A. World Bank Economic Review
36 items available
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The World Bank Economic Review is a professional journal for the dissemination of World Bank-sponsored and other research that may inform policy analysis and choice. It is directed to an international readership among economists and social scientists in government, business, international agencies, universities, and development research institutions. The Review seeks to provide the most current and best research in the field of quantitative development policy analysis, emphasizing policy relevance and operational aspects of economics, rather than primarily theoretical and methodological issues. It is intended for readers familiar with economic theory and analysis but not necessarily proficient in advanced mathematical or econometric techniques. Articles illustrate how professional research can shed light on policy choices. Consistency with World Bank policy plays no role in the selection of articles. Articles are drawn from work conducted by World Bank staff and consultants and by outside researchers. Non-Bank contributors are encouraged to submit their work. Before being accepted for publication, articles are reviewed by three referees--one from the World Bank and two from outside the institution. Articles must also be endorsed by the members of the Editorial Board before final acceptance.
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Editors’ Introduction
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)This volume contains the Papers and Proceedings of the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) held on June 20–21, 2016, in Washington D.C. The theme of the conference was “Data and Development Economics.” -
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Purchase Patterns, Socioeconomic Status, and Political Inclination
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)This paper analyzes millions of credit card transaction records during several months for tens of thousands of individuals from two different countries. The study shows that, purchase patterns are strongly correlated with important societal indices such as socioeconomic status and political inclination. The results suggest the possibility of understanding and predicting the evolution of such societal indices from purchase behavioral patterns, potentially at high temporal and spatial resolutions. -
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Predicting Dynamic Patterns of Short-Term Movement
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)Short-term human mobility has important health consequences, but measuring short-term movement using survey data is difficult and costly, and use of mobile phone data to study short-term movement is only possible in locations that can access the data. Combining several accessible data sources, Senegal is used as a case study to predict short-term movement within the country. The focus is on two main drivers of movement—economic and social—which explain almost 70 percent of the variation in short-term movement. Comparing real and predicted short-term movement to measure the impact of population movement on the spread of malaria in Senegal, the predictions generated by the model provide estimates for the effect that are not significantly different from the estimates using the real data. Given that the data used in this paper are often accessible in other country settings, this paper demonstrates how predictive modeling can be used by policy makers to estimate short-term mobility. -
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Linguistic Fractionalization and Health Information in Sub-Saharan Africa
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)This paper explores the relationship between linguistic diversity and the stock of health information in society. Information is measured using individual-level knowledge about the oral rehydration product for treating children with diarrhea. Exploiting an individual woman-level dataset from the Demographic and Health Surveys for 14 sub-Saharan African countries combined with a novel high-resolution dataset on the spatial distribution of linguistic groups at a 1 km × 1 km level, this study shows that linguistic diversity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the stock of information in society. -
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The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and Opportunities to Expand Access to and Use of Financial Services
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)The Global Findex database is the world's most comprehensive set of data on how people make payments, save money, borrow and manage risk. Launched in 2011, it includes more than 100 financial inclusion indicators in a format allowing users to compare access to financial services among adults worldwide -- including by gender, age and household income. This third edition of the database was compiled in 2017 using nationally representative surveys in more than 140 developing and high-income countries. The database includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It features additional data on Fintech and digital financial services, including the use of mobile phones and internet technology to conduct financial transactions. Global Findex data is utilized to track progress toward the World Bank's goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. The data also is a source for the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators and a benchmark for policymakers seeking to expand access to and use of financial services. Lastly, this report discusses opportunities to expand access to financial services among the unbanked, and ways to promote greater use of digital financial services among the underbanked. -
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The Impact of Information Sharing on the Use of Collateral versus Guarantees
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)This study exploits contract-level data from Bosnia and Herzegovina to assess the impact of a new credit registry on the use of borrower collateral versus third-party guarantees. Among first-time borrowers, the introduction of mandatory information sharing leads to a shift from collateral to guarantees, in particular for riskier borrowers. Among repeat borrowers, both collateral and guarantee requirements decline in proportion to the length of the lending relationship. These results suggest that information sharing can both reduce adverse selection among new borrowers and hold-up problems among repeat borrowers. -
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Geography, Climate, and Genes in Development Studies
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)Over the coming decade, much more genetic data will enter into the study of economic development. This paper provides an example and emphasizes the uses and misuses of such information. It has assembled for the first time national frequencies of the ACP1 genetic polymorphism and the Interleukin-6 (IL6-174G) and Interleukin-10 (IL10-1082G) cytokines. These three respond over the centuries to ultraviolet radiation and infectious diseases. The study also looks at a national measure of heterozygotic diversity. In particular, it finds that ACP1 frequencies are significantly related to national outcomes ranging from GDP per capita to type and quality of governance, to measures of national “competitiveness,” to health, to fertility, to measures of satisfaction with life. These associations do not seem explainable by reverse causation nor by the influence of some of the usual variables in studies of long-run development. Nonetheless, these results do not mean that a few genes have a direct causal effect on world development. The ACP1*B variable is surely picking up the influences of many genetic and cultural adaptations over evolutionary time in response to ultraviolet exposure and pathogen burdens. This study's findings thus support other research indicating the importance of disease environments in shaping both genetic and sociocultural adaptations that have influence on development outcomes today. The paper concludes with a discussion of what such strong associations mean and do not mean, in hopes of guiding future studies of genes and other deep roots of economic development. -
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Public Investment Choices by Local and Central Governments
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)This paper examines the impacts of devolving authority for public resource allocation to local governments in a setting of limited electoral control. Such a setting differs from that assumed by seminal formal models of devolution, but describes many developing countries. This study presents a formal model of this setting and tests it using unique data from a natural experiment in rural Ethiopia whereby half of the country's regions were decentralized but not the other half. Employing a spatial regression discontinuity design, this article shows that decentralization strongly improved delivery of agricultural public services, which are of high priority to the central government. In contrast, it did not impact drinking water services, on which the central government places lower priority but citizens place high priority. -
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Representativity and Networked Interference in Data-Rich Field Experiments: A Large-Scale RCT in Rural Mexico
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)Modern availability of rich geospatial datasets and analysis tools can provide insight germane to the design of field experiments. Design of field experiments, and in particular the choice of sampling strategy, requires careful consideration of its consequences on the external representativity and interference (SUTVA violations) of the experimental sample. This paper presents a methodology for a) modeling the geospatial and social interaction factors that drive interference in rural field experiments; and b) eliciting a set of nondominated sample options that approximate the Pareto-optimal tradeoff between interference and external representativity, as functions of sample choice. The study develops and tests the methodology in the context of a large-scale health experiment in rural Mexico, involving more than 3,000 pregnant women and 600 health clinics across 5 states. Relevant for the practitioner, the methodology is computationally tractable and can be implemented leveraging open sourced geo-spatial data and software tools. -
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Measuring Regional Ethnolinguistic Diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Surveys versus GIS
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-02)This paper compares two approaches to measuring subnational ethnolinguistic diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa, one based on censuses and large-scale population surveys and the other relying on the use of geographic information systems (GIS). The two approaches yield sets of regional fractionalization indices that show a moderately positive correlation, with a stronger association across rural areas. These differences matter for empirical analysis: in a common sample of regions, survey-based indices of deep-rooted diversity show a more strongly negative association with a range of development indicators relative to their highest-quality GIS-based counterparts.