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Vishwanath, Tara

Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank
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Macroeconomics, Development, Labor Economics
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Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Tara Vishwanath is a Lead Economist and a Global Lead of the Global Solutions Group for Welfare Implications of Climate, Fragility, and Conflict Risks in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. Prior to joining the Africa Region, she led the poverty program in Middle East and North Africa and South Asia regions. Before joining the World Bank, she was a professor of economics at Northwestern University and has published widely in leading international economics journals on economic theory, labor economics, and development. She holds a doctorate in economics from Cornell University.
Citations 32 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 21
  • Publication
    Promoting Youth Opportunities and Participation in Morocco
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-06) La Cava, Gloria; Vishwanath, Tara; Morgandi, Matteo; Serajuddin, Umar; Ivanic, Maros; Jillson, Irene
    This quick note is based on the report of the same name which was prepared just prior to the Arab Spring. The study anticipates the demands for social and economic inclusion articulated by Moroccan young people, especially February 2011. Since then, these demands have been amplified and reached a new level of urgency. This study adopts a mixed method approach combining an innovative quantitative instrument with qualitative and institutional analysis. The goal is to provide policy makers with a nuanced analysis of barriers to employment and active civic participation encountered by young people aged 15 to 29 years so as to tailor youth interventions more effectively. It identifies a wide range of recommendations available to support youth-inclusive activities and policies, and a roadmap for integrated youth investments.
  • Publication
    Jordan Now : New Work Opportunities for Women
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-10) Vishwanath, Tara; Krishnan, Nandini
    Improving women's access to economic opportunities remains an important development challenge for the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). Although impressive strides have been made region-wide in improving women's educational and health outcomes, the region's low female labor force participation rates are not commensurate with these achievements. The youth, especially young women, are very vulnerable, facing significantly higher rates of unemployment. Productive use of this increasingly well educated portion of the labor force promises faster and more sustained economic growth for the region as a whole. In this context, MENA countries are looking at various policies and programs to change this situation. This quick note looks at a pilot program in Jordan which is attempting to tackle this challenge.
  • Publication
    Famine and the Aid Response: Evidence from the Announcement of Famine-Like Conditions in the Republic of Yemen
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04) Tandon, Sharad; Vishwanath, Tara
    Using a high-frequency mobile phone survey of food security conducted by the World Food Programme, this paper investigates how food assistance and access to food changed following the announcement of famine-like conditions in the Republic of Yemen. Among the mobile phone–using population, the share of households receiving food assistance more than doubled following the announcement. The increases were largely targeted at regions identified in the announcement as being closer to famine in the original announcement, and there was improvement in access to food in regions that received the most food assistance relative to the rest of the country. Although the survey misses struggling households that do not have access to a mobile phone and are potentially more at risk of famine, the results raise questions about the need for better quality data in food emergencies that are updated more regularly for better targeting of food assistance.
  • Publication
    Where are Iraq’s Poor?: Mapping Poverty in Iraq
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-23) Vishwanath, Tara; Krishnan, Nandini
    Measuring poverty and tracking it over time is an important prerequisite to national economic planning. Absence of official data on household expenditure or poverty line hampered the ability of Iraqi policymakers to understand the extent of the problem, analyze their causes, and devise appropriate policies. Iraq household socioeconomic survey (IHSES) 2006-07 was the first survey of its kind since 1988 to cover all 18 governorates. The survey collected rich information on income, expenditure, employment, housing, education, health, and other socioeconomic indicators. Building on the experience of the first IHSES survey and using international best practice on sampling and questionnaire design and survey implementation, the second round of IHSES was fielded in 201-/13. To fill the data gap, a larger survey was designed to collect information on correlates of household welfare like demographic characteristics, education, occupation, housing, and assets and estimate small-area poverty rates using projection methods. This report presents results from the exercise, the first of its kind for Iraq. Poverty mapping not only provides a visual representation of poverty at subnational levels, it also reveals pockets of poverty and islands of prosperity where they exist. This knowledge is useful to inform decisions on policy design and targeting of development projects and programs.
  • Publication
    Testing the Importance of Search Frictions, Matching, and Reservation Prestige through Randomized Experiments in Jordan
    (World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-09-01) Groh, Matthew; McKenzie, David; Shammout, Nour; Vishwanath, Tara
    Unemployment rates for tertiary-educated youth in Jordan are high, as is the duration of unemployment. Two randomized experiments in Jordan were used to test different theories that may explain this phenomenon. The first experiment tested the role of search and matching frictions by providing firms and job candidates with an intensive screening and matching service based on educational backgrounds and psychometric assessments. Although more than 1,000 matches were made, youth rejected the opportunity to even have an interview in 28 percent of cases, and when a job offer was received, they rejected this offer or quickly quit the job 83 percent of the time. A second experiment built on the first by examining the willingness of educated, unemployed youth to apply for jobs of varying levels of prestige. Youth applied to only a small proportion of the job openings they were told about, with application rates higher for higher prestige jobs than lower prestige jobs. Youth failed to show up for the majority of interviews scheduled for low prestige jobs. The results suggest that reservation prestige is an important factor underlying the unemployment of educated Jordanian youth.
  • Publication
    The Lives and Livelihoods of Syrian Refugees in the Middle East: Evidence from the 2015-16 Surveys of Syrian Refugees and Host Communities in Jordan, Lebanon, and Kurdistan, Iraq
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Russo Riva, Flavio; Krishnan, Nandini; Sharma, Dhiraj; Vishwanath, Tara
    The Syrian crisis has led to rapid and large-scale population displacement. This paper has two main aims. (i) It documents the size and timing of the Syrian refugee influx into Jordan, Lebanon, and Kurdistan, characterizing the forced nature of displacement and exploring factors that influenced the decision to flee and subsequently move within the host country. (ii) The paper describes the daily living conditions of refugees after displacement, documenting vulnerability along several dimensions, such as housing access and quality, labor market attachment, and financial security. The data sources include the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' registration database and multi-country, multi-topic surveys conducted in 2015-16.
  • Publication
    Testing Job Matching Services for Unemployed Educated Youth in Jordan
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-09) Groh, Matthew; McKenzie, David; Shammout, Nour; Vishwanath, Tara
    This note tests the extent to which search and matching frictions are the cause of high levels of unemployment for educated youth in Jordan, and whether a job matching service can reduce unemployment.
  • Publication
    The Impact of Soft Skills Training on Female Youth Employment: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Jordan
    (Springer, 2016-05-13) Groh, Matthew; Kirshnan, Nandini; McKenzie, David; Vishwanath, Tara
    Employers around the world complain that youth lack the soft skills needed for success in the workplace. In response, a number of employment programs have begun to incorporate soft skills training, but to date there has been little evidence as to the effectiveness of such programs. This paper reports on a randomized experiment in Jordan in which female community college graduates were randomly assigned to a soft skills training program. Despite this program being twice as long in length as the average program in the region, and taught by a well-regarded provider, we find soft skills training does not have any significant employment impact in three rounds of follow-up surveys. We elicit expectations of academics and development professionals and reveal that these findings are novel and unexpected.
  • Publication
    Ex-Post Impact Evaluation of an Export Promotion Matching Grant : Tunisia's Second EMAF
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-05) Gourdon, J.; Marchat, J.M.; Sharma, S.; Vishwanath, T.
    Among the root causes of the current political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are the large numbers of unemployed but increasingly educated youth. For the region to achieve stability, it will have to ensure a more inclusive and faster growth path and find enough jobs for this cohort. Exports will play a key role in moving in this direction and this fast brief examines the impact of Matching Grants (MG) in supporting exports. This quick note is another addition to this body of work and presents results from one of the first ex-post Impact Evaluation (IE) of an active export promotion MG in a middle income country, Tunisia. This IE was undertaken in preparation of a lending operation. Finally, it must be noted that with the matching process, the untreated group with high propensity score will be more used for comparison than those with low propensity score so this will give more weight to firms that were 'targeted' by second Export Market Access Fund (EMAF). Hence it is key to see if the firms especially targeted by second EMAF would have done better or worse without the support.
  • Publication
    Capturing Sensitive Information from Difficult-to-Reach Populations: Evidence from a Novel Internet-Based Survey in Yemen
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09) Tandon, Sharad; Vishwanath, Tara
    As conflicts across the globe escalate and data collection in these settings becomes more sensitive, policy makers and researchers are forced to turn to alternative methods for accurately collecting vital information. This paper assesses the ability of novel and anonymous internet-based surveys to elicit sensitive information in the Republic of Yemen's conflict by comparing identical sensitive and non-sensitive questions in an internet survey to a concurrent mobile phone survey. There were significant differences between the modalities in all the sensitive questions, with a greater share of respondents expressing sensitive views in the internet survey. The differences between modalities was larger for sensitive questions than for non-sensitive questions, and all the differences were qualitatively identical for subsets of the sample that are underrepresented in internet surveys. Overall, the results suggest that internet surveys can be an effective tool to use in conjunction with other techniques to acquire information that would otherwise be difficult to collect.