means of building evidence for results. During this process, the Bank has also produced an extensive variety of knowledge products. However, there are several institutional and resource issues that constrain the effectiveness of our impact evaluation work. This brief outlines recent gains in the Bank's work on impact evaluation, highlights several issues, and proposes some options to continue improving and expanding the Bank's efforts in this area.