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  • 2010-2014  (631)
  • 2010  (631)
  • Washington, D.C : The World Bank  (631)
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  • 2010-2014  (631)
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  • 1
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Vulnerable places, vulnerable people : trade liberalization, rural poverty and the environment (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource (224 pages)
    Parallel Title: Erscheint auch als
    Keywords: Development Economics ; Economic Policy ; Environmental Economics ; Natural Resource Management ; Poverty Reduction Strategies ; Rural Development ; Trade ; Entwicklungsländer ; Welthandel ; Liberalisierung ; Armut ; Umweltverschmutzung
    Abstract: While some argue that trade liberalization has raised incomes and led to environmental protection in developing countries, others claim that it generates neither poverty reduction nor sustainability. The detailed case studies in this book demonstrate that neither interpretation is universally correct, given how much depends on specific policies and institutions that determine 'on-the-ground' outcomes. Drawing on research from six countries around the developing world, the book also presents the unique perspectives of researchers at both the world's largest development organization (The World Bank) and the world's largest conservation organization (World Wildlife Fund) on the debate over trade liberalization and its effects on poverty and the environment. The authors trace international trade rules and events down through national development contexts to investigate on-the-ground outcomes for real people and places. The studies underscore the importance of evaluating trade from a perspective that pays attention to environmental and social vulnerability and understands the linkages between poverty reduction and environmental protection. The lessons drawn provide a critical first step in developing the appropriate response options needed to ensure that trade plays a positive role in promoting truly sustainable development
    URL: Deutschlandweit zugänglich
    URL: Deutschlandweit zugänglich
    URL: Deutschlandweit zugänglich
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 2
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Downward Nominal and Real Wage Rigidity : Survey Evidence From European Firms (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (52 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Babecky, Jan Downward Nominal and Real Wage Rigidity
    Abstract: It has been well established that the wages of individual workers react little, especially downwards, to shocks that hit their employer. This paper presents new evidence from a unique survey of firms across Europe on the prevalence of downward wage rigidity in both real and nominal terms. The authors analyse which firm-level and institutional factors are associated with wage rigidity. The results indicate that it is related to workforce composition at the establishment level in a manner that is consistent with related theoretical models (e.g. efficiency wage theory, insider-outsider theory). The analysis also finds that wage rigidity depends on the labour market institutional environment. Collective bargaining coverage is positively related with downward real wage rigidity, measured on the basis of wage indexation. Downward nominal wage rigidity is positively associated with the extent of permanent contracts and this effect is stronger in countries with stricter employment protection regulations
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5159
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 3
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Green Stimulus, Economic Recovery, and Long-Term Sustainable Development (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Strand, Jon Green Stimulus, Economic Recovery, and Long-Term Sustainable Development
    Abstract: This paper discusses short-run and long-run effects of "green stimulus" efforts, and compares these effects with "non-green" fiscal stimuli. Green stimulus is defined here as short-run fiscal stimuli that also serve a "green" or environmental purpose in a situation of "crisis" characterized by temporary under-employment. A number of recently enacted national stimulus packages contain sizeable "green" components. The authors categorize effects according to their a) short-run employment effects, b) long-run growth effects, c) effects on carbon emissions, and d) "co-benefit" effects (on the environment, natural resources, and for other externalities). The most beneficial "green" programs in times of crisis are those that can stimulate employment in the short run, and lead to large "learning curve" effects via lower production costs in the longer term. The overall assessment is that most "green stimulus" programs that have large short-run employment and environmental effects are likely to have less significant positive effects for long-run growth, and vice versa, implying a trade-off in many cases between short-run and long-run impacts. There are also trade-offs for employment generation in that programs that yield larger (smaller) employment effects tend to lead to more employment gains for largely lower-skilled (higher-skilled) workers, so that the long-term growth effects are relatively small (large). Ultimately, the results reinforce the point that different instruments are needed for addressing different problems
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5163
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 4
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Price Elasticity of Nonresidential Demand for Energy in South Eastern Europe (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (61 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Iimi, Atsushi Price Elasticity of Nonresidential Demand for Energy in South Eastern Europe
    Abstract: Recent volatility in international energy prices has revealed South Eastern Europe as one of the most vulnerable regions to such external shocks. Under the current global economic downturn, in addition, the region’s energy-intensive industries are faced with the challenge of the weakening demand for their outputs. This paper casts light on the relationship between the price and the demand for energy. Based on firm level data, it is shown that the price elasticity of industrial energy demand is about -0.4 on average. There are a number of data issues to interpret the results correctly. But Albania and Macedonia are systematically found to have a relatively elastic demand for energy on the order of -0.7 to -0.8. In these countries, therefore, price adjustments would be one of the effective policy options to balance demand with supply during the period of energy crisis. In other countries, the demand response would be much weaker; pricing cannot be the only solution. Other policy measures, such as facilitation of firm energy efficiency and improvements in the quality of infrastructure services, may be required
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5167
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 5
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Hegelian Macroeconomics : The Dialectics of Global Imbalances (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (57 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Monga, Celestin Hegelian Macroeconomics
    Abstract: Traditional narratives of external imbalances have focused on the analysis of national accounts, trade flows, and financial flows. They have generated two opposing views of the current situation of the world economy: on one side, a prudent, if not pessimistic view considers large imbalances as evidence of problems with the international monetary and financial system, and symptoms of domestic distortions (mainly in the United States and China). On the other side, a relaxed, if not optimistic view suggests that global imbalances are not anomalies but simply the predictable outcome of a world with increasingly globalized financial flows in search of the right mix of risks and returns. The former view prescribes that the two largest countries in the world rebalance their economies to avoid the potentially painful cost of disruption and adjustment. The latter contends that global imbalances will be corrected through time by the normal functioning of market forces. This paper offers a critical analysis of these competing explanations of the United States-China imbalances and suggests a way of reconciling them. Starting with an exploration of the accounting frameworks that underpin any discussion of current account deficits and surpluses, the paper argues that China and the United States have become economically so interdependent that fears of any abrupt change in their current Nash equilibrium situation may be exaggerated. The paper also uses Hegel’s parable of the development of self-consciousness to explain the dynamics between the two countries. Hegel may not have been a great philosopher of history but his analysis of lordship and bondage (also known as the master-slave dynamics) provides a good framework for analyzing the dialectics of recognition and acknowledgement that currently characterizes the macroeconomic relationships between the United States and China
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5175
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 6
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Earthquake Propensity and the Politics of Mortality Prevention (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (41 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Plumper, Thomas Earthquake Propensity and the Politics of Mortality Prevention
    Abstract: Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing quake-proof construction regulation. The authors examine why many governments do not. Contrary to intuition, controlling for the strength and location of actual earthquakes, mortality is lower in countries with higher earthquake propensity, where the payoffs to mortality prevention are higher. Importantly, however, the government response to earthquake propensity depends on country income and the political incentives of governments to provide public goods to citizens. The opportunity costs of earthquake mortality prevention are higher in poorer countries; rich countries invest more in mortality prevention than poor countries in response to a higher earthquake propensity. Similarly, governments that have fewer incentives to provide public goods, such as younger democracies, autocracies with less institutionalized ruling parties and countries with corrupt regimes, respond less to an elevated quake propensity. They therefore have higher mortality at any level of quake propensity compared to older democracies, autocracies with highly institutionalized parties and non-corrupt regimes, respectively. The authors find robust evidence for these predictions in our analysis of earthquake mortality over the period 1960 to 2005
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5182
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 7
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Mexico : Impact Evaluation of Sme Programs Using Panel Firm Data (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (47 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Tinajero, Monica Mexico
    Abstract: Unlike social programs targeting individuals, few enterprise support programs have been rigorously evaluated, and existing evaluations have mostly been done in high-income countries such as the United States and Europe. Mexico spends a large share of government resources on small and medium enterprise programs each year. How effective these programs have been in achieving their objectives is unclear. In Mexico, impact evaluations of small and medium enterprise programs are rare, and most are qualitative in nature. This is the first paper evaluating these programs in Mexico using firm-level panel data. The continuous and ten-year panel data - from the 1994-2005 period - allow the authors to address selectivity bias and unobserved firm heterogeneity by applying a generalization of differences-in-differences models combined with propensity score matching methods. This study finds evidence that participation in small and medium enterprise programs is associated with improvements in key variables such as value added, gross production, and wages. Furthermore, the study finds evidence that some of the positive effects can take several years to realize. The results also call for streamlining and greater efficiency in Mexico's small and medium enterprise programs
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5186
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 8
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Paying Primary Health Care Centers for Performance in Rwanda (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (29 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Gertler, Paul J Paying Primary Health Care Centers for Performance in Rwanda
    Abstract: Paying for performance (P4P) provides financial incentives for providers to increase the use and quality of care. P4P can affect health care by providing incentives for providers to put more effort into specific activities, and by increasing the amount of resources available to finance the delivery of services. This paper evaluates the impact of P4P on the use and quality of prenatal, institutional delivery, and child preventive care using data produced from a prospective quasi-experimental evaluation nested into the national rollout of P4P in Rwanda. Treatment facilities were enrolled in the P4P scheme in 2006 and comparison facilities were enrolled two years later. The incentive effect is isolated from the resource effect by increasing comparison facilities' input-based budgets by the average P4P payments to the treatment facilities. The data were collected from 166 facilities and a random sample of 2158 households. P4P had a large and significant positive impact on institutional deliveries and preventive care visits by young children, and improved quality of prenatal care. The authors find no effect on the number of prenatal care visits or on immunization rates. P4P had the greatest effect on those services that had the highest payment rates and needed the lowest provider effort. P4P financial performance incentives can improve both the use of and the quality of health services. Because the analysis isolates the incentive effect from the resource effect in P4P, the results indicate that an equal amount of financial resources without the incentives would not have achieved the same gain in outcomes
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5190
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 9
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    When the Rivers Run Dry : Liquidity and the Use of Wholesale Funds in the Transmission of the U.S. Subprime Crisis (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (56 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Raddatz, Claudio When the Rivers Run Dry
    Abstract: This paper provides systematic evidence of the role of banks' reliance on wholesale funding in the international transmission of the ongoing financial crisis. It conducts an event study to estimate the impact of the liquidity crunch of September 15, 2008, on the stock price returns of 662 individual banks across 44 countries, and tests whether differences in the abnormal returns observed around those events relate to these banks' ex-ante reliance on wholesale funding. Globally and within countries, banks that relied more heavily in non-deposit sources of funds experienced a significantly larger decline in stock returns even after controlling for other mechanisms. Within a country, the abnormal returns of banks with high wholesale dependence fell about 2 percent more than those of banks with low dependence during the three days following Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy. This large differential return suggests that liquidity played an important role in the transmission of the crisis
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5203
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 10
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    What are the Implications for Global Value Chains when the Market Shifts From the North to the South ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (27 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Farooki, Masuma What are the Implications for Global Value Chains When the Market Shifts From the North to the South ?
    Abstract: Rapid growth in many low-income economies was fuelled by the insertion of producers into global value chains feeding into high-income northern markets. This paper charts the evolution of financial and economic crisis in the global economy and argues that the likely outcome will be sustained growth in the two very large Asian Driver economies of China and India and stagnation in the historically dominant northern economies. Given the nature of demand in low-income southern economies, it is likely to be reflected in sustained demand for commodities, with other southern economy producers in global value chains being forced into lower levels of value added. Standards are likely to be of considerably reduced significance in value chains feeding into China and India
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5205
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 11
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Soil Fertility, Fertilizer, and the Maize Green Revolution in East Africa (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (36 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Matsumoto, Tomoya Soil Fertility, Fertilizer, and the Maize Green Revolution in East Africa
    Abstract: This paper investigates the reasons for the low application of external fertilizers on farms in Kenya and Uganda. The analysis uses a large panel of household data with rich soil fertility data at the plot level. The authors control for maize seed selection and household effects by using a fixed-effects semi-parametric endogenous switching model. The results suggest that Kenyan maize farmers have applied inorganic fertilizer at the optimal level, corresponding to the high nitrogen-maize relative price, in one of the two survey years and also responded to the price change over time. In Uganda, even the low application of inorganic fertilizer is not profitable because of its high relative price. The authors conclude that policies that reduce the relative price of fertilizer could be effective in both countries, while the efficacy of policies based on improving farmers' knowledge about fertilizer use will be limited as long as the relative price of fertilizer remains high
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5158
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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    MPI Ethno. Forsch.
  • 12
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    The Inter-Linkages Between Rapid Growth in Livestock Production, Climate Change, and the Impacts On Water Resources, Land Use, and Deforestation (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (84 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Thornton, Philip K The Inter-Linkages Between Rapid Growth in Livestock Production, Climate Change, and the Impacts On Water Resources, Land Use, and Deforestation
    Abstract: Livestock systems globally are changing rapidly in response to human population growth, urbanization, and growing incomes. This paper discusses the linkages between burgeoning demand for livestock products, growth in livestock production, and the impacts this may have on natural resources, and how these may both affect and be affected by climate change in the coming decades. Water and land scarcity will increasingly have the potential to constrain food production growth, with adverse impacts on food security and human well-being. Climate change will exacerbate many of these trends, with direct effects on agricultural yields, water availability, and production risk. In the transition to a carbon-constrained economy, livestock systems will have a key role to play in mitigating future emissions. At the same time, appropriate pricing of greenhouse gas emissions will modify livestock production costs and patterns. Health and ethical considerations can also be expected to play an increasing role in modifying consumption patterns of livestock products, particularly in more developed countries. Livestock systems are heterogeneous, and a highly differentiated approach needs to be taken to assessing impacts and options, particularly as they affect the resource-poor and those vulnerable to global change. Development of comprehensive frameworks that can be used for assessing impacts and analyzing trade-offs at both local and regional levels is needed for identifying and targeting production practices and policies that are locally appropriate and can contribute to environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, and economic development
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5178
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  • 13
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Political Capture of Decentralization : Vote-Buying Through Grants-Financed Local Jurisdictions (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (37 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Khemani, Stuti Political Capture of Decentralization
    Abstract: A recent trend in decentralization in several large and diverse countries is the creation of local jurisdictions below the regional level - municipalities, towns, and villages - whose spending is almost exclusively financed by grants from both regional and national governments. This paper argues that such grants-financed decentralization enables politicians to target benefits to pivotal voters and organized interest groups in exchange for political support. Decentralization, in this model, is subject to political capture, facilitating vote-buying, patronage, or pork-barrel projects, at the expense of effective provision of broad public goods. There is anecdotal evidence on local politics in several large countries that is consistent with this theory. The paper explores its implications for international development programs in support of decentralization
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5350
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 14
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Export Restraints On Russian Natural Gas and Raw Timber : What Are the Economic Impacts ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (30 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Tarr, David G Export Restraints On Russian Natural Gas and Raw Timber
    Abstract: Export restraints by the Russian Federation on natural gas and timber have been the source of major controversy between the European Union and the Russian Federation. The analysis of this paper suggests that the export restraints in natural gas very substantially benefit Russia. On the other hand, in raw timber the analysis suggests that a substantial reduction of Russian export taxes would increase Russian welfare. The paper explains that Gazprom has failed to invest adequately, resulting in little development of new gas supplies. The result has been progressively increasing use by Gazprom of Central Asian gas supplies, at progressively higher prices for Russia. The increased prices of gas for Russian consumers have shown that it is crucial for Russia to allow new entrants and to introduce competition in the Russian domestic market. Without export restraints, however, competition among multiple gas suppliers from Russia would erode or eliminate the monopoly profits of the Russian Federation on gas exports. Thus, with a more competitive domestic market, the Russian government would be expected to grant exclusive exporting rights to a single entity (as it presently does with Gazprom) or impose export taxes. Thus, Europe should not expect to achieve cheaper Russian gas as a result of structural reforms within the Russian gas market. A more promising avenue for European energy diversification is new pipeline construction to open up new sources of supply independent of Russia (especially the Nabucco pipeline), and liquefied natural gas purchases
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5195
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 15
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    To What Extent Are Bangladesh's Recent Gains in Poverty Reduction Different From the Past? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kotikula, Aphichoke To What Extent Are Bangladesh's Recent Gains in Poverty Reduction Different From the Past?
    Abstract: The poor in Bangladesh are more likely to belong to households with a larger number of dependents and lower education among household members, be engaged in daily wage labor, own little land, and be less likely to receive remittances. This poverty profile for 2005 is similar to the profile in the mid-1980s and hence at first glance it would appear that little has changed over time. A closer look at national household survey data suggests a more nuanced story. This paper uses the latest two rounds of the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey to decompose the micro-determinants of poverty reduction between 2000 and 2005, closely following a similar analysis using five earlier rounds of the Survey. The comparison of results shows that the spatial distribution of poverty seen in earlier decades has changed with time and the drivers of poverty reduction are different in several respects
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5199
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  • 16
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    Catalytic Insurance : The Case of Natural Disasters (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (31 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cordella, Tito Catalytic Insurance
    Abstract: Why should countries buy expensive catastrophe insurance? Abstracting from risk aversion or hedging motives, this paper shows that catastrophe insurance may have a catalytic role on external finance. Such effect is particularly strong in those middle-income countries that face financial constraints when hit by a shock or in its anticipation. Insurance makes defaults less appealing, relaxes countries' borrowing constraint, increases their creditworthiness, and enhances their access to capital markets. Catastrophe lending facilities providing "cheap" reconstruction funds in the aftermath of a natural disaster weaken but do not eliminate the demand for insurance
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5377
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  • 17
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    A New Approach To Producing Geographic Profiles of Hiv Prevalence : An Application To Malawi (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Lanjouw, Peter A New Approach To Producing Geographic Profiles of Hiv Prevalence
    Abstract: Sub-national estimates of HIV prevalence can inform the design of policy responses to the HIV epidemic. Such responses also benefit from a better understanding of the correlates of HIV status, including the association between HIV and geographical characteristics of localities. In recent years, several countries in Africa have implemented household surveys (such as Demographic and Health Surveys) that include HIV testing of the adult population, providing estimates of HIV prevalence rates at the sub-national level. These surveys are known to suffer from non-response bias, but are nonetheless thought to represent a marked improvement over alternatives such as sentinel surveys. At present, however, most countries are not in a position to regularly field such household surveys. This paper proposes a new approach to the estimation of HIV prevalence for relatively small geographic areas in settings where national population-based surveys of prevalence are not available. The proposed approach aims to overcome some of the difficulties with prevailing methods of deriving HIV prevalence estimates (at both national and sub-national levels) directly from sentinel surveys. The paper also outlines some of the limitations of the proposed approach
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5207
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  • 18
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    Provision of Water to the Poor in Africa : Experience With Water Standposts and the Informal Water Sector (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (65 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Luengo, Manuel Provision of Water to the Poor in Africa
    Abstract: Standpipes that dispense water from utilities are the most common alternatives to piped water connections for poor customers in the cities of Sub-Saharan Africa. Fifty-five percent of the unconnected urban population relies on standpipes as their first water source. Other informal water providers include household resellers and a variety of water tankers and vendors, which are the first water source of 1 percent and 3 percent of the urban population, respectively. In the cities studied, the percentage of unconnected households ranges from 12 percent to 86 percent of the population. The percentage of unconnected people covered by standpipes is substantially higher for countries with higher rates of household connection, while the percentage of unconnected people covered by water tankers or water vendors is higher for countries with lower rates of household connection. Water prices in the informal market are much higher than for households with private connections or yard taps. Although standpipes are heavily subsidized by utilities, the prices charged by standpipe operators are closely related to the informal water reseller price. Standpipe management models also affect the informal price of water. For example, the shift from utilities management to delegated management models without complementary regulation or consumer information has often led to declines in service levels and increased prices. Standpipes are not the only or even the most efficient solution in peri-urban areas. Programs that promote private household connections and arrangements that improve pricing and services in the household resale market should also be considered by policy makers
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5387
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  • 19
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    Social Security Distortions Onto the Labor Market : Estimates for Colombia (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Olivera, Mauricio Social Security Distortions Onto the Labor Market
    Abstract: This paper identifies and quantifies three distortions caused by the existing social security and social assistance systems in Colombia. These distortions refer to the discrepancy between the cost of formal social security for the employer and the worker's valuation of the received service (social distortion): the differences in social security benefits received by salaried and self-employed formal workers (occupational distortion); and the discrepancy caused by the cost in employing a formal instead of an informal worker (informal distortion). Based on recently collected information concerning Colombian workers' willingness to pay for several packages of social security benefits, the study calculates that social distortions range from 2 to 27 percent of the workers' labor earnings; the occupational distortion amounts to 50 percent of formal salaried workers' earnings; and the informal distortions represent between 45 and 56 percent of formal workers' labor income. Results indicate that valuations of the contributive and noncontributive protection systems play a key role in explaining these distortions. In addition, the Colombian social protection system thereby places a hefty tax on the formal worker (and employer) while transferring resources to the informal worker, but these distortions are not sufficient to revert differentials in earnings among formal and informal workers
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5390
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  • 20
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    Trade Openness Reduces Growth Volatility When Countries Are Well Diversified (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Saborowski, Christian Trade Openness Reduces Growth Volatility When Countries Are Well Diversified
    Abstract: This paper addresses the mechanisms by which trade openness affects growth volatility. Using a diverse set of export diversification indicators, it presents strong evidence pointing to an important role for export diversification in reducing the effect of trade openness on growth volatility. The authors also identify positive thresholds for product diversification at which the effect of openness on volatility changes sign. The effect is shown to be positive only for a minority of countries with highly concentrated export baskets. This result is shown to be robust to both explicit accounting for endogeneity as well as the inclusion of a host of additional controls
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5222
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  • 21
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    A Diagnostic Framework for Assessing Public Investment Management (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (26 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Le, Tuan Minh A Diagnostic Framework for Assessing Public Investment Management
    Abstract: This paper provides a pragmatic and objective diagnostic approach to the assessment of public investment management systems for governments. Since weaknesses in public investment management can negate the core argument that additional fiscal space allocated to public investments could enhance future economic prospects, attention to the processes that govern public investment selection and management is critical. The paper begins with a description of eight key "must-have" features of a well-functioning public investment system: (1) investment guidance, project development, and preliminary screening; (2) formal project appraisal; (3) independent review of appraisal; (4) project selection and budgeting; (5) project implementation; (6) project adjustment; (7) facility operation; and (8) project evaluation. The emphasis is placed on the basic processes and controls (linked at appropriate stages to broader budget processes) that are likely to yield the greatest assurance of efficiency in public investment decisions. The approach does not seek to identify best practice, but rather to identify the "must have" institutional features that would address major risks and provide an effective systemic process for managing public investments. The authors also develop a diagnostic framework to assess the main stages of the public investment management cycle. In principle, the identification of core weaknesses will allow reforms to focus scarce managerial and technical resources where they will yield the greatest impact. In addition, the framework is intended to motivate governments to undertake periodic self-assessments of their public investment systems and design reforms to enhance the productivity of public investment
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5397
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  • 22
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    Unpleasant Surprises : Sovereign Default Determinants and Prospects (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (19 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cuaresma, Jesus Crespo Unpleasant Surprises
    Abstract: This paper uses model averaging techniques to identify robust predictors of sovereign default episodes on a pooled database for 46 emerging economies over the period 1980-2004. Sovereign default episodes are defined according to Standard & Poor’s or by non-concessional International Monetary Fund loans in excess of 100 percent of the country’s quota. The authors find that, in addition to the level of indebtedness, the quality of policies and institutions is the best predictor of default episodes in emerging market countries with relatively low levels of external debt. For emerging market countries with a higher level of debt, macroeconomic stability plays a robust role in explaining differences in default probabilities. The paper provides evidence that model averaging can improve out-of-sample prediction of sovereign defaults, and draws policy conclusions for the current crisis based on the results
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5401
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 23
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    The effects of business environments on development : surveying new firm-level evidence (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Xu, Lixin Colin The effects of business environments on development
    Abstract: In the past decade, the World Bank has promoted improving business environments as a key strategy for development, which has resulted in a significant amount of investment in collecting firm-level investment climate surveys across countries. What lessons have emerged from the papers using these new data? The key finding is that the effects of business environments are heterogeneous and depend crucially on industry, initial conditions, and complementary institutions. Some elements of the business environment, such as labor flexibility, low entry and exit barriers, and a reasonable protection from the "grabbing hands" of the government, seem to matter a great deal for most economies. Other elements, such as infrastructure and contracting institutions (courts and access to finance), hinge on their initial status and the size of the market
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5402
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 24
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    Undervaluation Through Foreign Reserve Accumulation : Static Losses, Dynamic Gains (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Korinek, Anton Undervaluation Through Foreign Reserve Accumulation
    Abstract: This paper shows that real exchange rate undervaluation through the accumulation of foreign reserves may improve welfare in economies with learning-by-investing externalities that arise disproportionately from the tradable sector. In the presence of targeting problems or when policy choices are restricted by multilateral agreements, first-best policies such as subsidies to capital accumulation, or subsidies to tradable production are not feasible. A neo-mercantilist policy of foreign reserve accumulation "outsources" the targeting problem or overcomes the multilateral restrictions by providing loans to foreigners that can only be used to buy up domestic tradable goods. This raises the relative price of tradable versus non-tradable goods (i.e. undervalues the real exchange rate) at the static cost of temporarily reducing tradable absorption in the domestic economy. However, since the tradable sector generates greater learning-by-investing externalities, it leads to dynamic gains in the form of higher growth. The net welfare effects of reserve accumulation depend on the balance between the static losses from lower tradable absorption versus the dynamic gains from higher growth
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5250
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 25
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    Can Disaggregated Indicators Identify Governance Reform Priorities ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (53 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kraay, Aart Can Disaggregated Indicators Identify Governance Reform Priorities ?
    Abstract: Many highly-disaggregated cross-country indicators of institutional quality and the business environment have been developed in recent years. The promise of these indicators is that they can be used to identify specific reform priorities that policymakers and aid donors can target in their efforts to improve institutional and regulatory quality outcomes. Doing so however requires evidence on the partial effects of these many very detailed variables on outcomes of interest, for example, investor perceptions of corruption or the quality of the regulatory environment. In this paper we use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to systematically document the partial correlations between disaggregated indicators and several closely-related outcome variables of interest using two leading datasets: the Global Integrity Index and the Doing Business indicators. We find major instability across outcomes and across levels of disaggregation in the set of indicators identified by BMA as important determinants of outcomes. Disaggregated indicators that are important determinants of one outcome are on average not important determinants of other very similar outcomes. And for a given outcome variable, indicators that are important at one level of disaggregation are on average not important at other levels of disaggregation. These findings illustrate the difficulties in using highly-disaggregated indicators to identify reform priorities
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5254
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  • 26
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    Cash Or Condition ? : Evidence From A Randomized Cash Transfer Program (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (62 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ozler, Berk Cash Or Condition ?
    Abstract: Are the large enrollment effects of conditional cash transfer programs a result of the conditions or simply the cash? This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effectiveness of conditionality in cash transfer programs for schooling. Using data from an intervention in Malawi that featured randomized conditional and unconditional treatment arms, the authors find that the program reduced the dropout rate by more than 40 percent and substantially increased regular school attendance among the target population of adolescent girls. However, they do not detect a higher impact in the conditional treatment group. This finding contrasts with previous non-experimental studies of conditional cash transfer programs, which found negligible "income" effects and strong "price" effects on schooling. The authors argue that their findings are consistent with the very low level of incomes and the high prevalence of teen marriage in the region. The results indicate that relatively small, unconditional cash transfers can be cost-effective in boosting school enrollment among adolescent girls in similar settings
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5259
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 27
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    The Impact of the 1999 Education Reform in Poland (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Jakubowski, Maciej The Impact of the 1999 Education Reform in Poland
    Abstract: Increasing the share of vocational secondary schooling has been a mainstay of development policy for decades, perhaps nowhere more so than in formerly socialist countries. The transition, however, led to significant restructuring of school systems, including a declining share of vocational students. Exposing more students to a general curriculum could improve academic abilities. This paper analyzes Poland’s significant improvement in international achievement tests and the restructuring of the education system that expanded general schooling to test the hypothesis that delayed vocational streaming improves outcomes. Using propensity score matching and differences-in-differences estimates, the authors show that delayed vocationalization had a positive and significant impact on student performance on the order of one standard deviation
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5263
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  • 28
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    Micro Efficiency and Macro Growth (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (30 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Nallari, Raj Micro Efficiency and Macro Growth
    Abstract: This paper is about micro foundations of productivity and growth. There are several studies on productivity for advanced economies but relatively few for developing countries. Using data from the investment climate surveys of the World Bank, estimation results from 45 developing countries, complemented by extended analysis at firm and industry levels for Brazil and India for the period 2002-05, indicate the following: (i) confirmation of the importance of total factor productivity at firm, industry and national levels, but total factor productivity progressively tapers off at each level of aggregation implying that there is a less than one-to-one relationship between micro-efficiency, sector growth, and macro growth; (ii) capital accumulation is more important at the macro level than the micro level; (iii) productivity at the micro level is driven by research and development, the capacity utilization rate, and adoption of foreign technology (all of which involve management decisions), and is negatively related to corruption and instability, tax, and financial regulations; and (iii) confirmation of the lower contribution of total factor productivity to output growth in developing countries than in developed economies. Management decisions are involved in a lot of day-to-day operations at the firm level and therefore management is an unmeasured input. In developing countries, at the firm level, there is a need to understand the contribution of quality of inputs (management quality, education and labor quality, training, experience of workers, use of computers at work) and also the role of external agglomeration (for example, location in a booming city, competitive pressures from new firms, trade competition, and regulations)
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5267
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 29
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    Identification strategy : a field experiment on dynamic incentives in rural credit markets (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (43 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Goldberg, Jessica Identification strategy
    Abstract: How do borrowers respond to improvements in a lender's ability to punish defaulters? This paper reports the results of a randomized field experiment in rural Malawi that examines the impact of fingerprinting borrowers in a context where a unique identification system is absent. Fingerprinting allows the lender to more effectively use dynamic repayment incentives: withholding future loans from past defaulters while rewarding good borrowers with better loan terms. Consistent with a simple model of borrower heterogeneity and information asymmetries, fingerprinting led to substantially higher repayment rates for borrowers with the highest ex ante default risk, but had no effect for the rest of the borrowers. The change in repayment rates is driven by reductions in adverse selection (smaller loan sizes) and lower moral hazard (for example, less diversion of loan-financed fertilizer from its intended use on the cash crop)
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5438
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  • 30
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    Water, Sanitation and Children's Health : Evidence From 172 DHS Surveys (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Gunther, Isabel Water, Sanitation and Children's Health
    Abstract: This paper combines 172 Demography and Health Survey data sets from 70 countries to estimate the effect of water and sanitation on child mortality and morbidity. The results show a robust association between access to water and sanitation technologies and both child morbidity and child mortality. The point estimates imply, depending on the technology level and the sub-region chosen, that water and sanitation infrastructure lowers the odds of children to suffering from diarrhea by 7-17 percent, and reduces the mortality risk for children under the age of five by about 5-20 percent. The effects seem largest for modern sanitation technologies and least significant for basic water supply. The authors also find evidence for the Mills-Reincke Multiplier for both water and sanitation access as well as positive health externalities for sanitation investments. The overall magnitude of the estimated effects appears smaller than coefficients reported in meta-studies based on randomized field trials, suggesting limits to the scalability and sustainability of the health benefits associated with water and sanitation interventions
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5275
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 31
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    Islamic vs. conventional banking : business model, efficiency and stability (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Demirguc-Kunt, Asli Islamic vs. conventional banking
    Abstract: This paper discusses Islamic banking products and interprets them in the context of financial intermediation theory. Anecdotal evidence shows that many of the conventional products can be redrafted as Sharia-compliant products, so that the differences are smaller than expected. Comparing conventional and Islamic banks and controlling for other bank and country characteristics, the authors find few significant differences in business orientation, efficiency, asset quality, or stability. While Islamic banks seem more cost-effective than conventional banks in a broad cross-country sample, this finding reverses in a sample of countries with both Islamic and conventional banks. However, conventional banks that operate in countries with a higher market share of Islamic banks are more cost-effective but less stable. There is also consistent evidence of higher capitalization of Islamic banks and this capital cushion plus higher liquidity reserves explains the relatively better performance of Islamic banks during the recent crisis
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5446
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  • 32
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    Subnational taxation in developing countries : a review of the literature (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (60 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Bird, Richard M Subnational taxation in developing countries
    Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on tax assignment in decentralized countries. Ideally, own-source revenues should be sufficient to enable at least the richest subnational governments to finance from their own resources all locally-provided services that primarily benefit local residents. Subnational taxes should also not unduly distort the allocation of resources. Most importantly, to the extent possible subnational governments should be accountable at the margin for financing the expenditures for which they are responsible. Although reality in most countries inevitably falls far short of these ideals, nonetheless there are several taxes that subnational governments in developing countries could use to help ensure that decentralization yields more of the benefits it appears to promise in theory. At the local level, such taxes include property taxes and, especially for larger cities, perhaps also a limited and well-designed local business tax. At the regional level, in addition to taxes on vehicles, governments in some countries may be able to utilize any or all of the following - a payroll tax; a simple surcharge on the central personal income tax; and a sales tax, in some cases perhaps taking the form of a well-designed regional value-added tax. The “best” package for any particular country or subnational government is likely to be not only context-specific and path-dependent, but also highly sensitive to the balance struck between different political and economic factors and interests
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5450
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 33
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    Egypt beyond the crisis : medium-term challenges for sustained growth (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (56 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Herrera, Santiago Egypt beyond the crisis
    Abstract: The paper analyzes the impact of the recent global crisis in the context of the previous two decades' growth and capital flows. Growth decomposition exercises show that Egyptian growth is driven mostly by capital accumulation. To estimate the share of labor in national income, the analysis adjusts the national accounts statistics to include the compensation of self-employed and non-paid family workers. Still, the share of labor, about 30 percent, is significantly lower than previously estimated. The authors estimate the output costs of the current crisis by comparing the output trajectory that would have prevailed without the crisis with the observed and revised gross domestic product projections for the medium term. The fall in private investment was the main driver of the output cost. Even if private investment recovers its pre-crisis levels, there is a permanent loss in gross domestic product per capita of about 2 percent with respect to the scenario without the crisis. The paper shows how the shock to investment is magnified due to the capital-intensive nature of the Egyptian economy: if the economy had the traditionally-used share of labor in income (40 percent), the output loss would have been reduced by half
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5451
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  • 34
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    Dealing with politics for money and power in infrastructure (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Benitez, Daniel Dealing with politics for money and power in infrastructure
    Abstract: Policy recommendations for infrastructure provision usually build on a well-established understanding of best practice for sector governance. Too rarely are they adapted to the country-specific political environment even if this is an area where policy choices are likely to be subject to private agendas in politics. The fact that such private agendas are often ignored goes a long way toward explaining why infrastructure policies fail and why best practice can be counterproductive. While non-benevolence and rent-seeking are well described in the literature and anecdotes abound, there is only limited consideration of how the different incentive problems in politics impede policy improvements in infrastructure. This paper addresses why politics in infrastructure cannot be ignored, drawing on theoretical results and a systematic review of experiences. It reviews how different private agendas in politics will have different impacts for sector-governance decisions - and hence service delivery. The concept of best practice in policy recommendations should be reconsidered in a wide perspective and allow for tailored solutions based on an understanding of the given incentive problems. Policy recommendations should take into account how coordination trade-offs may complicate efforts to reduce the possible impact of private agendas on infrastructure policy decisions. Although more transparency linked to service delivery indicators is a “safe” recommendation, it is also clear that the demand for good governance will not be sufficient to secure political accountability in a sector with huge vested interests combined with complicated funding schemes and complex contracts
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5455
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  • 35
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    Microinsurance : a case study of the Indian rainfall index insurance market (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (45 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Giné, Xavier Microinsurance
    Abstract: Rainfall index insurance provides a payout based on measured local rainfall during key phases of the agricultural season, and in principle can help rural households diversify a key source of idiosyncratic risk. This paper describes basic features of rainfall insurance contracts offered in India since 2003, and documents stylized facts about market demand and the distribution of payouts. The authors summarize the results of previous research on this market, which provides evidence that price, liquidity constraints, and trust all present significant barriers to increased take-up. They also discuss potential future prospects for rainfall insurance and other index insurance products
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5459
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  • 36
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    Energy poverty in rural and urban India : are the energy poor also income poor? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (40 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Khandker, Shahidur R Energy poverty in rural and urban India
    Abstract: Energy poverty is a frequently used term among energy specialists, but unfortunately the concept is rather loosely defined. Several existing approaches measure energy poverty by defining an energy poverty line as the minimum quantity of physical energy needed to perform such basic tasks as cooking and lighting. This paper proposes an alternative measure that is based on energy demand. The energy poverty line is defined as the threshold point at which energy consumption begins to rise with increases in household income. This approach was applied to cross-sectional data from a comprehensive 2005 household survey representative of both urban and rural India. The findings suggest that in rural areas some 57 percent of households are energy poor, versus 22 percent that are income poor. For urban areas the energy poverty rate is 28 percent compared with 20 percent that are income poor. Policies to reduce energy poverty would include support for rural electrification, the promotion of more modern cooking fuels, and encouraging greater adoption of improved biomass stoves. A combination of these programs would play a significant role in reducing energy poverty in rural India
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5463
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  • 37
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    Protecting child nutritional status in the aftermath of a financial crisis : evidence from Indonesia (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (50 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Giles, John Protecting child nutritional status in the aftermath of a financial crisis
    Abstract: This paper exploits heterogeneity in program exposure to evaluate the effectiveness of a supplementary feeding program implemented in the wake of the 1997-1998 economic crises in Indonesia. The explicit aim of the program was to protect the nutritional status of infants and young children from adverse effects of the crisis. The use of heterogeneity in program exposure has several advantages for identifying the impact of the program. First, the analysis avoids the strong assumption that all targeted children experienced homogenous exposure to the program, and facilitates identification in a setting in which nearly all communities experienced some exposure. Second, by exploiting child age and program eligibility rules, the paper estimates models with community fixed effects and thus avoid bias introduced as a result of endogenous program placement. The analysis finds that the program improved the nutritional status of children 12 to 24 months of age at the time of the survey in 2000, and helped to avoid problems of severe malnutrition among young children
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5471
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  • 38
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    The Effects of Domestic Climate Change Measures On International Competitiveness (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (18 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Mani, Muthukumara The Effects of Domestic Climate Change Measures On International Competitiveness
    Abstract: Under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries (called Annex I countries) have to reduce their combined emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels in the first commitment period of 2008-12. Efforts to reduce emissions to meet Kyoto targets and beyond have raised issues of competitiveness in countries that are implementing these policies, as well as fear of leakage of carbon-intensive industries to non-implementing countries. This has also led to proposals for tariff or border tax adjustments to offset any adverse impact of capping carbon dioxide emissions. This paper examines the implications of climate change policies such as carbon tax and energy efficiency standards on competitiveness across industries, as well as issues related to leakage, if any, of carbon-intensive industries to developing countries. Although competitiveness issues have been much debated in the context of carbon taxation policies, the study finds no evidence that the energy intensive industries’ competitiveness is affected by carbon taxes. In fact, the analysis suggests that exports of most energy-intensive industries increase when a carbon tax is imposed by the exporting countries, or by both importing and exporting countries. This finding gives credence to the initial assumption that recycling the taxes back to the energy-intensive industries by means of subsidies and exemptions may be overcompensating for the disadvantage to those industries. There is, however, no conclusive evidence that supports relocation (leakage) of carbon-intensive industries to developing countries due to stringent climate change policies
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5309
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  • 39
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    Can Africa replicate Asia's green revolution in rice? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (34 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Larson, Donald F Can Africa replicate Asia's green revolution in rice?
    Abstract: Asia's green revolution in rice was transformational and improved the lives of millions of poor households. Rice has become an increasingly important part of African diets and imports of rice have grown. Agronomists point out that large areas in Africa are well suited for rice and are encouraged by the field tests of new rice varieties. So is Africa poised for its own green revolution in rice? This study reviews the recent literature on rice technologies and their impact on productivity, incomes, and poverty, and compares current conditions in Africa with the conditions that prevailed in Asia as its rice revolution got under way. An important conclusion is that, to a degree, a rice revolution has already begun in Africa. Moreover, many of the same practices that have proved successful in Asia and in Africa can be applied where yields are currently low. At the same time, for many reasons, Africa's rice revolution has been, and will continue to be, characterized by a mosaic of successes, situated where the conditions are right for new technologies to take hold. This can have profound effects in some places. But because diets, markets, and geography are heterogeneous in Africa, the successful transformation of the Africa's rice sector must be matched by productivity gains in other crops to fully launch Africa's Green Revolution
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5478
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  • 40
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    Diamonds are not forever : Botswana medium-term fiscal sustainability (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kojo, Naoko C Diamonds are not forever
    Abstract: This paper analyzes Botswana's medium-term fiscal sustainability in view of the expected depletion of diamonds in the future. The analysis shows that in the absence of policy adjustments, Botswana's current fiscal policy strategy is unsustainable over the longer term, which could endanger macroeconomic stability and Botswana's reputation as Africa's success story. Ensuring medium-term sustainability of Botswana's public finances requires stronger revenue collection, through improved revenue administration, greater tax enforcement, and the rationalization of tax exemptions in order to realize the full revenue potential. Opportunities also exist to generate more revenue from the non-mining sector through changes in the tax regime. At the same time, the government needs to maximize the effectiveness of public expenditure and bring down public spending to levels that are more in line with long-term revenue prospects. A greater control over the public sector wage bill is critically important. In-house capacity for macroeconomic monitoring and fiscal analysis also needs to be enhanced further. Looking ahead, growth of a dynamic non-mining sector is crucial for Botswana not only from the fiscal sustainability point of view, but from the point of view of achieving balanced development that will create jobs and deliver durable reduction in poverty and inequality. Fiscal policy will have to play a central role in this process
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5480
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  • 41
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    Did higher inequality impede growth in rural China? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (43 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Benjamin, Dwayne Did higher inequality impede growth in rural China?
    Keywords: 1987-2002 ; Regionales Wachstum ; Ländliche Entwicklung ; Haushaltseinkommen ; Ländlicher Raum ; China
    Abstract: This paper estimates the relationship between initial village inequality and subsequent household income growth for a large sample of households in rural China. Using a rich longitudinal survey spanning the years 1987-2002, and controlling for an array of household and village characteristics, the paper finds that households located in higher inequality villages experienced significantly lower income growth through the 1990s. However, local inequality's predictive power and effects are significantly diminished by the end of the sample. The paper exploits several advantages of the household-level data to explore hypotheses that shed light on the channels by which inequality affects growth. Biases due to aggregation and heterogeneity of returns to own-resources, previously suggested as candidate explanations for the relationship, are both ruled out. Instead, the evidence points to unobserved village institutions at the time of economic reforms that were associated with household access to higher income activities as the source of the link between inequality and growth. The empirical analysis addresses a number of pertinent econometric issues including measurement error and attrition, but underscores others that are likely to be intractable for all investigations of the inequality-growth relationship
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5483
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  • 42
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    Trade Credit Contracts (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (34 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Laeven, Luc Trade Credit Contracts
    Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on the unique role of trade credit and contracting terms as a way for both sellers and buyers to mange business risk. The authors use a novel and unique dataset on almost 30,000 supplier contracts for 56 large buyers and more than 24,000 suppliers in Europe and North America. The sample of buyers and suppliers includes firms of varying size, investment grade, and sectors. The paper finds evidence in support of four important, and not mutually exclusive, reasons for trade credit: 1) as a method of financing; 2) as a means of price discrimination; 3) as a bond assuring buyers of product quality; and 4) as a screening mechanism to gauge buyer default risk. In particular, the analysis finds that the largest and most creditworthy buyers receive contracts with the longest maturities, as measured by net days, from smaller, investment grade suppliers. In comparison, early payment discounts seem to be used as a risk management tool to limit the potential nonpayment risk of trade credit. Early payment discounts are generally offered to smaller, non-investment grade buyers. The results suggest that contract terms are jointly determined by supplier and buyer characteristics
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5328
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  • 43
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    Energy Access, Efficiency, and Poverty : How Many Households Are Energy Poor in Bangladesh ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (50 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Samad, Hussain A Energy Access, Efficiency, and Poverty
    Abstract: Access to energy, especially modern sources, is a key to any development initiative. Based on cross-section data from a 2004 survey of some 2,300 households in rural Bangladesh, this paper studies the welfare impacts of household energy use, including that of modern energy, and estimates the household minimum energy requirement that could be used as a basis for an energy poverty line. The paper finds that although the use of both traditional (biomass energy burned in conventional stoves) and modern (electricity and kerosene) sources improves household consumption and income, the return on modern sources is 20 to 25 times higher than that on traditional sources. In addition, after comparing alternate measures of the energy poverty line, the paper finds that some 58 percent of rural households in Bangladesh are energy poor, compared with 45 percent that are income poor. The findings suggest that growth in electrification and adoption of efficient cooking stoves for biomass use can lower energy poverty in a climate-friendly way by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing energy poverty helps reduce income poverty as well
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5332
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 44
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    The Growth Report and New Structural Economics (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (25 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Monga, Celestin The Growth Report and New Structural Economics
    Abstract: Despite its heavy human, financial, and economic cost, the recent global recession provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the knowledge from several decades of growth research, draw policy lessons from the experience of successful countries, and explore new approaches going forward. In an increasingly globalized world where fighting poverty is not only a moral responsibility but also a strategy for confronting some of the major problems (diseases, malnutrition, insecurity and violence) that ignore boundaries and contribute to global insecurity, thinking about new ways of generating and sustaining growth is a crucial task for economists. This paper reassesses the evolution of knowledge on growth and suggests a new structural approach to the analysis. It offers a brief, critical review of lessons learned from growth research and examines the remaining challenges - especially from the policy standpoint. It highlights how the 2008 Growth Commission Report identifies the stylized facts associated with sustained and inclusive growth. And it explains how the new structural economics provides a consistent framework for understanding the key findings of the Report
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5336
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  • 45
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    The impacts of biofuel targets on land-use change and food supply : A global CGE assessment (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (71 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Timilsina, Govinda R The impacts of biofuel targets on land-use change and food supply
    Abstract: This study analyzes the long-term impacts of large-scale expansion of biofuels on land-use change, food supply and prices, and the overall economy in various countries or regions using a global computable general equilibrium model, augmented by a land-use module and detailed representation of biofuel sectors. The study finds that an expansion of global biofuel production to meet currently articulated or even higher national targets in various countries for biofuel use would reduce gross domestic product at the global level; however, the gross domestic product impacts are mixed across countries or regions. The expansion of biofuels would cause significant land re-allocation with notable decreases in forest and pasture lands in a few countries. The results also suggest that the expansion of biofuels would cause a reduction in food supply. Although the magnitude of the impact on food supply at the global level is not as large as perceived earlier, it would be significant in developing countries like India and those in Sub-Saharan Africa. Agricultural commodities such as sugar, corn, and oil seeds, which serve as the main biofuel feedstocks, would experience significant increases in their prices in 2020 compared with the prices at baseline due to the expansion of biofuels to meet the existing targets
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5513
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  • 46
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    On Measuring Scientific Influence (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (22 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Wagstaff, Adam On Measuring Scientific Influence
    Abstract: Bibliometric measures based on citations are widely used in assessing the scientific publication records of authors, institutions and journals. Yet currently favored measures lack a clear conceptual foundation and are known to have counter-intuitive properties. The authors propose a new approach that is grounded on a theoretical "influence function," representing explicit prior beliefs about how citations reflect influence. They provide conditions for robust qualitative comparisons of influence - conditions that can be implemented using readily-available data. An example is provided using the economics publication records of selected universities and the World Bank
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5375
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  • 47
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    Industry and Skill Wage Premiums in East Asia (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (100 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: di Gropello, Emanuela Industry and Skill Wage Premiums in East Asia
    Abstract: This paper focuses on the estimation of skill/industry premiums and labor force composition at the national and sector levels in seven East Asian countries with the objective of providing a comprehensive analysis of trends in demand for skills in the region. The paper addresses the following questions: Are there converging or diverging trends in the region regarding the evolution of skill premiums and labor force composition? Are changes in skill premiums generalized or industry-related? How have industry premiums evolved? The analysis uses labor and household surveys going back at least 10 years. The main trends emerging from the analysis are: (a) increasing proportions of skilled/educated workers over the long run across the region; (b) generally increasing demand for skills in the region; (c) the service sector has become the most important driver of demand for skills for all countries (except Thailand); (d) countries can be broadly categorized into three groups in relation to trends and patterns of demand for skills (Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand; Vietnam and China; and Cambodia and Mongolia); and (e) industry premiums have increased in three countries of the region (Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia). These trends point to several policy implications, including that governments should focus on policies promoting access to education to address the increasing demand for skills and/or persistent skill shortages; support general rather than specific curricula given broad-based increases in skill premiums in most countries; better tailor curriculum design and content and pedagogical approaches to the needs of the service sector; and target some social protection programs to unskilled workers to protect them from the "unequalizing" impact of education
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5379
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  • 48
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    Labor Supply and Retirement Policy in An Overlapping Generations Model With Stochastic Fertility (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (21 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Jensen, Svend E. Hougaard Labor Supply and Retirement Policy in An Overlapping Generations Model With Stochastic Fertility
    Abstract: Using a stochastic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations, this paper studies a policy rule for the retirement age aiming at offsetting the effects on the supply of labor following fertility changes. The authors find that the retirement age should increase more than proportionally to the direct fall in labor supply caused by a fall in fertility. The robustness of this result is checked against alternative model specifications and parameter values. The efficacy of the policy rule depends crucially on the link between the preference for leisure and the response of the intensive margin of labor supply to changes in the statutory retirement age. The model has subsequently been calibrated for Brazil by Jorgensen (2010), in the context of the Brazil Aging Study
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5382
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 49
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    Crop Production and Road Connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa : A Spatial Analysis (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (46 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Schmidt, Emily Crop Production and Road Connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa
    Abstract: This study examines the relationship between transport infrastructure and agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa using new data obtained from geographic information systems (GIS). First, the authors analyze the impact of road connectivity on crop production and choice of technology. Second, they explore the impact of investments that reduce road travel times. Finally, they show how this type of analysis can be used to compare cost-benefit ratios for alternative road investments in terms of agricultural output per dollar invested. The authors find that agricultural production is highly correlated with proximity (as measured by travel time) to urban markets. Likewise, adoption of high-productive/high-input technology is negatively correlated with travel time to urban centers. There is therefore substantial scope for increasing agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in more remote areas. Total crop production relative to potential production is 45 percent for areas within four hours’ travel time from a city of 100,000 people. In contrast, it is just 5 percent for areas more than eight hours away. Low population densities and long travel times to urban centers sharply constrain production. Reducing transport costs and travel times to these areas would expand the feasible market size for these regions. Compared to West Africa, East Africa has lower population density, smaller local markets, lower road connectivity, and lower average crop production per unit area. Unlike in East Africa, reducing travel time does not significantly increase the adoption of high-input/high-yield technology in West Africa. This may be because West Africa already has a relatively well-connected road network
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5385
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  • 50
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    Are Innovating Firms Victims Or Perpetrators? : Tax Evasion, Bribe Payments, and the Role of External Finance in Developing Countries (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (57 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Demirguc-Kunt, Asli Are Innovating Firms Victims Or Perpetrators?
    Abstract: This paper investigates corruption and tax evasion and their firm-level determinants across 25,000 firms in 57 countries, a large fraction of which are small and medium enterprises in developing countries. Firms that pay more bribes also evade more taxes. Corruption acts as a tax on innovation, particularly that of small and young firms. Innovating firms pay a larger percentage of their revenues in bribes to government officials than non-innovating firms. They do not, however, pay more protection money to private parties than other firms. Comparing the magnitudes of bribes and taxes evaded, innovating firms and firms that use formal finance are more likely to be net victims. The findings point to the challenges facing innovators in developing countries and the role of banks in curbing corruption and tax evasion
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5389
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  • 51
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    Experimental Approaches in Migration Studies (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: McKenzie, David Experimental Approaches in Migration Studies
    Abstract: The decision of whether or not to migrate has far-reaching consequences for the lives of individuals and their families. But the very nature of this choice makes identifying the impacts of migration difficult, since it is hard to measure a credible counterfactual of what the person and their household would have been doing had migration not occurred. Migration experiments provide a clear and credible way for identifying this counterfactual, and thereby allowing causal estimation of the impacts of migration. The authors provide an overview and critical review of the three strands of this approach: policy experiments, natural experiments, and researcher-led field experiments. The purpose is to introduce readers to the need for this approach, give examples of where it has been applied in practice, and draw out lessons for future work in this area
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5395
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  • 52
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    Foreign Bank Participation in Developing Countries : What Do We Know About the Drivers and Consequences of This Phenomenon? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cull, Robert Foreign Bank Participation in Developing Countries
    Abstract: Foreign bank participation has increased steadily across developing countries since the mid-1990s. This paper documents this trend and surveys the existing literature to explore the drivers and consequences of this phenomenon, paying particular attention to the differences observed across regions both in the degree of foreign bank participation and in the impact of this process. Local profit opportunities, the absence of barriers to entry, and the presence of mechanisms to mitigate information problems have been the main factors driving foreign bank entry across developing countries. In general, foreign bank participation has been shown to exert a positive influence on banking sector efficiency and competition. The weight of the evidence suggests that foreign bank presence does not endanger, but rather enhances banking sector stability. And although some case studies suggest that foreign bank entry limits access to finance, many cross-country studies offer evidence to the contrary
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5398
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 53
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    Economic freedom, human rights, and the returns to human capital : an evaluation of the Schultz hypothesis (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (45 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Montenegro, Claudio E Economic freedom, human rights, and the returns to human capital
    Abstract: According to T.W. Schultz, the returns to human capital are highest in economic environments experiencing unexpected price, productivity, and technology shocks that create "disequilibria." In such environments, the ability of firms and individuals to adapt their resource allocations to shocks becomes most valuable. In the case of negative shocks, government policies that mitigate the impact of the shock will also limit the returns to the skills of managing risk or adapting resources to changing market forces. In the case of positive shocks, government policies may restrict access to credit, labor, or financial markets in ways that limit reallocation of resources toward newly emerging profitable sectors. This paper tests the hypothesis that the returns to skills are highest in countries that allow individuals to respond to shocks. Using estimated returns to schooling and work experience from 122 household surveys in 86 developing countries, this paper demonstrates a strong positive correlation between the returns to human capital and economic freedom, an effect that is observed throughout the wage distribution. Economic freedom benefits those workers who have attained the most schooling as well as those who have accumulated the most work experience
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5405
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  • 54
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    Integrating land financing into subnational fiscal management (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Peterson, George E Integrating land financing into subnational fiscal management
    Abstract: Land assets have become an important source of financing capital investments by subnational governments in developing countries. Land assets, often with billions of dollars per transaction, rival and sometimes surpass subnational borrowing or fiscal transfers for capital spending. While reducing the uncertainty surrounding future debt repayment capacity, the use of land-based revenues for financing infrastructure can entail substantial fiscal risks. Land sales often involve less transparency than borrowing. Many sales are conducted off-budget, which makes it easier to divert proceeds into operating budgets. Capital revenues from sales of land assets exert a much more volatile trend and could create an incentive to appropriate auction proceeds for financing the operating budget, particularly in times of budget shortfalls during economic downturns. Furthermore, land collateral and expected future land-value appreciation for bank loans can be linked with macroeconomic risks. It is critical to develop ex ante prudential rules comparable to those governing borrowing, to reduce fiscal risks and the contingent liabilities associated with the land-based revenues for financing infrastructure
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5409
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  • 55
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    Timeliness and contract enforceability in intermediate goods trade (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Gamberoni, Elisa Timeliness and contract enforceability in intermediate goods trade
    Abstract: This paper shows that the institutional environment and the ability to export on time are sources of comparative advantage as important as factors of production. In particular, the ability to export on time is crucial to explain comparative advantage in intermediate goods. These findings underscore the importance of investing in infrastructure and fostering trade facilitation to boost a country's participation in production networks. Furthermore, the paper contributes to the so-called “distance puzzle” by showing that the increasing importance of distance over time is in part driven by trade in intermediate goods
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5482
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  • 56
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    Antiretroviral therapy awareness and risky sexual behaviors : evidence from Mozambique (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (37 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: De Walque, Damien Antiretroviral therapy awareness and risky sexual behaviors
    Abstract: This paper studies the effect of increased access to antiretroviral therapy on risky sexual behavior, using data collected in Mozambique in 2007 and 2008. The survey sampled both households of randomly selected HIV positive individuals and households from the general population. Controlling for unobserved individual characteristics, the findings support the hypothesis of disinhibition behaviors, whereby risky sexual behaviors increase in response to the perceived changes in risk associated with increased access to antiretroviral therapy. Furthermore, men and women respond differently to the perceived changes in risk. In particular, risky behaviors increase for men who believe, wrongly, that AIDS can be cured, while risky behaviors increase for women who believe, correctly, that antiretroviral therapy can treat AIDS but cannot cure it. The findings suggest that scaling up access to antiretroviral therapy without prevention programs may not be optimal if the objective is to contain the disease, since people would adjust their sexual behavior in response to the perceived changes in risk. Therefore, prevention programs need to include educational messages about antiretroviral therapy, and address the changing beliefs about HIV in the era of increasing antiretroviral therapy availability
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5486
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  • 57
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    Measuring Inequality of Opportunity With Imperfect Data : The Case of Turkey (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Aran, Meltem Measuring Inequality of Opportunity With Imperfect Data
    Abstract: The measurement of inequality of opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data problems in countries where a demographic and health survey and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available. One method relies only on the demographic and health survey, and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic advantage. The alternative method imputes consumption from the ancillary survey into the demographic and health survey. In both cases, the between-type share of overall inequality is computed as a lower bound estimator of inequality of opportunity. Parametric and non-parametric estimates are calculated for both methods, and the parametric approach is shown to yield preferable lower-bound measures. In an application to the sample of ever-married women aged 30-49 in Turkey, inequality of opportunity accounts for at least 26 percent (31 percent) of overall inequality in imputed consumption (the wealth index)
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5204
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  • 58
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    Climate Cost Uncertainty, Retrofit Cost Uncertainty, and Infrastructure Closedown : A Framework for Analysis (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Miller, Sebastian Climate Cost Uncertainty, Retrofit Cost Uncertainty, and Infrastructure Closedown
    Abstract: Large and energy-intensive infrastructure investments with long life times have substantial implications for climate policy. This study focuses on options to scale down energy consumption and carbon emissions now and in the future, and on the costs of doing so. Two ways carbon emissions can be reduced post-investment include retrofitting the infrastructure, or closing it down. Generally, the presence of bulky infrastructure investments makes it more costly to reduce emissions later. Moreover, when expected energy and environmental costs are continually rising, inherent biases in the selection processes for infrastructure investments lead to excessive energy intensity in such investments. Thus great care must be taken when choosing the energy intensity of the infrastructure at the time of investment. Simulations indicate that optimally exercising the retrofit option, when it is available, reduces ex ante expected energy consumption relative to the no-option case. Total energy plus retrofit costs can also be substantially reduced, the more so the larger is ex ante cost uncertainty. However, the availability of the retrofit option also leads to a more energy intensive initial infrastructure choice; this offsets some, but usually not all, of the gains from options for subsequent retrofitting
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5208
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  • 59
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    Challenges of the mandatory funded pension system in the Russian Federation (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Rudolph, Heinz P Challenges of the mandatory funded pension system in the Russian Federation
    Keywords: Finanzwissen ; Altersvorsorge ; Russland
    Abstract: The overwhelming number of contributors that have been allocated into the default option is one of the main characteristics of the Russian second pillar. This finding confirms that the level of financial literacy for most of the participants is not sufficient to make informed portfolio selections. The authors argue that the current system is perfectly consistent with a solid second pillar, but the authorities should focus their attention in the strategic asset allocation of pension funds. Since in the short and medium term it is unlikely to see improvements in financial literacy of individuals that may overcome the complexity of these decisions, the authorities can play an important role in designing default investment portfolios that can be aligned with expected replacement rates for the contributors. The current investment regulation of the default option induces investment in inefficient portfolios that are unlikely to bring returns above inflation, and probably will result in very low replacement rates for contributors. Further liberalization of the investments of the pension portfolio; improvements in the governance and supervision of the pension system; and greater certainty about the ownership of the funds are necessary steps to complete the pension reform launched in 2002
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5514
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  • 60
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    'Red Flags of Corruption' in World Bank Projects : An Analysis of Infrastructure Contracts (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (27 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kenny, Charles 'Red Flags of Corruption' in World Bank Projects
    Abstract: "Red flags" are indicators of potential issues regarding governance failure, collusion or corruption in projects. While some specific red flags can be powerful indicators of issues to be addressed, the hypothesis of this paper is that many proposed red flags are potentially too ubiquitous and randomly distributed to be useful as indicators of significant governance failure. The paper examines project documentation from a small sample of World Bank water and sanitation projects in an attempt to collect data on the presence or absence of 13 commonly accepted red flags. This paper finds that: (i) almost every contract reviewed raised at least one of 13 red flags analyzed; (ii) potentially tainted contracts did not exhibit notably more red flags than control contracts; and (iii) the occurrence of multiple red flags in the same contract was rare enough to suggest that joint occurrence was largely by chance, not as a result of a strongly causal inter-relationship between flags. The ubiquity and apparent randomness of these red flags suggests that their roll-out as a monitoring tool requires additional thought as to interpretation, context and use. The paper examines an alternate tool for uncovering potential problem projects - supplier concentration. Across a very small sample, there does appear to be a relationship between such concentration and potential problem projects
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5243
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  • 61
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    Publishing Construction Contracts and Outcome Details (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (18 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kenny, Charles Publishing Construction Contracts and Outcome Details
    Abstract: Construction governance failures can lead to the construction of the wrong infrastructure, poor quality construction, and excessively high prices for work. There is some evidence from both other sectors and the construction sector itself that improved transparency, especially when combined with oversight, can improve development outcomes through its impact on the quality of governance. This paper reviews that evidence, discusses costs and benefits of greater transparency in particular with regard to the contracting and delivery process in construction, and briefly discusses an initiative to improve governance in public construction - the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5247
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  • 62
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    Can Donor Coordination Solve the Aid Proliferation Problem ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (12 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Rahman, Aminur Can Donor Coordination Solve the Aid Proliferation Problem ?
    Abstract: The paper augments Holmstrom’s (1982) team production model in the context of aid effectiveness. The analysis shows how donor proliferation leads to inefficient supply of aid in the recipient country because of the free-riding problem faced by the donors. The empirical findings support the theoretical prediction with regard to donor proliferation. However, this raises the question whether the current efforts in the international aid community with regard to donor coordination can in fact solve the aid proliferation problem
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5251
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  • 63
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    Russian Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Policy At the Crossroads (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (27 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Tarr, David Russian Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Policy At the Crossroads
    Abstract: This paper summarizes the estimates of what Russia will get from World Trade Organization accession and why. A key finding is the estimate that Russia will gain about
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5255
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  • 64
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    Within-School Tracking in South Korea : An Analysis Using Pisa 2003 (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (24 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Macdonald, Kevin Within-School Tracking in South Korea
    Abstract: The 2003 PISA Korea sample is used to examine the association between within-school ability tracking and mathematics achievement. Estimates of a variety of econometric models reveal that tracking is positively associated with mathematics achievement among females and that this association declines for higher achieving females. No evidence of an association between males and tracking is detected. While this association for females cannot be interpreted as a causal effect, the presence of a measurable association indicates the need for further research on tracking in Korea with a particular focus on gender differences
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5266
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  • 65
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    Enterprise Recovery Following Natural Disasters (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Woodruff, Christopher Enterprise Recovery Following Natural Disasters
    Abstract: Using data from surveys of enterprises in Sri Lanka after the December 2004 tsunami, the authors undertake the first microeconomic study of the recovery of the private firms in a developing country following a major natural disaster. Disaster recovery in low-income countries is characterized by the prevalence of relief aid rather than of insurance payments; the data show this distinction has important consequences. The data indicate that aid provided directly to households correlates reasonably well with reported losses of household assets, but is uncorrelated with reported losses of business assets. Business recovery is found to be slower than commonly assumed, with disaster-affected enterprises lagging behind unaffected comparable firms more than three years after the disaster. Using data from random cash grants provided by the project, the paper shows that direct aid is more important in the recovery of enterprises operating in the retail sector than for those operating in the manufacturing and service sectors
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5269
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  • 66
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    Is Protectionism on the Rise ? : Assessing National Trade Policies During the Crisis of 2008 (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (34 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Nicita, Alessandro Is Protectionism on the Rise ?
    Abstract: To understand the role of trade policies in the crisis of 2008, this paper constructs the overall trade restrictiveness indices for a wide range of countries using their tariff schedules in 2008 and 2009. The index summarizes the trade policy stance of a country, taking into account the share of each good in trade as well as its corresponding import demand elasticity. Results show that there is no widespread increase in protectionism via tariff policies since the global financial crisis has unfolded. While many countries have adjusted tariffs upward on selected products, only a handful of countries, such as Malawi, Russia, Argentina, Turkey and China focus on products that have significant impacts on trade flows. The United States and the European Union, by contrast, rely mainly on anti-dumping duties to shield domestic industries. Overall, while the rise in tariffs and anti-dumping duties in these countries may have jointly caused global trade to drop by as much as US
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5274
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  • 67
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    Will the Crisis Affect the Economic Recovery in Eastern European Countries ? : Evidence From Firm Level Data (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (30 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Iootty, Mariana Will the Crisis Affect the Economic Recovery in Eastern European Countries ?
    Abstract: Two sources of growth are firm learning and innovation. Using a unique panel data for 1,686 firms in six countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey), this paper applies panel data estimators and Juhn-Murphy Pierce decomposition in order to identify the effects of the global economic crisis on sales growth of innovative and young enterprises in Eastern European countries. The results show that innovative and young firms were significantly more affected by the crisis than non innovative and older enterprises. The authors interpret these results as an indication that the achievement of pre-crisis growth rates in those countries may be difficult
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5278
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  • 68
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    Poverty Lines Across the World (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ravallion, Martin Poverty Lines Across the World
    Abstract: National poverty lines vary greatly across the world, from under
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5284
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  • 69
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    Aid Quality and Donor Rankings (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (33 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Knack, Stephen Aid Quality and Donor Rankings
    Keywords: Entwicklungshilfe ; Geberländer
    Abstract: This paper offers new measures of aid quality covering 38 bilateral and multilateral donors, as well as new insights about the robustness and usefulness of such measures. The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the follow-up 2008 Accra Agenda for Action have focused attention on common donor practices that reduce the development impact of aid. Using 18 underlying indicators that capture these practices - derived from the OECD-DAC's Survey for Monitoring the Paris Declaration, the new AidData database, and the DAC aid tables - the authors construct an overall aid quality index and four coherently defined sub-indexes on aid selectivity, alignment, harmonization, and specialization. Compared with earlier indicators used in donor rankings, this indicator set is more comprehensive and representative of the range of donor practices addressed in the Paris Declaration, improving the validity, reliability, and robustness of rankings. One of the innovations is to increase the validity of the aid quality indicators by adjusting for recipient characteristics, donor aid volumes, and other factors. Despite these improvements in data and methodology, the authors caution against overinterpretation on overall indexes such as these. Alternative plausible assumptions regarding weights or the inclusion of additional indicators can still produce marked shifts in the ranking of some donors, so that small differences in overall rankings are not meaningful. Moreover, because the performance of some donors varies considerably across the four sub-indexes, these sub-indexes may be more useful than the overall index in identifying donors’ relative strengths and weaknesses
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5290
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  • 70
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    Can Subjective Well-Being Predict Unemployment Length ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (52 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Mavridis, Dimitris Can Subjective Well-Being Predict Unemployment Length ?
    Abstract: This paper uses 16 waves of panel data from the British Household Panel Survey to evaluate the role of subjective well-being in determining labor market transitions. It confirms a previous finding in the literature: individuals report a fall in their happiness when they lose a job, but they report a smaller fall when they are surrounded by unemployed peers, an effect called the "social norm". The main results of interest are that job search effort and unemployment duration are affected by the utility differential between having a job and being unemployed. Since this differential is also affected by the social norm, it implies that when unemployment increases, the unemployed are happier and they reduce their search effort. These results indicate that unemployment hysteresis has labor supply causes
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5293
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  • 71
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    Small State Regional Cooperation, South-South and South-North Migration, and International Trade (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (20 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Schiff, Maurice Small State Regional Cooperation, South-South and South-North Migration, and International Trade
    Abstract: This paper provides a different basis than previous analyses for regional bloc formation and regional migration. Due to low bargaining power and fixed costs, small states face a severe disadvantage in negotiations with the rest of the world and might benefit by forming a regional bloc. The study a) presents a general equilibrium model where bargaining power, international and regional negotiation costs, number of issues negotiated, and accession rule to the bloc determine its size and welfare impact; and b) examines the impact of international migration as well as the migration-trade relationship. The main findings are: i) the likelihood of regional bloc formation, its size and welfare impact, increases with international negotiation costs and the number of issues negotiated, and decreases with regional negotiation costs; ii) bloc size is optimal (below the optimum) if an accession fee is (is not) charged; iii) South-South migration raises bloc size and welfare; iv) South-South migration and trade are complements under market access negotiations and are substitutes under negotiations for unilateral transfers as well as under migrant remittances; and v) South-North migration and bloc formation, and South-North and South-South migration, are substitutes for the states that benefit from membership in the bloc
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5297
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  • 72
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    Thirty-Five Years of Long-Run Energy Forecasting : Lessons for Climate Change Policy (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Hourcade, Jean-Charles Thirty-Five Years of Long-Run Energy Forecasting
    Abstract: This paper sheds light on an implicit dimension of the climate policy debate: the extent to which supply-side response (emission-reducing energy technologies) may substitute for the transformation of consumption behavior and thus help get around the political difficulties surrounding such behavioral transformation. The paper performs a meta-review of long-term energy forecasts since the end of the 1960s in order to put in perspective the controversies around technological optimism about the potential for cheap, large-scale, carbon-free energy production. This retrospective analysis encompasses 116 scenarios conducted over 36 years and analyzes their predictions for a) fossil fuels, b) nuclear energy, and c) renewable energy. The analysis demonstrates how the predicted relative shares of these three types of energy have evolved since 1970, for two cases: a) predicted shares in 2010, which shows how the initial outlooks for the 2000-2010 period have been revised as a function of observed trends; and b) predicted shares for t+30, which shows how these revisions have affected medium-term prospects. The analysis shows a decrease, since 1970, in technological optimism about switching away from fossil fuels; this decrease is unsurprisingly correlated with a decline in modelers’ beliefs in the suitability of nuclear energy. But, after a trend of increasing optimism, a declining trend also characterizes renewable energies in the 1980s and 1990s before a slight revival of technological optimism about renewables in the aftermath of Kyoto
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5298
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  • 73
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    Social Protection in Latin America : Achievements and Limitations (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (41 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ferreira, Francisco H.G Social Protection in Latin America
    Abstract: Social protection systems in Latin America have been transformed in the past two decades. Until the 1980s, those who were not covered by the social security arrangements available primarily in the urban formal sector received little public assistance beyond universal subsidies for some food or fuel purchases. Since the 1990s, the introduction of non-contributory social insurance programs (including "social pensions") and conditional cash transfers has substantially extended the coverage and improved the incidence of social assistance. However, the organic growth of subsidized social assistance in parallel to the older social insurance system, financed largely out of taxes on formal sector employment, has led to a dual system that is neither properly equitable nor efficient. The twin challenges that now face social protection in Latin America are to better integrate those two halves of the system, and to develop programs that promote sustainable self-reliance, by moving from "safety nets" to "opportunity ropes
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5305
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  • 74
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    The Impact of Water Supply Variability On Treaty Cooperation Between International Bilateral River Basin Riparian States (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Blankespoor, Brian The Impact of Water Supply Variability On Treaty Cooperation Between International Bilateral River Basin Riparian States
    Abstract: This paper assesses the impact of water supply variability on treaty cooperation between international bilateral river basin riparian states. Climate change is anticipated to change the variability of water supply, as well as its expected magnitude. Previous studies have focused mainly on water scarcity, measured in terms of mean precipitation or per capita water availability in the country, as a trigger for conflict or cooperation. The water variability measure used here captures both annual runoff variability and precipitation variability over periods of 30 and 100 years. The analysis used economic and international relations data to identify incentives for international cooperation in addressing water supply variability. The authors find that small-to-moderate increases in variability create an impetus for cooperation, although large increases in variability would reduce incentives for treaty cooperation. Stronger diplomatic and trade relations support cooperation, while uneven economic power inhibits cooperation. Various measures of democracy/governance suggest different impacts on cooperation across the basin riparians. The findings have policy implications in the context of preparedness for impacts of climate change on the water sector
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5307
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  • 75
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    Growth Identification and Facilitation : The Role of the State in the Dynamics of Structural Change (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Lin, Justin Yifu Growth Identification and Facilitation
    Abstract: Active economic policies by developing countries’ governments to promote growth and industrialization have generally been viewed with suspicion by economists, and for good reasons: past experiences show that such policies have too often failed to achieve their stated objectives. But the historical record also indicates that in all successful economies, the state has always played an important role in facilitating structural change and helping the private sector sustain it across time. This paper proposes a new approach to help policymakers in developing countries identify those industries that may hold latent comparative advantage. It also recommends ways of removing binding constraints to facilitate private firms’ entry into those industries. The paper introduces an important distinction between two types of government interventions. First are policies that facilitate structural change by overcoming information and coordination and externality issues, which are intrinsic to industrial upgrading and diversification. Such interventions aim to provide information, compensate for externalities, and coordinate improvements in the "hard" and "soft" infrastructure that are needed for the private sector to grow in sync with the dynamic change in the economy’s comparative advantage. Second are those policies aimed at protecting some selected firms and industries that defy the comparative advantage determined by the existing endowment structure-either in new sectors that are too advanced or in old sectors that have lost comparative advantage
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5313
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  • 76
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    A Summary and Update of Developing Annuities Markets : The Experience of Chile (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (45 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Rudolph, Heinz P A Summary and Update of Developing Annuities Markets
    Abstract: The rapid growth of the market for retirement products in Chile has its origins in the pension reform that was implemented in 1981. But the successful development of an active annuity market also reflects many other factors. This paper summarizes and updates an earlier longer study on the development of the Chilean annuity market. The update focuses on the numerous changes that were introduced in 2008. The most striking aspect of the Chilean experience is the very high rate of annuitization. This has been linked to the restrictions that have been applied to lump-sum withdrawals, the offer of inflation-protected annuities, and the robust prudential regulation of providers. But the level of annuitization has also been supported by the annuitization incentives provided to early retirees and the influence of brokers and sales agents. The recent regulatory changes have weakened the impact of the last two factors, while strengthening the demand for annuities at normal retirement
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5325
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  • 77
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    Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy : Lessons From Nine Country Studies (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (53 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Rutledge, Susan L Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy
    Abstract: The recent turmoil in financial markets worldwide has emphasized the need for adequate consumer protection and financial literacy for long-term stability of the financial sector. This Working Paper aims to summarize key lessons from reviews of consumer protection and financial literacy in nine middle-income countries of Europe and Central Asia (Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, the Russian Federation and Slovakia). All the country assessments used a systematic common approach, based on a set of Good Practices for Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy developed by the World Bank's Europe and Central Asia Region. The objective of the Working Paper is to contribute to the international dialog on strengthening financial consumer protection and financial literacy in emerging markets.A financial consumer protection regime should meet three objectives. First, consumers should receive accurate, simple, comparable information of a financial service or product, before and after buying it. Second, consumers should have access to expedient, inexpensive and efficient mechanisms for dispute resolution with financial institutions. Third, consumers should be able to receive financial education when and how they want it. A common challenge among the nine countries is the need of an adequate institutional structure for financial consumer protection. However independent of the specific institutional structures, financial consumers should have one single agency where to submit complaints and inquiries. Financial institutions should be required to apply fair, non-coercive and reasonable practices when selling and advertising financial products and services to consumers. Personal data should also be carefully protected
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5326
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  • 78
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    Factors That Predispose Youth To Risk in Mexico and Chile (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (39 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cunningham, Wendy Factors That Predispose Youth To Risk in Mexico and Chile
    Abstract: About half of Latin America’s youth are considered "at risk," meaning that they engage in or are at risk of engaging in risky behaviors that are detrimental to their own development and to the well-being of their societies. While child psychologists identify many factors that may cause some youth to engage in at-risk behaviors and others not to, only empirical evidence can identify the set that is relevant to a particular population. This paper uses youth surveys from Chile and Mexico to test which of a large set of potential factors are correlated with a range of risky behaviors among youth. These factors range from relationships with parents and institutions to household behaviors (abuse, discipline techniques) to social exclusion. The authors use stepwise regressions to sort out which variables best explain the observed variance in seven different risky behaviors. They find that higher socioeconomic status, a good relationship with parents and peers, strong connection with local governmental institutions and schools, urban residence, younger age, and spirituality emerge as key explanatory factors for all seven behaviors for boys and girls in both countries. This points to a wider range of policy entry points than currently used, including targeting parents and the relationship with schools
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5333
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  • 79
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    Revisiting Between-Group Inequality Measurement : An Application To the Dynamics of Caste Inequality in Two Indian Villages (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (48 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Lanjouw, Peter Revisiting Between-Group Inequality Measurement
    Abstract: Standard approaches to decomposing how much group differences contribute to inequality rarely show significant between-group inequality, and are of limited use in comparing populations with different numbers of groups. This study applies an adaptation to the standard approach that remedies these problems to longitudinal household data from two Indian villages - Palanpur in the north, and Sugao in the west. The authors find that in Palanpur the largest scheduled caste group failed to share in the gradual rise in village prosperity. This would not have emerged from standard decomposition analysis. However, in Sugao the alternative procedure did not yield any additional insights because income gains applied relatively evenly across castes
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5337
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  • 80
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    The Economy-Wide Effects of Further Trade Reforms in Tunisia's Services Sectors (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (50 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Dee, Philippa The Economy-Wide Effects of Further Trade Reforms in Tunisia's Services Sectors
    Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to benchmark Tunisia against other emerging economies in terms of the regulatory barriers affecting particular services sectors, and to assess the economy-wide effects of further liberalizing these services trade restrictions, compared with reducing the dispersion in barriers to its merchandise trade. On the basis of a rather restricted sample of services sectors, partial regulatory reform would yield gains roughly equivalent to full unilateral reform of manufacturing tariffs, but roughly one-tenth the gains from full bilateral reform of border protection in agriculture with the European Union. The adjustment costs associated with these services trade reforms would be minimal. The paper identifies the reasons why the gains from these services reforms are relatively small, and argues that a wider set of reforms could provide win-win outcomes and even fewer adjustment costs. By contrast, the gains in agriculture and manufacturing tend to come at the expense of domestic output in the reforming sectors - the gains are greater, but so too are the adjustment costs
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5341
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  • 81
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    Agricultural Distortions in Sub-Saharan Africa : Trade and Welfare Indicators, 1961 To 2004 (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (40 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Croser, Johanna Agricultural Distortions in Sub-Saharan Africa
    Abstract: For decades, agricultural price and trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa have hampered farmers’ contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction. Although there has been much policy reform over the past two decades, the injections of agricultural development funding, together with ongoing regional and global trade negotiations, have brought distortionary policies under the spotlight once again. A key question asked of those policies is: How much are they still reducing national economic welfare and trade? Economy-wide models are able to address that question, but they are not available for many poor countries. Even where they are, typically they apply to just one particular previous year and so are unable to provide trends in effects over time. This paper provides a partial-equilibrium alternative to economy-wide modeling, by drawing on a modification of so-called trade restrictiveness indexes to provide theoretically precise indicators of the trade and welfare effects of agricultural policy distortions to producer and consumer prices over the past half-century. The authors generate time series of country level indexes, as well as Africa-wide aggregates. They also provide annual commodity market indexes for the region, and a sense of the relative importance of the key policy instruments used
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5344
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  • 82
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    The Publicity "Defect" of Customary Law (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (20 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Gauri, Varun The Publicity "Defect" of Customary Law
    Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which dispute resolvers in customary law systems provide widely understandable justifications for their decisions. The paper first examines the liberal-democratic reasons for the importance of publicity, understood to be wide accessibility of legal justification, by reviewing the uses of publicity in Habermas’ and Rawls’ accounts of the rule of law. Taking examples from Sierra Leone, the paper then argues that customary law systems would benefit from making the reasons for local dispute resolution practices, such as "begging" from elders, witchcraft, and openness of hearings, more widely accessible. The paper concludes that although legal pluralism is usually taken to be an analytical concept, it may have a normative thrust as well, and that publicity standards would also apply to formal courts in developing countries, which are also typically "defective" along this dimension
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5349
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  • 83
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    The Impact of Infrastructure Spending in Sub-Saharan Africa : A CGE Modeling Approach (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (57 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Estache, Antonio The Impact of Infrastructure Spending in Sub-Saharan Africa
    Keywords: Infrastrukturinvestition ; Wirkungsanalyse ; CGE-Modell ; Allgemeines Gleichgewicht ; Benin ; Kamerun ; Mali ; Senegal ; Tansania ; Uganda
    Abstract: The authors constructed a standard computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to explore the economic impact of increased spending on infrastructure in six African countries: Benin, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. The basic elements of the model are drawn from EXTER, adjusted to accommodate infrastructure externalities. Seven sectors were considered: food crop agriculture, export agriculture, mining and oil, manufacturing, construction, private services, and public services. Four sets of simulations were conducted: baseline nonproductive investments, roads, electricity, and telecoms. For each set of simulations, five funding schemes were considered: reduced public expenditure; increased value-added taxes; increased import duties; funding from foreign aid; and increased income taxes. In general, the funding schemes had similar qualitative and quantitative effects on macro variables. For road and electricity investment, there were relatively large quantitative differences and some qualitative differences among funding schemes at the macro level. Sectoral analysis revealed further disparities among countries and investment types. The same type of investment with the same funding sources had varying effects depending on the economic structure of the sector in question. The authors find that few sectors are purely tradable or non-tradable, having instead variable degrees of openness to trade. If the current account needs to be balanced, funding investment through foreign aid produces the strongest sectoral effects because strong price and nominal exchange rate adjustments are needed to clear the current account balance. In addition, the capital/labor ratio of each sector plays an important role in determining its winners and losers
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5386
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  • 84
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    The Economic Consequences of "Brain Drain" of the Best and Brightest : Microeconomic Evidence From Five Countries (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (48 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: McKenzie, David The Economic Consequences of "Brain Drain" of the Best and Brightest
    Abstract: Brain drain has long been a common concern for migrant-sending countries, particularly for small countries where high-skilled emigration rates are highest. However, while economic theory suggests a number of possible benefits, in addition to costs, from skilled emigration, the evidence base on many of these is very limited. Moreover, the lessons from case studies of benefits to China and India from skilled emigration may not be relevant to much smaller countries. This paper presents the results of innovative surveys which tracked academic high-achievers from five countries to wherever they moved in the world in order to directly measure at the micro level the channels through which high-skilled emigration affects the sending country. The results show that there are very high levels of emigration and of return migration among the very highly skilled; the income gains to the best and brightest from migrating are very large, and an order of magnitude or more greater than any other effect; there are large benefits from migration in terms of postgraduate education; most high-skilled migrants from poorer countries send remittances; but that involvement in trade and foreign direct investment is a rare occurrence. There is considerable knowledge flow from both current and return migrants about job and study opportunities abroad, but little net knowledge sharing from current migrants to home country governments or businesses. Finally, the fiscal costs vary considerably across countries, and depend on the extent to which governments rely on progressive income taxation
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5394
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  • 85
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    Public Debt Management in Emerging Market Economies : Has This Time Been Different ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (30 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Velandia-Rubiano, Antonio Public Debt Management in Emerging Market Economies
    Abstract: Despite the scale of the global financial crisis, to date it has not resulted in a sovereign debt crisis among emerging market countries. Two significant factors in this outcome are the improved macroeconomic management and public debt management in these countries over the past decade. This paper reviews the improvements in macroeconomic fundamentals and the composition of public debt portfolios in emerging market countries prior to the crisis and concludes that the policies and strategies pursued by governments provided them with a buffer when the crisis hit. Nevertheless, with the international capital markets effectively closed for over three months and domestic borrowing in many cases impacted by extreme risk aversion, government debt managers were required to adapt their strategies to rapidly changing circumstances. The paper reviews the impact of the crisis and the responses of debt managers to the drying up of international capital, decreased liquidity in markets, and sharply increased term premia. Three categories of response are identified: (i) funding from other sources to reduce pressure on market borrowing; (ii) adapting funding programs to changes in demand in the different types of securities; and (iii) implementing liability management operations to support the market. Most governments were willing to accept temporarily greater risk in their portfolios, often reversing long established strategies, at a time when financial markets were under stress. These actions contributed to the measures taken by governments to stabilize markets and prevent economies from stalling. Looking to the future, government debt managers will need to consider how they can increase the resilience of public debt portfolios for the uncertain times that lie ahead
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5399
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  • 86
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    How do governments respond to food price spikes? : lessons from the past (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Nelgen, Signe How do governments respond to food price spikes?
    Abstract: Food prices in international markets spiked upward in 2008, doubling or more in a matter of months. Evidence is still being compiled on policy responses over the following two years, but lessons can be learned from the price spike in 1973, the magnitude and speed of which were similar to those experienced around the 2008 spike. In developing countries, policy responses to the earlier spike lowered the (negative) nominal assistance coefficient for agriculture by one-third between 1972 and 1974 before it was returned to the same level by 1976. That was twice the extent of the fall and recovery of the (positive) nominal assistance coefficient for high-income countries. However, the trade and welfare effects of those changes were much less for developing than high-income countries, suggesting the dispersion of distortion rates among farm industries decreased in developing countries. The adjustments were virtually all due to suspension and then reinstatement of import restrictions, with changes in export taxation by developing countries playing an additional (but minor) role during 1972-74. This beggar-thy-neighbor dimension of each government’s food policies is worrying because it reduces the role that trade between nations can play in bringing stability to the world’s food markets. More effort appears to be needed before a multilateral agreement to desist can be reached
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5403
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  • 87
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    Export entrepreneurs : evidence from Peru (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (59 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Freund, Caroline Export entrepreneurs
    Abstract: This paper examines firm entry and survival in exporting, and in products and markets not previously served by any domestic exporters. The authors use data on the nontraditional agriculture sector in Peru, which grew seven-fold from 1994 to 2007. They find tremendous firm entry and exit in the export sector, with exits more likely after one year and among firms that start small. There is also significant entry and exit in new markets. In contrast, such trial and error in new products is rare. New products are typically discovered by large experienced exporters and there is increased entry after products are discovered. The results imply that high sunk costs of entry are of concern for product discovery, especially for products that are not consumed domestically. In contrast, the tremendous entry and exit in exporting and in new markets suggests that initial sunk costs are relatively low. The authors develop a model that explains how entrepreneurs decide to export and to develop new export products and markets when there are sunk costs of discovery and uncertainty about idiosyncratic costs. The model explains many features of the data
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5407
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  • 88
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    Does respondent reticence affect the results of corruption surveys? : evidence from the world bank enterprise survey for Nigeria (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (27 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kraay, Aart Does respondent reticence affect the results of corruption surveys?
    Abstract: A potential concern with survey-based data on corruption is that respondents may not be fully candid in their responses to sensitive questions. If reticent respondents are less likely to admit to involvement in corrupt acts, and if the proportion of reticent respondents varies across groups of interest, comparisons of reported corruption across those groups can be misleading. This paper implements a variant on random response techniques that allows for identification of reticent respondents in the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey for Nigeria fielded in 2008 and 2009. The authors find that 13.1 percent of respondents are highly likely to be reticent, and that these reticent respondents admit to sensitive acts at a significantly lower rate than possibly candid respondents when survey questions are worded in a way that implies personal wrongdoing on the part of the respondent
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5415
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 89
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    The impact of environmental performance rating and disclosure : an empirical analysis of perceptions by polluting firms' managers in China (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (33 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Jin, Yanhong The impact of environmental performance rating and disclosure
    Abstract: Environmental performance rating and disclosure has emerged as a substitute or complement for traditional pollution regulation, especially in developing countries. Using data from China's Green Watch program, this study extends previous research on performance rating and disclosure by considering firms' perceptions of public and market responses to their ratings. The results suggest that the Green Watch has significantly increased market and stakeholder pressures on managers to improve their firms’ environmental performance. More specifically, controlling for the characteristics of locations, firms, and individual managers, the analysis finds that firms with better ratings perceive positive impacts on market competitiveness, overall market value, and relationships with different stakeholders, while the firms with bad ratings are more likely to perceive deterioration. Among these factors, managers perceive a more active role for markets than for stakeholder relations
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5419
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 90
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    Political economy of infrastructure spending in India (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Khemani, Stuti Political economy of infrastructure spending in India
    Abstract: This paper examines a puzzle in the political economy of infrastructure in India - the co-existence of relatively low shares of capital spending in public budgets alongside evidence of large demand for village infrastructure from poor voters. It argues that this pattern is due to infrastructure projects being used at the margin for political rent-seeking, while spending on employment and welfare transfers are the preferred vehicles to win votes for re-election. New suggestive evidence on the variation of public spending composition across states, and within states over time is offered that is consistent with this argument. This evidence underscores a growing argument in the development literature that the level and composition of public spending per se may not be sufficient metrics to assess the quality of public goods policies - greater infrastructure spending in some contexts may go to political rents rather than to the actual delivery of broad public goods for growth and poverty reduction
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5423
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 91
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    Is there a metropolitan bias? : the inverse relationship between poverty and city size in selected developing countries (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (36 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ferré, Céline Is there a metropolitan bias?
    Abstract: This paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size. Poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities. This basic pattern is generally robust to choice of poverty line. The paper shows, further, that for all eight countries, a majority of the urban poor live in medium, small, or very small towns. Moreover, it is shown that the greater incidence and severity of consumption poverty in smaller towns is generally compounded by similarly greater deprivation in terms of access to basic infrastructure services, such as electricity, heating gas, sewerage, and solid waste disposal. The authors illustrate for one country-Morocco-that inequality within large cities is not driven by a severe dichotomy between slum dwellers and others. The notion of a single cleavage between slum residents and well-to-do burghers as the driver of urban inequality in the developing world thus appears to be unsubstantiated-at least in this case. Robustness checks are performed to assess whether the findings in the paper are driven by price variation across city-size categories, by the reliance on an income-based concept of well-being, and by the application of small-area estimation techniques for estimating poverty rates at the town and city level
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5508
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  • 92
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    Understanding Options for Public-Private Partnerships in Infrastructure : Sorting Out the Forest From the Trees ; Bot, Dbfo, Dcmf, Concession, Lease (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (75 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Delmon, Jeffrey Understanding Options for Public-Private Partnerships in Infrastructure
    Abstract: This paper provides a methodology for categorizing public-private partnerships in infrastructure, based on the following key characteristics: whether the project involves new or existing business, the nature of the private sector’s construction obligations, the need for the private sector to mobilize significant private funding ab initio, the nature of the private sector’s service delivery obligations, and the source of the project revenue stream. The purpose of this methodology is to facilitate mapping, referencing, cross-comparison, analytical studies, and descriptions of public-private partnerships in infrastructure projects with similar key characteristics across sector, commercial, regional, and geopolitical lines. The methodology is tested against 15 case studies representing different infrastructure sectors, regional applications, and commercial approaches to public-private partnerships
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5173
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  • 93
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    Vulnerability of Bangladesh To Cyclones in A Changing Climate : Potential Damages and Adaptation Cost (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (54 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Huq, Mainul Vulnerability of Bangladesh To Cyclones in A Changing Climate
    Abstract: This paper integrates information on climate change, hydrodynamic models, and geographic overlays to assess the vulnerability of coastal areas in Bangladesh to larger storm surges and sea-level rise by 2050. The approach identifies polders (diked areas), coastal populations, settlements, infrastructure, and economic activity at risk of inundation, and estimates the cost of damage versus the cost of several adaptation measures. A 27-centimeter sea-level rise and 10 percent intensification of wind speed from global warming suggests the vulnerable zone increases in size by 69 percent given a +3-meter inundation depth and by 14 percent given a +1-meter inundation depth. At present, Bangladesh has 123 polders, an early warning and evacuation system, and more than 2,400 emergency shelters to protect coastal inhabitants from tidal waves and storm surges. However, in a changing climate, it is estimated that 59 of the 123 polders would be overtopped during storm surges and another 5,500 cyclone shelters (each with the capacity of 1,600 people) to safeguard the population would be needed. Investments including strengthening polders, foreshore afforestation, additional multi-purpose cyclone shelters, cyclone-resistant private housing, and further strengthening of the early warning and evacuation system would cost more than
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5280
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  • 94
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    The Global Apparel Value Chain, Trade and the Crisis : Challenges and Opportunities for Developing Countries (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Gereffi, Gary The Global Apparel Value Chain, Trade and the Crisis
    Abstract: This paper examines the impact of two crises on the global apparel value chain: the World Trade Organization phase-out of the quota system for textiles and apparel in 2005, which provided access for many poor and small export-oriented economies to the markets of industrialized countries, and the current economic recession that has lowered demand for apparel exports and led to massive unemployment across the industry’s supply chain. An overarching trend has been the process of global consolidation, whereby leading apparel suppliers (countries and firms alike) have strengthened their positions in the industry. On the country side, China has been the big winner, although Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam have also continued to expand their roles in the industry. On the firm side, the quota phase-out and economic recession have accelerated the ongoing shift to more streamlined global supply chains, in which lead firms desire to work with fewer, larger, and more capable suppliers that are strategically located around the world. The paper concludes with recommendations for how developing countries as well as textile and apparel suppliers can adjust to the crisis
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5281
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  • 95
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    Assessing Poverty and Distributional Impacts of the Global Crisis in the Philippines : A Microsimulation Approach (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Habib, Bilal Assessing Poverty and Distributional Impacts of the Global Crisis in the Philippines
    Abstract: As the financial crisis has spread through the world, the lack of real-time data has made it difficult to track its impact in developing countries. This paper uses a micro-simulation approach to assess the poverty and distributional effects of the crisis in the Philippines. The authors find increases in both the level and the depth of aggregate poverty. Income shocks are relatively large in the middle part of the income distribution. They also find that characteristics of people who become poor because of the crisis are different from those of both chronically poor people and the general population. The findings can be useful for policy makers wishing to identify leading monitoring indicators to track the impact of macroeconomic shocks and to design policies that protect vulnerable groups
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5286
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  • 96
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    Designing the Payout Phase of Pension Systems : Policy Issues, Constraints and Options (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (59 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Rocha, Roberto Designing the Payout Phase of Pension Systems
    Abstract: This paper examines the policy issues, constraints and options facing policymakers in promoting the development of sound markets for retirement products. It discusses the various risks faced by pensioners and the risk characteristics of alternative retirement products and also reviews the risks faced by providers of retirement products and the management and regulatory challenges of dealing with these risks. The paper focuses on policies that could be adopted by developing and transitioning countries where financial and insurance markets are not well developed. It argues for promoting an adequate level of annuitization but avoiding excessive annuitization. It also argues for favoring combinations of payout options, covering different products at a particular point in time as well as different payout options over time. The paper also discusses the choice between centralized and decentralized markets and highlights the basic elements of an effective regulation of risk management
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5289
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  • 97
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    Trade Crisis and Recovery : Restructuring of Global Value Chains (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (40 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Milberg, William Trade Crisis and Recovery
    Keywords: Globale Wertschöpfungskette ; Internationale Wirtschaft ; Außenhandelsstruktur ; Wirtschaftskrise ; Welt
    Abstract: The recent large and rapid slowdown in economic activity has resulted in even larger and more rapid declines in international trade. As world trade is set to rebound, this paper addresses three questions: (i) Will trade volumes rebound in a symmetric fashion as world economic growth rebounds? (ii) Will the crisis result in a change in the structure of trade, and in particular will it lead to a reversal of the pattern of more diversified sourcing and thus to a consolidation of global value chains? (iii) What policies can improve the prospects for developing country growth in the event that trade volumes do not rebound symmetrically and there is a consolidation of some global value chains?
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5294
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  • 98
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    Decentralization (Localization) and Corruption : New Cross-Country Evidence (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Shah, Anwar Decentralization (Localization) and Corruption
    Abstract: This paper attempts to improve the understanding and measurement of decentralization and its relationship with corruption in a worldwide context. This is done by presenting the conceptual underpinnings of such relationship as well as using superior and more defensible measures of both decentralization in its various dimensions as well as corruption for a sample of 182 countries. It is the first paper that treats various tiers of local governments (below the inter-mediate order of government) as the unit of comparative analysis. In contrast, previous analyses erroneously focused on subnational governments as the unit of analysis which yields invalid cross-country comparisons. By pursuing rigorous econometric analysis, the paper demonstrates that decentralization, when properly measured to mean moving government closer to people by empowering local governments, is shown to have significant negative effect on the incidence of corruption regardless of the choice of the estimation procedures or the measures of corruption used. In terms of various dimensions of decentralized local governance, political decentralization matters even when we control for fiscal decentralization. Further voice (political accountability) is empirically shown to be more important in combating corruption than exit options made available through competition among jurisdictions
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5299
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  • 99
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    Poverty, Living Conditions, and Infrastructure Access : A Comparison of Slums in Dakar, Johannesburg, and Nairobi (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (63 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Talukdar, Debabrata Poverty, Living Conditions, and Infrastructure Access
    Abstract: In this paper the authors compare indicators of development, infrastructure, and living conditions in the slums of Dakar, Nairobi, and Johannesburg using data from 2004 World Bank surveys. Contrary to the notion that most African cities face similar slum problems, find that slums in the three cities differ dramatically from each other on nearly every indicator examined. Particularly striking is the weak correlation of measures of income and human capital with infrastructure access and quality of living conditions. For example, residents of Dakar’s slums have low levels of education and high levels of poverty but fairly decent living conditions. By contrast, most of Nairobi’s slum residents have jobs and comparatively high levels of education, but living conditions are but extremely bad. And in Johannesburg, education and unemployment levels are high, but living conditions are not as bad as in Nairobi. These findings suggest that reduction in income poverty and improvements in human development do not automatically translate into improved infrastructure access or living conditions. Since not all slum residents are poor, living conditions also vary within slums depending on poverty status. Compared to their non-poor neighbors, the poorest residents of Nairobi or Dakar are less likely to use water (although connection rates are similar) or have access to basic infrastructure (such as electricity or a mobile phone). Neighborhood location is also a powerful explanatory variable for electricity and water connections, even after controlling for household characteristics and poverty. Finally, tenants are less likely than homeowners to have water and electricity connections
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5388
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  • 100
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    Do We Need A Zero Pure Time Preference Or the Risk of Climate Catastrophes To Justify A 2C Global Warming Target ? (2010)
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Details
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (21 p)
    Edition: 2010 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Hourcade, J. C Do We Need A Zero Pure Time Preference Or the Risk of Climate Catastrophes To Justify A 2C Global Warming Target ?
    Abstract: This paper confronts the wide political support for the 2C objective of global increase in temperature, reaffirmed in Copenhagen, with the consistent set of hypotheses on which it relies. It explains why neither an almost zero pure time preference nor concerns about catastrophic damages in case of uncontrolled global warming are prerequisites for policy decisions preserving the possibility of meeting a 2C target. It rests on an optimal stochastic control model balancing the costs and benefits of climate policies resolved sequentially in order to account for the arrival of new information (the RESPONSE model). This model describes the optimal abatement pathways for 2,304 worldviews, combining hypotheses about growth rates, baseline emissions, abatement costs, pure time preference, damages, and climate sensitivity. It shows that 26 percent of the worldviews selecting the 2C target are not characterized by one of the extreme assumptions about pure time preference or climate change damages
    DOI: 10.1596/1813-9450-5392
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