Publication: Ways Out of Poverty : Diffusing Best Practices and Creating Capabilities--Perspectives on Policies for Poverty Reduction
Loading...
Date
2003-03
ISSN
Published
2003-03
Author(s)
Abstract
Fundamentally, poverty reduction is about bringing growth processes to poor areas. Because poor areas can benefit from technical and organizational innovations made elsewhere in the world, it is possible today to create productive jobs faster and in greater quantity than ever before. The puzzle is what helps spread such "best practices." Saving, investment, education, resources, and new technology are all needed-and fairly easy to obtain. What is hard to obtain are the institutions that allow these factors of production to be combined and translated into productive job creation. Firms are the key vehicles that spread best practices and productive jobs to areas where poor people live. Because we can never be sure which firm will be successful, it is necessary that new firms can enter markets, that substandard firms are allowed to fail, and that good firms face few barriers to growth. This is the definition of competition, and competition is what selects good firms and thus drives the spread of best practice and productive jobs. Governments need to provide the framework in which capable firms can emerge. Yet, the right mix of state activity and how it best interacts with firms are not fully understood. Some selection mechanism, which allows for policy experiments and selects successful ones, is valuable for national, provincial, and local governments. Thus competition among jurisdictions and firms is an integral part of dynamic social systems that hold promise for creating wealth and ending poverty.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Klein, Michael. 2003. Ways Out of Poverty : Diffusing Best Practices and Creating Capabilities--Perspectives on Policies for Poverty Reduction. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 2990. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18312 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Global Ripple Effects(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-26)The three major players in the global economy, the United States, the European Union, and China, have been designing climate mitigation policies that will help reduce their carbon emissions but will also likely reshape developing countries’ trade, prices, and access to technology. This paper examines developing countries’ exposure to such changes. Overall, the policies are expected to curtail demand for fossil fuels, energy-intensive manufacturing, and agricultural exports linked to environmental degradation. They are also expected to open export opportunities in critical minerals, electric vehicles and their components, and renewable energy technologies and components. The exposure of affected export sectors and the overall economy to these changes will vary across countries based on the orientation of their export sectors to the markets in the European Union, the United States, and Chinese as well as the weight of affected exports in their economies. The climate policies will also likely reduce oil prices and raise critical mineral prices, help reduce the cost of green technologies, and increase green foreign investment. The paper draws recommendations for developing countries, the European Union, the United States, and China, as well as the international community, on how best to help developing countries lessen the potential negative competitiveness effects of these climate policies and make the most of the opportunities for a faster green transition and economic development.Publication Firm Linkages and Domestic Value Added in Exports(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-26)Since 2000, China has been upgrading its infrastructure, exemplified by the expansion of the high-speed railways (HSR), while simultaneously moving up the global value chains, evidenced by the rising domestic value-added ratio (DVAR) in exports. To analyze the impacts of the HSR on China’s DVAR, this paper develops a new methodology to estimate firm-level DVAR using only customs transaction data, without relying on the industry input-output tables or matching firm-level industrial census data. This paper also proposes a novel way to capture firm-level input-output linkages by matching the custom product codes of importers and exporters. The results confirm that the HSR increases the DVAR through firm linkages by connecting downstream exporters with upstream domestic suppliers. A two-sector model shows that, by improving the probability of exporters connecting with low-communication cost domestic suppliers, the HSR decreases domestic material prices and increases the variety of accessible domestic materials, hence pushing up DVAR.Publication Indigenous peoples, land and conflict in Mindanao, Philippines(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-12)This article explores the links between conflict, land and indigenous peoples in several regions of Mindano, the Philippines, notorious for their levels of poverty and conflict. The analysis takes advantage of the unprecedented concurrence of data from the most recent, 2020, census; an independent conflict data monitor for Mindanao; and administrative sources on ancestral land titling for indigenous peoples in the Philippines. While evidence elsewhere compellingly links land titling with conflict reduction, a more nuanced story emerges in the Philippines. Conflicts, including land- and resource-related conflicts, are generally less likely in districts (barangays) with higher shares of indigenous peoples. Ancestral domain areas also have a lower likelihood for general conflict but a higher likelihood for land-related conflict. Ancestral domains titling does not automatically solve land-related conflicts. When administrative delays take place (from cumbersome bureaucratic processes, insufficient resources and weak institutional capacity), titling processes may lead to sustained, rather than decreased, conflict.Publication Behaviorally Informed Messages Increase COVID-19 Vaccination Intentions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-22)During the COVID-19 pandemic, low- and middle-income countries struggled with lower vaccination rates compared to wealthier countries, posing challenges to reducing virus transmission, mitigating healthcare system pressures, and promoting economic recovery. Communications campaigns offer low-cost opportunities to overcome such challenges by strengthening vaccine confidence and intentions to get vaccinated, but empirical testing is needed to identify which messages will be most effective in different contexts. To support policy-making efforts to design effective communication rapidly during the pandemic, a global research program of 28 online experiments was conducted by recruiting respondents (123,270 individuals) through social media between January 2021 and June 2022 across 23 mostly low- and middle-income countries and territories. An individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis of these data summarizes the results of this research program testing the impact of behaviorally informed messaging on vaccine intentions. Results from the meta-analysis show that among unvaccinated survey respondents, behaviorally informed messages significantly increased the odds of vaccination intention by 1.28 times overall and up to 1.93 times in individual studies (safety messages in Papua New Guinea). Significant pooled effects of specific framings ranged from increasing the odds of vaccination intention by 1.16 times (variant framing) to 1.45 times (experts and religious leaders framing). This research underscores the importance of communication tailored to address different drivers of vaccine hesitancy and offers insights for handling future health crises with behavioral communication strategies leveraging rapid insights afforded by social media.Publication From Fiscal Cyclicality to Fiscal Stress(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-26)Macroeconomic textbooks warn that procyclical public spending can amplify economic volatility and cause fiscal stress. However, the latter risks materialize only when governments fail to reduce spending during downturns as much as they increase it during booms. This study investigates asymmetries in the cyclicality of public consumption and finds that emerging markets exhibit “downward rigidity”: they boost spending during upswings but do not effectively cut back during downturns. In contrast, advanced economies maintain steady levels of public consumption regardless of economic conditions, making them effectively acyclical. Downward rigidity in public consumption not only paves the way for fiscal stress when the economy slows, but also leads to sustained growth in the size of the state.