Publication: The World Bank Research Observer 16(2)
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Published
2001-09
ISSN
0257-3032
Date
2013-06-19
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Abstract
Counting the world's poor: problems and possible solutions; by Angus Deaton. Comments on "counting the world's poor"; by Martin Ravallion, and T. N. Srinivasan. Ecology, history, and development : a perspective from rural Southeast Asia; by Yujiro Hayami. Productivity growth and sustainability in post-green revolution agriculture: the case of the Indian and Pakistan Punjab; by Rinku Murgai, Mubarik Ali, and Derek Byerlee. The politics of Russian enterprise reform: insiders, local governments, and the obstacles to restructuring; by Raj M. Desai and Itzhak Goldberg.
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“World Bank. Devarajan, Shantayanan, editors. 2001. The World Bank Research Observer 16(2). World Bank Research Observer. , 16(2), . © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14037 License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO.”
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Supply-side subsidies are, for the most part, neutral or regressive; while demand-side subsidies perform better-although many of them do not improve income distribution. Considering that the policy objective is to improve the welfare of the poorest, it is imperative to move away from supply-side subsidies towards demand-side subsidies and to integrate transport social concerns into wider poverty alleviation efforts, which include the possibility of channeling subsidies through monetary transfer systems or through other transfer instruments (food subsidies, health services and education for the poor). The general conclusion of the paper is that more effort should be devoted to improve the targeting properties of public urban transport subsidies using means-testing procedures to ensure a more pro-poor incidence of subsidies.Publication Investment Climate Reforms and Job Creation in Developing Countries : What Do We Know and What Should We Do?(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-09)This paper reviews the literature on the role of the investment climate reforms in job creation. It finds that the current landscape of employment and private sector activity in developing countries indicates a number of potential channels through which investment climate reforms can positively affect job creation. However, rigorous empirical evidence is scarce and most of the relevant studies focus on business entry reforms with a few focusing on business taxation and investment promotion activities. Overall, there is evidence of job creation through business entry, tax reforms, and investment promotion activity in developing countries. Almost all of these evidences are from quasi-experimental studies that are significant improvements over conventional cross-country or cross-section panel data analysis. Still, various endogeneity concerns in these studies cannot be ruled out completely. In assessing job effects, future research should provide deeper insights on the gross versus net and short-run versus long-run job effects and general equilibrium effects of various investment climate reforms related to jobs, productivity, competition, and other developmental outcomes. Another critical agenda for future research is to shed light on which investment climate reforms matter most for spurring the employment and productivity growth of firms in developing countries. The World Bank Group, in partnership with development partners and client government countries, can play a significant role in bridging the current knowledge gap by integrating rigorous evaluation as an integral part of project design and implementation, and improving data quality, particularly through its information and communication technologies-led private sector development reform initiatives.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Adaptive Social Protection in the Caribbean - Building Human Capital for Resilience(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-01)The Caribbean region is highly exposed to different types of shocks, some with devastating effects, ranging from climate change and disasters to external economic stresses and epidemics like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Most Caribbean economies are small and open, and reliant on tourism and foreign investments, combined with high levels of poverty, which makes countries in the region vulnerable to such shocks. Shocks disproportionally affect the poor because they are often not only more exposed to them (e.g. due to their geographical location), but they are also more vulnerable to their effects. The sources of resilience available to the poor are more limited, and therefore they are often less equipped to anticipate, absorb, and recover from shocks. The social protection (SP), health, and education sectors play key roles in helping people to build human capital for resilience. These sectors contribute to strengthening the capacities of households and individuals, and in particular the poor, to anticipate, absorb, and recover from shocks. In this regard, ensuring business continuity for these services during shock events is crucial, alongside developing the capacity to rapidly adapt and deploy adequate support to people affected by shocks. Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) is concerned with how SP programs, services and systems can contribute to addressing covariate shocks through preventive, preparedness, and response actions: that is, adapting and using the capacity of the SP sector, typically developed for addressing idiosyncratic shocks, to enhance the resilience of households – and of the poor in particularPublication The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic : Short and Medium Term Estimates for West Africa(Washington, DC, 2014-10-07)The 2014 outbreak of the Ebola virus disease in West Africa has taken a devastating human toll. Although the outbreak originated in rural Guinea, it has hit hardest in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in part because it has reached urban areas in these two countries, a factor that distinguishes this outbreak from previous episodes elsewhere. As of October 3, 2014, there had been 3,431 recorded deaths out of 7,470 probable, suspected, or confirmed cases of Ebola. This report informs the response to the epidemic by presenting best-effort estimates of its macroeconomic and fiscal effects. Any such exercise is necessarily highly imprecise due to limited data and many uncertain factors, but it is still necessary in order to plan the economic assistance that must accompany the immediate humanitarian response. The goal is to help affected countries to recover and return to the robust economic growth they had experienced until the onset of this crisis. This document presents the World Bank's preliminary estimates of the economic impact of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa for 2014 (short term impact) and 2015 (medium term impact). Section 2 presents a single set of 2014 estimates for Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, based on available data on current economic activity as well as assumptions about the short-term impact. It also presents current data on the limited current impacts on other countries in the region. Section 3 presents estimates for the impact by the end of 2015 for Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, as well as estimates for West Africa as a whole. Because the epidemic and the behavioral responses to it have more time to diverge over the course of 2015, Section 3 presents two scenarios for 2015, which vary in the optimism of their assumptions regarding the epidemic and the success of donor and government policy and efforts to control it. The take-away messages from this analysis are a low Ebola scenario that corresponds to rapid containment within the three most severely affected countries, and a high Ebola scenario corresponds to slower containment in the three countries, with some broader regional contagion. A swift policy reaction by the international community is crucial. With potential the economic costs of the Ebola epidemic being so high, very substantial containment and mitigation expenditures would be cost-effective, if they successfully avert the worst epidemiological outcomes. To mitigate the medium term economic impact of the outbreak, current efforts by many partners to strengthen the health systems and fill the fiscal gaps in the core three countries are key priorities. Finally, this report does not take into account the longer term impacts generated by mortality, failure to treat other health conditions due to aversion behavior and lack of supply capacity, school closings and dropouts, and other shocks to livelihoods. It is truly focused on the short and medium-term inputs, over the next 18 months.