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  • 2005-2009  (2,679)
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  • Frankfurt am Main :Suhrkamp,
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  • 1
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Frankfurt am Main :Suhrkamp,
    Language: German
    Series Statement: Edition Suhrkamp
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    Keywords: Rassismus. ; Gesellschaft. ; Fremdenfeindlichkeit. ; Antisemitismus. ; Sexismus. ; Deutschland. ; Aufsatzsammlung ; Rassismus ; Gesellschaft ; Fremdenfeindlichkeit ; Antisemitismus ; Sexismus ; Gesellschaft
    Note: Erscheinungsdatum der Druck-Ausgaben 2002-2017. - Verl.-Ort später Berlin. Mit Bd. 10 abgeschlossen
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  • 2
    ISBN: 978-3-518-58518-4
    Language: German
    Pages: 635 S.
    Edition: 1. Aufl.
    Uniform Title: 〈〈Le〉〉 prix de la vérité
    DDC: 194
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    Keywords: Geschenk. ; Sozialer Austausch. ; Sozialphilosophie. ; Handel. ; Geld. ; Tauschgerechtigkeit. ; Geschenk ; Sozialer Austausch ; Sozialphilosophie ; Handel ; Geld ; Tauschgerechtigkeit
    Note: Literaturverz. S. 605 - 622
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  • 3
    ISBN: 978-3-518-58522-1
    Language: German
    Pages: 455 S. : , Ill.
    Edition: 1. Aufl.
    DDC: 570
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    Keywords: Darwin, Charles 〈1809-1882〉 ; Foucault, Michel 〈1926-1984〉 ; Darwin, Charles ; Foucault, Michel ; Nature ; Natur. ; Kultur. ; Geschichtswissenschaft. ; 1809-1882 Darwin, Charles ; Natur ; Kultur ; 1926-1984 Foucault, Michel ; 1809-1882 Darwin, Charles ; 1926-1984 Foucault, Michel ; Geschichtswissenschaft
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  • 4
    Book
    Book
    Frankfurt am Main :Suhrkamp,
    ISBN: 978-3-518-58534-4
    Language: German
    Pages: 1297 S.
    Edition: 1. Aufl.
    Uniform Title: 〈〈A〉〉 secular age
    DDC: 200.903
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    Keywords: Geschichte ; Moderne - Areligiosität ; Säkularisierung - Geschichte ; Religion and culture ; Secularism ; Moderne. ; Areligiosität. ; Säkularisierung. ; Säkularismus. ; Westliche Welt. ; Moderne ; Areligiosität ; Säkularisierung ; Geschichte ; Säkularismus
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  • 5
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (57 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Calderon, Cesar Does Financial Openness Lead To Deeper Domestic Financial Markets?
    Abstract: Advanced and emerging market economies have rapidly integrated into international capital markets and this growing globalization of financial markets has led to some important changes in the patterns of saving and investment across the world. The main goal of this paper is to test whether the cross-border asset trade has led to improvements in the intermediation of these savings - that is, foster development of domestic financial markets. The authors have collected annual information on financial market development, financial openness, and other control variables for a sample of 145 countries for the period 1974-2007. Controlling for the likely endogeneity of financial openness, the analysis finds that rising financial openness expands private credit, bank assets, and stock market and private bond market development, and generates efficiency gains in the banking system. However, the impact of financial openness on domestic financial development may depend on the level of institutional quality, the extent of investor protection, and the degree of trade openness. In general, rising financial openness will enlarge the size and activity of financial intermediaries, improve efficiency in the banking system, and contribute to deepen private bond markets in countries with moderate to high levels of institutional quality and investor protection as well as in countries with high trade openness
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 6
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kazianga, Harounan Educational and Health Impacts of Two School Feeding Schemes
    Abstract: This paper uses a prospective randomized trial to assess the impact of two school feeding schemes on health and education outcomes for children from low-income households in northern rural Burkina Faso. The two school feeding programs under consideration are, on the one hand, school meals where students are provided with lunch each school day, and, on the other hand, take-home rations that provide girls with 10 kg of cereal flour each month, conditional on 90 percent attendance rate. After running for one academic year, both programs increased girls’ enrollment by 5 to 6 percentage points. While there was no observable significant impact on raw scores in mathematics, the time-adjusted scores in mathematics improved slightly for girls. The interventions caused absenteeism to increase in households that were low in child labor supply while absenteeism decreased for households that had a relatively large child labor supply, consistent with the labor constraints. Finally, for younger siblings of beneficiaries, aged between 12 and 60 months, take-home rations have increased weight-for-age by .38 standard deviations and weight-for-height by .33 standard deviations. In contrast, school meals did not have any significant impact on the nutrition of younger children
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 7
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Loayza, Norman Natural Disasters and Growth
    Abstract: There has been a steady increase in the occurrence of natural disasters. Yet their effect on economic growth remains unclear, with some studies reporting negative, and others indicating no, or even positive effects. These seemingly contradictory findings can be reconciled by exploring the effects of natural disasters on growth separately by disaster and economic sector. This is consistent with the insights from traditional models of economic growth, where production depends on total factor productivity, the provision of intermediate outputs, and the capital-labor ratio, as well as the existence of important intersector linkages. Applying a dynamic Generalized Method of Moments panel estimator to a 1961-2005 cross-country panel, three major insights emerge. First, disasters affect economic growth - but not always negatively, and differently across disasters and economic sectors. Second, although moderate disasters can have a positive growth effect in some sectors, severe disasters do not. Third, growth in developing countries is more sensitive to natural disasters - more sectors are affected and the magnitudes are non-trivial
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 8
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (17 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Baffes, John More On the Energy
    Abstract: This paper examines the energy/non-energy commodity price link, based on a reduced form econometric model and using annual data from 1960 to 2008. The transmission elasticity from energy to the non-energy index is estimated at 0.28. At a more disaggregated level, the fertilizer index exhibited the largest elasticity (0.55), followed by precious metals (0.46), food (0.27), metals and minerals (0.25), and raw materials (0.11). By contrast, only a few price indices responded strongly to inflation, although the trend parameter estimate (often viewed as a proxy for technological progress) is negative for agriculture and positive for metals. A key implication of the pass-through results is that for as long as energy prices remain elevated, most non-energy commodity prices are expected to be high
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 9
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (34 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Gine, Xavier Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is
    Abstract: The authors designed and tested a voluntary commitment product to help smokers quit smoking. The product (CARES) offered smokers a savings account in which they deposit funds for six months, after which they take a urine test for nicotine and cotinine. If they pass, their money is returned; otherwise, their money is forfeited to charity. Eleven percent of smokers offered CARES tookup, and smokers randomly offered CARES were 3 percentage points more likely to pass the 6-month test than the control group. More importantly, this effect persisted in surprise tests at 12 months, indicating that CARES produced lasting smoking cessation
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 10
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (40 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Olaberria, Eduardo Managing East Asia's Macroeconomic Volatility
    Abstract: East Asia has experienced a dramatic decrease in output growth volatility over the past 20 years. This is good news, as output growth volatility affects poor households because of coping strategies that have long-term, harmful consequences, and the overall economy through its negative impact on economic growth. This paper investigates the factors behind this long decline in volatility, and derives lessons about ways to mitigate renewed upward pressure in face of the financial crisis. The authors show that if, on the one hand, high trade openness has sustained economic growth in the past several decades, on the other hand, it has made countries more vulnerable to external fluctuations. Although less frequent terms of trade shocks and more stable growth rates of trading partners have helped to reduce volatility in the past, the same external factors are now putting renewed pressure on volatility. The way forward seems therefore to be to counterbalance the external upward pressure on volatility by improving domestic factors. Elements under domestic control that can help countries deal with high volatility include more accountable institutions, better regulated financial markets, and more stable fiscal and monetary policies
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 11
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Gamberoni, Elisa Aid for Trade
    Abstract: This paper is designed to help both the beneficiary governments and donors of aid-for-trade identify countries that are under-performing in trade and which are receiving less aid for trade than their global performance might otherwise suggest is necessary. The authors develop ten measures of trade performance and capacity (including trade-related infrastructure, institutions, and incentives) to assess potential demand, and then look at country allocations of aid for trade to see which are receiving below-average amounts in the supply of aid for trade - relative to their potential demand. As they design national development strategies, countries may wish to consider giving greater attention to trade and requesting that donors allocate more aid for trade. As part of the analysis, the paper provides a conceptual framework for selecting indicators of trade performance and its policy determinants that the World Trade Organization and its partners might monitor closely as part of the aid for trade initiative
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 12
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kannan, Prakash The Uncertainty Channel of Contagion
    Abstract: The 2007 subprime crisis in the United States has triggered a succession of financial crises around the globe, reigniting interest in the contagion phenomenon. Not all crises, however, are contagious. This paper models a new channel of contagion where the degree of anticipation of crises, through its impact on investor uncertainty, determines the occurrence of contagion. Incidences of surprise crises lead investors to doubt the accuracy of their information-gathering technology, which endogenously increases the probability of crises elsewhere. Anticipated crises, instead, have the opposite effect. Importantly, this channel is empirically shown to have an independent effect beyond other contagion channels
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 13
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Chauffour, Jean-Pierre Trade Finance in Crisis
    Abstract: As world leaders have agreed to massively support trade finance, this paper discusses the singularity of the issues related to trade finance in the context of the global economic crisis. Why should international trade finance be a particular issue of concern in the current circumstances? Are there specific market or government failures associated with trade finance that justify a special and differential treatment of the issue by policymakers? If so, what would then be the most appropriate policy instruments to address those concerns? The paper cautions against the notion of a large trade finance "gap," yet highlights the possible rationales and conditions for an effective intervention in support of trade finance
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 14
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (24 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Irwin, Timothy Implications for Climate-Change Policy of Research On Cooperation in Social Dilemmas
    Abstract: The problem of climate change seems to be a tragedy of the commons: despite the global benefits of reducing green-house gas emissions, no individual has any incentive to reduce his or her own emissions. Yet many people are making efforts to reduce emissions and putting pressure on businesses and governments to do the same. Although the size of these efforts is unclear, their very existence might seem puzzling. The efforts are consistent, however, with some theoretical and empirical evidence about the extent of cooperation in other social dilemmas. This evidence does not imply that greenhouse-gas emissions will be reduced to desirable levels, but it does suggest that the potential for voluntary cooperation should not be ignored. It also suggests that cooperation can be promoted by (i) allowing cooperators to punish defectors without withdrawing their own cooperation; (ii) publicly emphasizing the social benefits and extent of cooperation and the social norms that require it; and (iii) improving the quantity and timeliness of public information about cooperation and defection
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 15
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Adhvaryu, Achyuta R The Long-Run Impacts of Adult Deaths On Older Household Members in Tanzania
    Abstract: HIV/AIDS is drastically changing the demographic landscape in high-prevalence countries in Africa. The prime-age adult population bears the majority of the mortality burden. These “missing” prime-age adults have implications for the socioeconomic well-being of surviving family members. This study uses a 13-year panel from Tanzania to examine the impacts of prime-age mortality on the time use and health outcomes of older adults, with a focus on long-run impacts and gender dimensions. Prime-age deaths are weakly associated with increases in working hours of older women when the deceased adult was co-resident in the household. The association is strongest when the deceased adult was living with the elderly individual at the time of death and for deaths in the distant past, suggesting that shorter-run studies may not capture the full extent of the consequences of adult mortality for survivors. Holding more assets seems to buffer older adults from having to work more after these shocks. Most health indicators are not worse for older adults when a prime-age household member died, although more distant adult deaths are associated with an increased probability of acute illness for the surviving elderly. For deaths of children who were not residing with their parents at baseline, the findings show no impact on hours worked or health outcomes
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 16
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (55 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cull, Robert Measuring Household Usage of Financial Services
    Abstract: In recent years, the number of surveys of access to and use of financial services has multiplied, but little is known about whether the data generated are comparable across countries, or within the same country over time. This paper reports results from a randomized experiment in Ghana to test whether the identity of the respondent and the inclusion of product-specific cues in questions affect the reported rates of household usage of financial services. The analysis shows that rates of household usage are almost identical when the head reports on behalf of the household and when the rate is tabulated from a full enumeration of household use. Randomly selected informants (i.e., non-heads of the household) provide a less complete summary of household use of financial services than the other two methods. The findings also show that for credit from formal institutions, informal sources of savings, and insurance, usage rates are higher when questions are asked about specific financial products rather than about the respondent’s dealings with types of financial institutions. In short, who is asked the questions and the form in which they are asked both matter
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 17
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (33 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Baird, Sarah The Short-Term Impacts of A Schooling Conditional Cash Transfer Program On the Sexual Behavior of Young Women
    Abstract: Recent evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer programs for schooling are effective in raising school enrollment and attendance. However, there is also reason to believe that such programs can affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba Cash Transfer Program is a randomized, ongoing conditional cash transfer intervention targeting young women in Malawi that provides incentives (in the form of school fees and cash transfers) to current schoolgirls and recent dropouts to stay in or return to school. An average offer of US
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  • 18
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Andersen, Lykke E Social Impacts of Climate Change in Bolivia
    Abstract: This paper analyzes the direct evidence of climate change in Bolivia during the past 60 years, and estimates how these changes have affected life expectancy and consumption levels for each of the 311 municipalities in Bolivia. Contrary to the predictions of most general circulation models, the evidence shows a consistent cooling trend of about 0.2°C per decade over all highland areas, slight and scattered evidence of warming in the lowlands, and no systematic changes in precipitation. The estimations indicate that the 1°C cooling experienced in the already cold highlands over the past five decades likely has reduced consumption possibilities by about 2-3 percent in these areas. Since the much richer population in the lowlands have benefitted slightly from recent climate change, the simulations suggest that recent climate change has contributed to an increase in inequality and poverty in Bolivia. Poor and indigenous peoples in the highlands are among the most severely affected populations. No statistically significant effect on life expectancy was found
    URL: Volltext  (Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
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  • 19
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (56 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ostrom, Elinor A Polycentric Approach for Coping With Climate Change
    Abstract: This paper proposes an alternative approach to addressing the complex problems of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The author, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, argues that single policies adopted only at a global scale are unlikely to generate sufficient trust among citizens and firms so that collective action can take place in a comprehensive and transparent manner that will effectively reduce global warming. Furthermore, simply recommending a single governmental unit to solve global collective action problems is inherently weak because of free-rider problems. For example, the Carbon Development Mechanism (CDM) can be ‘gamed’ in ways that hike up prices of natural resources and in some cases can lead to further natural resource exploitation. Some flaws are also noticeable in the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) program. Both the CDM and REDD are vulnerable to the free-rider problem. As an alternative, the paper proposes a polycentric approach at various levels with active oversight of local, regional, and national stakeholders. Efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions are a classic collective action problem that is best addressed at multiple scales and levels. Given the slowness and conflict involved in achieving a global solution to climate change, recognizing the potential for building a more effective way of reducing green house gas emissions at multiple levels is an important step forward. A polycentric approach has the main advantage of encouraging experimental efforts at multiple levels, leading to the development of methods for assessing the benefits and costs of particular strategies adopted in one type of ecosystem and compared to results obtained in other ecosystems. Building a strong commitment to find ways of reducing individual emissions is an important element for coping with this problem, and having others also take responsibility can be more effectively undertaken in small- to medium-scale governance units that are linked together through information networks and monitoring at all levels. This paper was prepared as a background paper for the 2010 World Development Report on Climate Change
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  • 20
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (40 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Barakat, Bilal Breaking the Waves ?
    Abstract: Much of the developing world has experienced a decline in mortality, while fertility often has remained high. This has produced youthful populations in many countries, generally referred to as "youth bulges." Recent empirical research suggests that youth bulges may be associated with increased risks of political violence and conflict. This paper addresses ways that education may serve as a strategy to reduce the risk of political violence, particularly in the context of large cohorts of young males. The authors use a new education dataset measuring educational attainment. The dataset is constructed using demographic back-projection techniques, and offers uninterrupted time-series data for 120 countries. The empirical analysis finds evidence that large, young male population bulges are more likely to increase the risk of conflict in societies where male secondary education is low. The effect on conflict risk by low education and large youth populations is particularly strong in low and middle-income countries. This is especially challenging for Sub-Saharan Africa, the region facing the youngest age structure and the lowest educational attainment levels. Although quantitative studies generally find a strong relationship between indicators of development and conflict risk, the results suggest that poor countries do have some leverage over reducing conflict potential through increased educational opportunities for young people. There is further evidence that the interaction of large youth cohorts and low education levels may be mediated by structural economic factors. The study supports broad policy interventions in education by relaxing concerns about the consequences of rapid educational expansion
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  • 21
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (26 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: de Walque, Damien The Association Between Remarriage and HIV Infection
    Abstract: The literature shows that divorced, separated, and widowed individuals in Africa are at significantly increased risk for HIV. Using nationally representative data from 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper confirms that formerly married individuals are at significantly higher risk for HIV. The study goes further by examining individuals who have remarried. The results show that remarried individuals form a large portion of the population - usually larger than the divorced, separated, or widowed - and that they also have higher than average HIV prevalence. This large number of high-risk remarried individuals is an important source of vulnerability and further infection that needs to be acknowledged and taken into account in prevention strategies
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  • 22
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (24 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Luo, Xubei Disparities in Labor Market Performance in the Philippines
    Abstract: The Philippine economy has been growing rapidly, at an annual growth rate of 5 percent over the past five years. Such decent growth in gross domestic product, however, did not translate into an increase in household income. Wage income declined in real terms. The poverty headcount increased slightly. The fruits of economic growth were not shared equally across the country. Challenges remain to create more jobs to keep pace with the rapidly growing active population. Using the Philippines Labor Force Survey data (2003-2007), this paper reviews the disparities in labor market performance and examines the contribution of regional and individual characteristics. The results show that real wages declined and disparities widened between the National Capital Region and other islands. The youth, less educated, and women face more challenges in finding employment with a decent salary, other things being equal. Disparities in labor market performance are largely associated with the difference in regional structure and human capital endowment. Individual characteristics account for roughly one-third of the difference in wages between the National Capital Region and other regions; regional structures and other unobservable factors account for two-thirds of the difference
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  • 23
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kousky, Carolyn Responding To Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes
    Abstract: There is a low but uncertain probability that climate change could trigger "mega-catastrophes," severe and at least partly irreversible adverse effects across broad regions. This paper first discusses the state of current knowledge and the defining characteristics of potential climate change mega-catastrophes. While some of these characteristics present difficulties for using standard rational choice methods to evaluate response options, there is still a need to balance the benefits and costs of different possible responses with appropriate attention to the uncertainties. To that end, the authors present a qualitative analysis of three options for mitigating the risk of climate mega-catastrophes - drastic abatement of greenhouse gas emissions, development and implementation of geoengineering, and large-scale ex ante adaptation - against the criteria of efficacy, cost, robustness, and flexibility. They discuss the composition of a sound portfolio of initial investments in reducing the risk of climate change mega-catastrophes
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  • 24
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (37 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: de Walque, Damien Comparing Condom Use With Different Types of Partners
    Abstract: Based on nationally representative samples from 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper reinforces and expands previous findings that condom use in general is low in this region, men report using condoms more frequently than women, and unmarried individuals report they use condoms more frequently than married individuals with their spouse. Based on descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate analyses, the authors also demonstrate to a degree not previously shown in the current literature that married men from most countries report using condoms with extramarital partners about as frequently as unmarried men. However, married women from most countries included use condoms with extramarital partners less frequently than unmarried women. This result is especially troubling because marriage usually ensures regular sexual intercourse, providing more opportunities to pass HIV from extramarital partner to spouse than an unmarried person who may also have multiple partners but not as regular sexual intercourse
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  • 25
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (63 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: McKibbin, Warwick J The Potential Impact of the Global Financial Crisis On World Trade
    Abstract: This paper models the global financial crisis as a combination of shocks to global housing markets and sharp increases in risk premia of firms, households and international investors in a global economic model. The model has six sectors of production and trade in 15 major economies and regions. The paper shows that the shocks observed in financial markets can be used to generate the severe economic contraction in global trade and production experienced in 2009. In particular the distinction between the production and trade of durable and non durable goods plays a key role in explaining the much larger contraction in trade than GDP experienced by most economies. The paper explores the implications of the large increase in fiscal deficits and the implications of a global trade war in response to the financial crisis
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  • 26
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Hoekman, Bernard Conclude Doha
    Abstract: The Doha Round must be concluded not because it will produce dramatic liberalization but because it will create greater security of market access. Its conclusion would strengthen, symbolically and substantively, the WTO’s valuable role in restraining protectionism in the current downturn. What is on the table would constrain the scope for tariff protection in all goods, ban agricultural export subsidies in the industrial countries and sharply reduce the scope for distorting domestic support - by 70 per cent in the EU and 60 per cent in the US. Average farm tariffs that exporters face would fall to 12 per cent (from 14.5 per cent) and the tariffs on exports of manufactures to less than 2.5 per cent (from about 3 per cent). There are also environmental benefits to be captured, in particular disciplining the use of subsidies that encourage over-fishing and lowering tariffs on technologies that can help mitigate global warming. An agreement to facilitate trade by cutting red tape will further expand trade opportunities. Greater market access for the least-developed countries will result from the "duty free and quota free" proposal and their ability to take advantage of new opportunities will be enhanced by the Doha-related "aid for trade" initiative. Finally, concluding Doha would create space for multilateral cooperation on critical policy matters that lie outside the Doha Agenda, most urgently the trade policy implications of climate change mitigation
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  • 27
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (13 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Deininger, Klaus Determinants of Repayment Performance in Indian Micro-Credit Groups
    Abstract: Despite their potential importance and ease of modification, impacts of monitoring and loan recovery arrangements on micro-credit groups' repayment performance have rarely been studied. Data on 3,350 expired group loans in 300 Indian villages highlight that regular monitoring and audits, high repayment frequency, consumption smoothing support through rice credit, and having group savings deposited with the lender all significantly increase repayment rates. Estimated magnitudes of their effects vastly exceed those of members' socio-economic characteristics. Significantly lower repayment on loans originating in externally provided grant resources suggests that stringent monitoring will be essential for these to have a sustainable impact
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  • 28
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (29 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Azzarri, Carlo Modeling Migration Dynamics in Albania
    Abstract: Since 1990 migration flows from Albania have been massive, relative to the size of the country and its population, but they have also fluctuated over time. This paper presents and discusses various descriptive trends, mainly in graphical form. The data come from the Albanian Living Standards Measurement Survey, 2005 round, and cover the period 1990-2004. The resulting observed trends reflect changing push and pull factors in Albania and the two main host countries, Greece and Italy. The paper also presents a hazard approach to modeling Albanian emigration and return migration. This analysis highlights, among other things, the relevance of networks in Albanian migration dynamics, both to promote emigration and to delay return
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  • 29
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (41 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cull, Robert Does Regulatory Supervision Curtail Microfinance Profitability and Outreach?
    Abstract: Regulation allows microfinance institutions to evolve more fully into banks, particularly for institutions aiming to take deposits. But there are potential trade-offs. Complying with regulation and supervision can be costly. The authors examine the implications for the institutions’ profitability and their outreach to small-scale borrowers and women. The tests draw on a new database that combines high-quality financial data on 245 of the world’s largest microfinance institutions with newly-constructed data on their prudential supervision. Ordinary least squares regressions show that supervision is negatively associated with profitability. Controlling for the non-random assignment of supervision via treatment effects and instrumental variables regressions, the analysis finds that supervision is associated with substantially larger average loan sizes and less lending to women than in ordinary least squares regressions, although it is not significantly associated with profitability. The pattern is consistent with the notion that profit-oriented microfinance institutions absorb the cost of supervision by curtailing outreach to market segments that tend to be more costly per dollar lent. By contrast, microfinance institutions that rely on non-commercial sources of funding (for example, donations), and thus are less profit-oriented, do not adjust loan sizes or lend less to women when supervised, but their profitability is significantly reduced
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  • 30
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (41 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Calvo-Pardo, Hector The ASEAN Free Trade Agreement
    Abstract: Using detailed data on trade and tariffs from 1992-2007, the authors examine how the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement has affected trade with nonmembers and external tariffs facing nonmembers. First, the paper examines the effect of preferential and external tariff reduction on import growth from ASEAN insiders and outsiders across HS 6-digit industries. The analysis finds no evidence that preferential liberalization has led to lower import growth from nonmembers. Second, it examines the relationship between preferential tariff reduction and MFN tariff reduction. The analysis finds that preferential liberalization tends to precede external tariff liberalization. To examine whether this tariff complementarity is a result of simultaneous decision making, the authors use the scheduled future preferential tariff reductions (agreed to in 1992) as instruments for actual preferential tariff changes after the Asia crisis. The results remain unchanged, suggesting that there is a causal relationship between preferential and MFN tariff reduction. The findings also indicate that external liberalization was relatively sharper in the products where preferences are likely to be most damaging, proving further support for a causal effect. Overall, the results imply that the ASEAN agreement has been a force for broader liberalization
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  • 31
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (27 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cunningham, Wendy Unpacking Youth Unemployment in Latin America
    Abstract: High youth unemployment rates may be a signal of difficult labor market entry for youth or may reflect high churning. The European and United States literature finds the latter conclusion while the Latin American literature suggests the former. This paper uses panel data to examine whether Latin American youth follow OECD patterns or are, indeed, unique. By decomposing transition matrices into propensity to move and rate of separation matrices and estimating duration matrices, the authors find that Latin American youth do follow the OECD trends: their high unemployment reflects high churning while their duration of unemployment is similar to that of non-youth. The paper also finds that young adults (age 19-24) have higher churning rates than youth; most churning occurs between informal wage employment, unemployment, and out-of-the labor force, even for non-poor youth; and unemployment probabilities are similar for men and women when the analysis control for greater churning by young men. The findings suggest that the "first employment" programs that have become popular in the region are not addressing the key constraints to labor market entry for young people and that more attention should be given to job matching, information, and signaling to improve the efficiency of the churning period
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  • 32
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Fofack, Hippolyte Potential Gains From Capital Flight Repatriation for Sub-Saharan African Countries
    Abstract: Despite the recent increase in capital flows to Sub-Saharan Africa, the region remains largely marginalized in financial globalization and chronically dependent on official development aid. And with the potential decline in the level of official development assistance in a context of global financial crisis, the need to increase domestic resources mobilization as well as non-debt generating external resources is critical now more than ever before. However, the debate on resource mobilization has overlooked an important untapped source of funds consisting of the massive stocks of private wealth stashed in Western financial centers, a substantial part of which left the region in the form of capital flight. This paper argues that the repatriation of flight capital should take a more prominent place in this debate from a moral standpoint and for clear economic reasons. On the moral side, the argument is that a large proportion of the capital flight legitimately belongs to the Africans and therefore must be restituted to the legitimate claimants. The economic argument is that repatriation of flight capital will propel the sub-continent on a higher sustainable growth path while preserving its financial stability and without mortgaging the welfare of its future generations through external borrowing. The analysis in the paper demonstrates quantitatively that the gains from repatriation are large and dominate the expected benefits from other sources such as debt relief. It is estimated that if only a quarter of the stock of capital flight was repatriated to Sub-Saharan Africa, the region would go from trailing to leading other developing regions in terms of domestic investment, thus initiating a ‘big-push’-led sustainable long-term economic growth. The paper proposes some strategies for inducing capital flight repatriation, but cautions that the success of this program is contingent on strong political will on the part of African and Western governments and effective coordination and cooperation at the global level
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  • 33
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (49 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Robalino, David A Ex-Ante Methods To Assess the Impact of Social Insurance Policies On Labor Supply With An Application To Brazil
    Abstract: This paper solves and estimates a stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to assess how changes in the design of the unemployment benefits and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates, the share of time that individuals spend outside of the formal sector, and retirement decisions. Dynamics depend on five main parameters: preferences regarding consumption and leisure, preferences regarding formal Vs. informal work, attitudes towards risks, the rate of time preference, and the distribution of an exogenous shock that affects movements in and out of the social security system (given individual decisions). The yearly household survey is used to create a pseudo panel by age-cohorts and estimate the joint distribution of model parameters based on a generalized version of the Gibbs sampler. The model does a good job in replicating the distribution of the members of a given cohort across states (in or out of the social security / active or retired). Because the parameters are related to individual preferences or exogenous shocks, the joint distribution is unlikely to change when the social insurance system changes. Thus, the model is used to explore how alternative policy interventions could affect behaviors and through this channel benefit levels and fiscal costs. The results from various simulations provide three main insights: (i) the Brazilian SI system today might generate distortions (lower savings rates and less formal employment) that increase the costs of the system and might generate regressive redistribution; (ii) there are important interactions between the unemployment benefits and pension systems, which calls for joint policy analysis when considering reforms; and (iii) current distortions could be reduced by creating an actuarial link between contributions and benefits and then combining matching contributions and anti-poverty targeted transfers to cover individuals with limited or no savings capacity
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  • 34
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (47 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Cusolito, Ana P Technology Adoption and Factor Proportions in Open Economies
    Abstract: Theories of international trade assume that all countries use similar and exogenous technologies in the production of any good. This paper relaxes this assumption. The marriage of literatures on biased technical change and trade yields a tractable theory, which predicts that differences in factor endowments and intellectual property rights bias technical change toward particular factor intensities, and thus unit factor input requirements can vary across economies. Using data on net exports of a single industry, computers, intellectual property rights and factor endowments for 73 countries during 1980-2000, the paper shows that once technological choices are considered, countries with different factor endowments can become net exporters of the same product
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  • 35
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ravallion, Martin Do Poorer Countries Have Less Capacity for Redistribution?
    Abstract: Development aid and policy discussions often assume that poorer countries have less internal capacity for redistribution in favor of their poorest citizens. The assumption is tested using data for 90 developing countries. The capacity for redistribution is measured by the marginal tax rate on those who are not poor by rich-country standards that is needed to cover the poverty gap or to provide a poverty-level of basic income, judged by developing-country standards. For most (but not all) countries with annual consumption per capita under
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  • 36
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (24 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Hoekman, Bernard The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership
    Abstract: This paper discusses options to facilitate movement of workers between high-income and developing countries within the framework of trade agreements, focusing on the European Union’s partnership agreements with neighboring countries. Existing frameworks for cooperation offer the possibility of expanding temporary rather than longer-term or permanent movement of workers since extant trade agreements provide scope for negotiating specific market access commitments for services, including those delivered through the cross-border movement of natural persons. Even though the potential for such "embodied" trade in services will not be anywhere near what would be associated with substantial liberalization of migration regimes, furthering the services trade dimension in the European Union’s trade agreements offers significant potential Pareto gains. For the partner countries these gains from temporary movement of service providers are both direct - through greater employment in/revenue from providing services in the European Union - and indirect - by helping to increase and sustain higher growth at home
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  • 37
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (20 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Sauvant, Karl P FDI Protectionism Is On the Rise
    Abstract: Over the past two decades or so, countries have liberalized their FDI regulatory frameworks and have put in place an international investment law regime that provides various protections for international investors. In the past few years, however, there are signs that countries are reevaluating their approach toward such investment. As a result, FDI protectionism is on the rise, with screening of inward M&As becoming more frequent. Typically, this is being done under the guise of "national interest" or similar concepts, often linked to strategic sectors and national champions. While the international investment law regime faces a challenge to find the right balance between the rights and responsibilities of governments and investors, care needs to be taken that the rise of FDI protectionism does not endanger a rules-based approach to FDI. An independent FDI Protectionism Observatory to monitor new protectionist measures and name and shame countries that take them is therefore needed
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  • 38
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (45 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ju, Jiandong Endowment Structures, Industrial Dynamics, and Economic Growth
    Abstract: This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model to explore industrial evolution and economic growth in a closed developing economy. The authors show that industries will endogenously upgrade toward the more capital-intensive ones as the capital endowment becomes more abundant. The model features a continuous inverse-V-shaped pattern of industrial evolution driven by capital accumulation: As the capital endowment reaches a certain threshold, a new industry appears, prospers, then declines and finally disappears. While the industry is declining, a more capital-intensive industry appears and booms, ad infinitum. Explicit solutions are obtained to fully characterize the whole dynamics of perpetual structural change and economic growth. Implications for industrial policies are discussed
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  • 39
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (16 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Liverani, Andrea Climate Change and Individual Behavior
    Abstract: Climate change is anthropogenic - the product of billions of acts of daily consumption. That solutions need to be anthropogenic too is well accepted. Yet, suggested solutions are normally cast in the realms of finance and technology, often neglecting the primal root of the problem: individual behavior. An emerging body of social-psychology scholarship has examined the barriers and drivers of individual behavior in relation to both adaptation and mitigation. This paper reviews some of its conclusions, and suggests policy areas that should be considered in devising appropriate interventions
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  • 40
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (18 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Milanovic, Branko Global Inequality Recalculated
    Abstract: The results of new direct price level comparisons across 148 countries in 2005 have led to large revisions of purchasing power parity exchanges rates, particularly for China and India. The recalculation of international and global inequalities, using the new purchasing power parity rates, shows that inequalities are substantially higher than previously thought. Inequality between global citizens is estimated at 70 Gini points rather than 65 as before. The richest decile receives 57 percent of global income rather than 50 percent
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  • 41
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (17 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Bastos, Fabiano Exchange Rate and Output Fluctuations in the Small Open Economy of Mauritius
    Abstract: The authors estimate a VAR and compute generalized impulse response to analyze the joint dynamics of four key macroeconomic variables in the small open economy of Mauritius. Results suggest that nominal exchange rate and interest rate have limited ability to impact output growth over the medium-run. Large error bands hinder analysis of the inflation output trade-off, but evidence points to a weak relationship in the short run as well. These findings are used to shed some light into the policy response to the current worldwide economic slowdown affecting Mauritius
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  • 42
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (33 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Montalvo, Jose G The Pattern of Growth and Poverty Reduction in China
    Abstract: China has seen a huge reduction in the incidence of extreme poverty since the economic reforms that started in the late 1970s. Yet, the growth process has been highly uneven across sectors and regions. The paper tests whether the pattern of China´s growth mattered to poverty reduction using a new provincial panel data set constructed for this purpose. The econometric tests support the view that the primary sector (mainly agriculture) has been the main driving force in poverty reduction over the period since 1980. It was the sectoral unevenness in the growth process, rather than its geographic unevenness, that handicapped poverty reduction. Yes, China has had great success in reducing poverty through economic growth, but this happened despite the unevenness in its sectoral pattern of growth. The idea of a trade-off between these sectors in terms of overall progress against poverty in China turns out to be a moot point, given how little evidence there is of any poverty impact of non-primary sector growth, controlling for primary-sector growth. While the non-primary sectors were key drivers of aggregate growth, it was the primary sector that did the heavy lifting against poverty
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  • 43
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (31 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Beck, Thorsten What Explains the Cost of Remittances ?
    Abstract: Remittances are a sizeable source of external financing for developing countries. In the L’Aquila 2009 G8 Summit, leaders pledged to reduce the cost of remittances by half in 5 years (from 10 to 5 percent). Yet, empirically, little is known about what drives the cost of remittances. Using newly gathered data across 119 country corridors, this paper explores the factors that determine the cost of remittances. Considering average costs across all types of institutions, the authors find that corridors with larger numbers of migrants and more competition among remittances service providers exhibit lower costs. By contrast, remittance costs are higher in richer corridors and in corridors with greater bank participation in the remittances market. Comparing results across all banks and all money transfer operators separately, the analysis finds few significant differences. However, estimations for Western Union, a leading player in the remittances business, suggest that this firm’s prices are insensitive to competition
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  • 44
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ianchovichina, Elena Implications of the Growth of China and India for the Other Asian Giant
    Abstract: Continuing rapid growth of China and India can be expected to raise incomes in Russia, but also to put adjustment pressure on Russian firms. The impacts of the rapid growth of China and India on the Russian economy are explored by examining a baseline projection using a global general equilibrium model, and then assessing the implications of higher-than-expected growth in China and India. The authors find that a major source of benefits to Russia is likely to be terms-of-trade improvements associated with higher energy prices - a quite different channel of effect from that for many developing countries that benefit primarily through expanded opportunities to trade directly with these emerging giants. Taking into account the likely improvements in the quality and variety of exports from China and India, the gains to Russia increase substantially. The expansion of the energy sector and the contraction of manufacturing and services are a sign of a Dutch disease effect that will increase the importance of policies to encourage adaptation to the changing world environment
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  • 45
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Baird, Sarah Designing Cost-Effective Cash Transfer Programs To Boost Schooling Among Young Women in Sub-Saharan Africa
    Abstract: As of 2007, 29 developing countries had some type of conditional cash transfer program in place, with many others planning or piloting one. However, the evidence base needed by a government to decide how to design a new conditional cash transfer program is severely limited in a number of critical dimensions. This paper presents one-year schooling impacts from a conditional cash transfer experiment among teenage girls and young women in Malawi, which was designed to address these shortcomings: conditionality status, size of separate transfers to the schoolgirl and the parent, and village-level saturation of treatment were all independently randomized. The authors find that the program had large impacts on school attendance: the re-enrollment rate among those who had already dropped out of school before the start of the program increased by two and a half times and the dropout rate among those in school at baseline decreased from 11 to 6 percent. These impacts were, on average, similar in the conditional and the unconditional treatment arms. Although most schooling outcomes examined here were unresponsive to variation in the size of the transfer to the parents, higher transfers given directly to the schoolgirls were associated with significantly improved school attendance and progress - but only if the transfers were conditional on school attendance. There were no spillover effects within treatment communities after the first year of program implementation. Policymakers looking to design cost-effective cash transfer programs targeted toward young women should note the relative insensitivity of these short-term program impacts with respect to conditionality and total transfer size
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  • 46
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (45 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Macours, Karen Changing Households' Investments and Aspirations Through Social Interactions
    Abstract: Low aspirations can limit households’ investments and contribute to sustained poverty. Vice versa, increased aspirations can lead to investment and upward mobility. Yet how aspirations are formed is not always well understood. This paper analyzes the role of social interactions in determining aspirations in the context of a program aimed at increasing households' investments. The causal effect of social interactions is identified through the randomized assignment of leaders and other beneficiaries to three different interventions within each treatment community. Social interactions are found to affect households’ attitudes toward the future and to amplify program impacts on investments in human capital and productive activities. The empirical evidence indicates that communication with motivated and successful nearby leaders can lead to higher aspirations and corresponding investment behavior
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  • 47
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (28 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Das Gupta, Monica How Might India's Public Health Systems Be Strengthened ?
    Abstract: The central government’s policies, though well-intentioned, have inadvertently de-emphasized environmental health and other preventive public health services in India since the 1950s, when it was decided to amalgamate the medical and public health services and to focus public health services largely on single-issue programs. This paper discusses how successive policy decisions have diminished the Health Ministry’s capacity for stewardship of the nation’s public health. These decisions have introduced policies and fiscal incentives that have inadvertently enabled states to prioritize medical services and single-issue programs over broader public health services, and diminished the capacity of the public health workforce to deliver public health services. Diseases resulting from poor environmental health conditions continue to impose high costs even among the more affluent, and hinder development. There are many approaches to strengthening the public health system, and the authors suggest one that may require relatively little modification of existing structures and systems. They suggest establishing a focal point in the Health Ministry for public health stewardship, and re-vitalizing the states’ public health managerial cadres as well as the grassroots public health workers. The central government could consider linking its fiscal support to states with phased progress in four areas: (1) the enactment of state Public Health Acts; (2) the establishment by states of separate public health directorates; (3) the re-vitalization of grassroots public health workers; and (4) health department engagement in ensuring municipal public health. The central focal point could provide the needed support, oversight, incentives, and sanctions to ensure that states build robust public health systems. These measures can do much to help governments use public funds more effectively for protecting people’s health
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  • 48
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (24 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Milanovic, Branko Four Critiques of the Redistribution Hypothesis
    Abstract: This paper discusses and assesses critiques of the aurhor's reformulation of the median voter hypothesis and its testing. The author rephrases and redefines more correctly the redistribution hypothesis and clarifies its relationship with the median voter hypothesis. He also reviews four types of critiques leveled at his approach
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  • 49
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (34 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Das Gupta, Monica Family Systems, Political Systems, and Asia's 'Missing Girls'
    Abstract: Son preference is known to be found in certain types of cultures, that is patrilineal cultures. But what explains the fact that China, South Korea, and Northwest India manifest such extreme child sex ratios compared with other patrilineal societies? This paper argues that what makes these societies unique is that their pre-modern political and administrative systems used patrilineages to organize and administer their citizens. The interplay of culture, state, and political processes generated uniquely rigid patriliny and son preference. The paper also argues that the advent of the modern state in these settings has unraveled the underpinnings of the rigid patrilineal rules, and unleashed a variety of forces that reduce son preference. Firstly, the modern state has powerful tools for incorporating and managing its citizenry, rendering patrilineages a threat rather than an asset for the state. Secondly, the modern state has brought in political, social, and legal reforms aimed to challenge traditional social hierarchies, including the age and gender hierarchies of the kinship system. Thirdly, industrialization and urbanization have ushered in new modes of social organization, which reduce the hold of clans and lineages. Studies of the impact of the media suggest that states can accelerate the resultant decline in son preference, through media efforts to help parents perceive that daughters can now be as valuable as sons
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  • 50
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (38 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Das, Jishnu U.S. and Them
    Abstract: Using a database of 76,046 empirical economics papers published between 1985 and 2004 in the top 202 economics journals, the authors report two associations. First, per-capita research output on a given country increases with the country's per capita gross domestic product (GDP). Regressions controlling for data availability and quality in the country, indicators of governance and the use of English yield an estimated research-GDP elasticity of 0.37; surprisingly, the United States (US) is not an outlier in the production of empirical research. Second, papers written about the US are far more likely to be published in the top five economics journals, even after the quality of research has been partially controlled for through fixed-effects for the authors' institutional affiliations; the estimates suggest that papers on the US are 2.6 percentage points more likely to be published in the top-five journals. This is a large effect because only 1.5 percent of all papers written about countries other than the US are published in the top-five journals. The authors speculate about the interpretations of these facts, and invite further analysis and additions to the public release of the database that accompanies this paper
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  • 51
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (35 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ahmed, S. Amer The Impact of Trade in Services On Factor Incomes
    Abstract: Indian gross domestic product per capita increased rapidly between 2001 and 2006 in a climate of increasing services trade, with the export-oriented services sector responsible for rising shares of growth in gross domestic product. Due to its contribution to aggregate economic growth, there is a great need for empirical examination of the distributional consequences of this growth, especially in light of the challenges in obtaining theoretical solutions that can be generalized. This paper fills this gap in the literature by using a global simulation model to examine how sensitive factor incomes across different industries may have been to the historical changes in India's services exports and imports, and provides insight on the distribution of the national income growth attributable to the expansion of the services industry. Rent on capital in the service sector and wages of all workers would have increased as a result of greater services trade in this period, while income from capital specific to agriculture and manufacturing would have declined. The factors involved with the urban-based services sector may thus benefit from the services trade growth, while the total factor income involved in rural agriculture may decline
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  • 52
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (46 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ravallion, Martin Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence?
    Abstract: We are not seeing faster progress against poverty amongst the poorest developing countries. Yet this is implied by widely accepted "stylized facts" about the development process. The paper tries to explain what is missing from those stylized facts. Consistently with models of economic growth incorporating borrowing constraints, the analysis of a new data set for 100 developing countries reveals an adverse effect on consumption growth of high initial poverty incidence at a given initial mean. A high incidence of poverty also entails a lower subsequent rate of progress against poverty at any given growth rate (and poor countries tend to experience less steep increases in poverty during recessions). Thus, for many poor countries, the growth advantage of starting out with a low mean ("conditional convergence") is lost due to their high poverty rates. The size of the middle class - measured by developing-country, not Western, standards - appears to be an important channel linking current poverty to subsequent growth and poverty reduction. However, high current inequality is only a handicap if it entails a high incidence of poverty relative to mean consumption
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  • 53
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (47 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Shankar, Raja Lessons from European Union policies for regional development
    Abstract: Regional disparities present an ever present development challenge in most countries, especially those with large geographic areas under their jurisdiction. A neglect of these inequities may create the potential for disunity and, in extreme cases, for disintegration. In view of this, most countries actively pursue policies with a view to helping lagging regions catch up with faster growing regions. These policies have at best a mixed record of success. It is therefore useful to discern what type of policies work and why? In this context learning from the experience of the European Union (EU) may be particularly instructive as, over the years, it has provided significant support to assist poorer regions achieve convergence with the richer regions. This paper reviews the impact of EU policies for regional development to draw lessons of interest to other countries pursuing similar goals. The paper concludes that policies that serve to create an internal common market by creating a level playing field that enables poorer regions to integrate with the broader national and global economies have the best potential to advance regional income convergence. In this context, removal of barriers to trade and factor mobility and providing enhanced access to information and technology to the lagging regions should be main policy priorities for regional development
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  • 54
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (34 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Wang, Limin The Health Impact of Extreme Weather Events in Sub-Saharan Africa
    Abstract: Extreme weather events are known to have serious consequences for human health and are predicted to increase in frequency as a result of climate change. Africa is one of the regions that risks being most seriously affected. This paper quantifies the impact of extreme rainfall and temperature events on the incidence of diarrhea, malnutrition and mortality in young children in Sub-Saharan Africa. The panel data set is constructed from Demographic and Health Surveys for 108 regions from 19 Sub-Saharan African countries between 1992 and 2001 and climate data from the Africa Rainfall and Temperature Evaluation System from 1980 to 2001. The results show that both excess rainfall and extreme temperatures significantly raise the incidence of diarrhea and weight-for-height malnutrition among children under the age of three, but have little impact on the long-term health indicators, including height-for-age malnutrition and the under-five mortality rate. The authors use the results to simulate the additional health cost as a proportion of gross domestic product caused by increased climate variability. The projected health cost of increased diarrhea attributable to climate change in 2020 is in the range of 0.2 to 0.5 percent of gross domestic product in Africa
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  • 55
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (34 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Demirguc-Kunt, Asli Remittances and Banking Sector Breadth and Depth
    Abstract: Despite the rising volume of remittances flowing to developing countries, their impact on banking sector breadth and depth in recipient countries has been largely unexplored. The authors examine this topic using municipio-level data on the fraction of households that receive remittances and on measures of banking breadth and depth for Mexico. They find that remittances are strongly associated with greater banking breadth and depth, increasing the number of branches and accounts per capita and the ratio of deposits to gross domestic product. These effects are significant both statistically and economically, even after conducting robustness tests and addressing the potential endogeneity of remittances
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  • 56
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (37 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Monga, Celestin Post-Macroeconomics
    Abstract: For decades, many researchers argued that economics had nothing to fear from enriching itself with lessons and advances from other disciplines. Unfortunately, these suggestions were either neglected or dismissed upfront in what was then arbitrarily considered mainstream economics. The global crisis has led even Nobel Prize winners to acknowledge that the problem facing economists and policy makers today is mostly intellectual - it is the need to confront the systematic failure of thinking, especially on the part of macroeconomists. Despite its unprecedented magnitude and heavy financial, human, and intellectual cost, the crisis certainly does not invalidate everything that has been learned about macroeconomics. However, the costs highlight some of mistakes of the dominant intellectual macroeconomic framework. Post-macroeconomics should not be understood as another metanarrative of the end of metanarratives. The use of the prefix post here suggests and emphasizes much more than temporal posterity. Post-macroeconomics should follow from macroeconomics more than it follows after macroeconomics. The theorizing of post-macroeconomics is therefore neither systematically oppositional nor hegemonic. It does not advocate a - dialectic opposition - between macroeconomics and post-macroeconomics. Rather, it suggests that the latter builds on the former and goes beyond it
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  • 57
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (57 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Moreno-Serra, Rodrigo System-Wide Impacts of Hospital Payment Reforms
    Abstract: Although there is broad agreement that the way that health care providers are paid affects their performance, the empirical literature on the impacts of provider payment reforms is surprisingly thin. During the 1990s and early 2000s, many European and Central Asian countries shifted from paying hospitals through historical budgets to fee-for-service or patient-based-payment methods (mostly variants of diagnosis-related groups). Using panel data on 28 countries over the period 1990-2004, the authors of this study exploit the phased shift from historical budgets to explore aggregate impacts on hospital throughput, national health spending, and mortality from causes amenable to medical care. They use a regression version of difference-in-differences and two variants that relax the difference-in-differences parallel trends assumption. The results show that fee-for-service and patient-based-payment methods both increased national health spending, including private (out-of-pocket) spending. However, they had different effects on inpatient admissions (fee-for-service increased them; patient-based-payment had no effect), and average length of stay (fee-for-service had no effect; patient-based-payment reduced it). Of the two methods, only patient-based-payment appears to have had any beneficial effect on "amenable mortality," but there were significant impacts for only a couple of causes of death, and not in all model specifications
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  • 58
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (30 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Freund, Caroline The Trade Response To Global Downturns
    Abstract: The author examines the impact of historical global downturns on trade flows. The results provide insight into why trade has dropped so dramatically in the current crisis, what is likely to happen in the coming years, how global imbalances are affected, and which regions and industries suffer most heavily. The author finds that the elasticity of global trade volumes to real world GDP has increased gradually from around 2 in the 1960s to above 3 now. The author also finds that trade is more responsive to GDP during global downturns than in tranquil times. The results suggest that the overall drop in real trade this year is likely to exceed 15 percent. There is significant variation across industries, with food and beverages the least affected and crude materials and fuels the most affected. On the positive side, trade tends to rebound very rapidly when the outlook brightens. The author also finds evidence that global downturns often lead to persistent improvements in the ratio of the trade balance to GDP in borrower countries
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  • 59
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (41 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Beck, Thorsten Finance in Africa
    Abstract: In spite of shallow financial markets, Sub-Saharan Africa will not escape the repercussions of the global financial crisis. The global turmoil threatens the progress Sub-Saharan Africa has made in financial sector deepening and broadening over the recent years and underlines the importance of continuing and deepening the necessary institutional reforms. In this context it is important to define the role of government in expanding financial sectors in a sustainable and market-friendly manner. Foreign banks have brought more benefits than risks for their host economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, but are certainly not a panacea and not a substitute for institutional and policy reform. The profile of foreign banks, however, has changed, with more and more regional banks emerging. This trend toward regional integration is promising as it might allow the small African financial system to reap benefits from scale economies, but it also requires regulatory and supervisory improvements and coordination across the region
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  • 60
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Aterido, Reyes Big Constraints To Small Firms' Growth?
    Abstract: Using data on more than 56,000 enterprises in 90 countries, this paper finds that objective conditions in the business environment vary substantially across firms of different sizes and that there are important non-linearities in their impact on employment growth. The paper focuses on four areas: access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and infrastructure. The results, particularly on the impacts of finance and corruption on growth, depend on whether and how the analysis accounts for the possible endogeneity of the business environment. Controlling for endogeneity revises the finding that small firms benefit most from access to finance, particularly for sources of finance associated with investment and growth. The findings are also sensitive to how “small” is defined. Differentiating micro (less than 10 employees) from other small firms shows that, while small firms can be disadvantaged in such an environment, micro firms tend to be proportionally less affected by a weak business climate - and, on occasion, it can help them to grow. Overall, allowing different size classifications provides insights into the impact of the business environment that are lost in more aggregate analyses
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  • 61
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Newhouse, David The Value of Vocational Education
    Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between the type of senior high school attended by Indonesian youth and their subsequent labor market outcomes. This topic is very timely, given the government’s recent decision to dramatically expand vocational enrollment. The analysis controls for an unusually rich set of predetermined characteristics, and exploits longitudinal data spanning 14 years to separately identify cohort and age effects. There are four main findings. First, students are sorted into different school types largely on the basis of their entering exam score. Public schools attract the highest-scoring students, while private vocational schools serve the lowest-scoring students. Second, after controlling for a variety of characteristics, including test scores, male public school graduates earn a substantial premium over their privately schooled counterparts. Third, private vocational school graduates fare at least as well as private general graduates, despite coming from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Finally, the returns to public vocational education have declined sharply for the most recent cohort of men. This raises important concerns about the current expansion of public vocational education, and the relevance of the male vocational curriculum in an increasingly service-oriented economy
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  • 62
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (30 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Do, Quy-Toan Agent Orange and the Prevalence of Cancer Among the Vietnamese Population 30 Years After the End of the Vietnam War
    Abstract: During the Vietnam War, more than 70 million liters of military herbicide were sprayed over the combat zone. This study uses self and proxy-reported data on cancer status obtained from a nationally representative health survey of the Vietnamese population (N=158,019), combined with measures of military herbicide exposure computed from detailed information on US and allied wartime military activities. No significant difference in the prevalence of reported cancer is detected between communes with some degree of exposure and those with none. When restricting the analysis to exposed communes and adopting a continuous measure of herbicide exposure, there is evidence of a dose-response relationship; among communes that were exposed, increasing exposure to past military spraying is associated with increasing prevalence of reported cancer in 2001-2002. There is mixed evidence as to whether cohorts born before or after the end of the spraying campaigns are equally affected
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  • 63
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (29 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Milanovic, Branko Global Inequality and the Global Inequality Extraction Ratio
    Abstract: Using social tables, the author makes an estimate of global inequality (inequality among world citizens) in the early 19th century. The analysis shows that the level and composition of global inequality have changed over the past two centuries. The level has increased, reaching a high plateau around the 1950s, and the main determinants of global inequality have become differences in mean country incomes rather than inequalities within nations. The inequality extraction ratio (the percentage of total inequality that was extracted by global elites) has remained surprisingly stable, at around 70 percent of the maximum global Gini, during the past 100 years
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  • 64
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (22 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Foletti, Liliana Smoke in the Water
    Abstract: As the economic crisis deepens and widens, fears of a return to the protectionist spiral of the 1930s become more common. However, an important difference between the 1930s and today is the existence of the World Trade Organization and the legal limits it imposes on the protectionist responses members can pursue. The objective of this paper is threefold. First, to assess the extent to which applied tariff can legally be raised without violating tariff-bound obligations, and compare it with what is economically possible. Second, to examine what has been the protectionist response of individual countries when facing an economic crisis since the creation of the WTO. Finally, to predict how far the protectionist responses will go during the current crisis. Results suggest that the policy space left when looking at what is economically possible is indeed quite large. However, in the recent past very little of the available policy space has been used by countries suffering from an economic crisis. Our predictions for the current crisis are modest tariff hikes in the order of 8 percent
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  • 65
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (55 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Agenor, Pierre-Richard Cyclical Effects of Bank Capital Requirements With Imperfect Credit Markets
    Abstract: This paper analyzes the cyclical effects of bank capital requirements in a simple model with credit market imperfections. Lending rates are set as a premium over the cost of borrowing from the central bank, with the premium itself depending on firms’ effective collateral. Basel I- and Basel II-type regulatory regimes are defined and a capital channel is introduced through a signaling effect of capital buffers on the cost of bank deposits. The macroeconomic effects of various shocks (a drop in output, an increase in the refinance rate, and a rise in the capital adequacy ratio) are analyzed, under both binding and nonbinding capital requirements. Factors affecting the procyclicality of each regime (defined in terms of the behavior of the risk premium) are also identified and policy implications are discussed
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  • 66
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (36 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Anas, Alex An Analysis of Various Policy Instruments To Reduce Congestion, Fuel Consumption and CO2 Emissions in Beijing
    Abstract: Using a nested multinomial logit model of car ownership and personal travel in Beijing circa 2005, this paper compares the effectiveness of different policy instruments to reduce traffic congestion and CO2 emissions. The study shows that a congestion toll is more efficient than a fuel tax in reducing traffic congestion, whereas a fuel tax is more effective as a policy instrument for reducing gasoline consumption and emissions. An improvement in car efficiency would also reduce congestion, fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions significantly; however, this policy benefits only richer households that own a car. Low-income households do better under the fuel tax policy than under the efficiency improvement and congestion toll policies. The congestion toll and fuel tax require the travel cost per mile to more than triple. The responsiveness of aggregate fuel and CO2 are, approximately, a 1 percent drop for each 10 percent rise in the money cost of a car trip
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  • 67
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (44 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ghani, Ejaz How Will Changes in Globalization Impact Growth in South Asia ?
    Abstract: The current global crisis may change globalization itself, as both developed and developing countries adjust to global imbalances that contributed to the crisis. Will these changes help or hinder economic recovery and growth in South Asia? This is the focus of this paper. The three models of globalization - trade, capital, and economic management - may not be the same in the future. Changes in globalization could change the composition of trade flows, capital flows, and economic management, which in turn, could accelerate or restrain growth. South Asia is somewhat peculiar and different from other regions in how it has globalized, although there is a lot of diversity within the region. Its trade characteristics are different. India's growth has been spearheaded by exports of modern services and less by goods exports. Modern service trade tends to be more resilient compared with goods trade. Globalization of services is still at an early stage. So, as consumers pull back in the United States, service trade is likely to be less impacted compared to goods trade. Trade also contributes to growth through knowledge spillovers, externalities, and learning. The global crisis has not reduced the stock of global knowledge. Changes in capital flows are also not likely to have a big impact on growth in South Asia, as South Asia's investments are largely driven by domestic savings. Its dependence on foreign capital is low. South Asia has attracted capital flows that are less volatile. Remittances, which are more resilient, have been the dominant form of capital inflows, exceeding foreign direct investment and other inflows.This global downturn calls for counter-cyclical economic management. But South Asia has limited room for fiscal stimulus, given high debt-to-gross domestic product ratios. Nevertheless, reduced commodity prices have created some fiscal space that can be used for growth enabling infrastructure and safety nets. As South Asia undergoes structural transformation, the region is well positioned to bounce back with global economic recovery
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  • 68
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (41 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Available in another form Evaluating SME Support Programs in Chile Using Panel Firm Data
    Abstract: This paper evaluates small and medium enterprise (SME) support programs in Chile using a firm-level panel for the 1992-2006 period on two groups of firms - a treatment group that participated in SME programs and a control group that did not. These unique panel data provide an unprecedented opportunity to address several issues that have plagued impact evaluations of SME programs - selectivity bias from observed and unobserved firm heterogeneity, identification of an appropriate control group, and inability to track firms over a long enough period of time for performance outcomes to be realized. Using difference-in-differences models combined with propensity score matching methods, the paper finds evidence that participation in SME programs in Chile is associated with improvements in intermediate outcomes (training, adoption of new technology and organizational practices), and causally with positive and statistically significant impacts on sales, production, labor productivity, wages and exports. The mixed results of previous studies may be attributable in part to the confounding effects of unobserved heterogeneity motivating selection into programs of firms with relatively low productivity levels, and in part to time-effects of program participation occurring in years after the time horizon of most impact evaluation studies
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  • 69
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (45 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Hallward-Driemeier, Mary Creative Destruction and Policy Reforms
    Abstract: How important is firm turnover to national productivity growth? The literature points to the contribution of creative destruction being strongest in more developed countries or where market institutions are strongest. This paper looks at the case of Morocco, spanning 16 years, during which reform initiatives aiming to strengthen market forces were introduced. The paper argues that it is important to take into account i) the timing of how decompositions are structured (capturing the effects of high growth among young firms as part of the benefit of increased entry) and ii) the additional indirect impacts of firm dynamics on agglomeration externalities and competition. The paper shows there are striking differences in the productivity paths of entering and exiting firms compared with incumbents, and that restricting the time horizon of productivity decompositions to the actual year of entry or exit underestimates the productivity effects of turnover. Although it has been hypothesized that conducting decompositions over longer horizons would increase the positive contribution of net turnover, this is not the case in Morocco as losses from exiting firms rise too. Nor has the net contribution of turnover increased with market reforms; if anything, the contribution has declined over time. But the allocation of resources has improved. Both technical and allocative efficiency have risen since the mid-1990s. The paper also shows that firm turnover affects productivity through additional channels. It is closely correlated with measures of agglomeration that are associated with higher rates of exit among unproductive firms, and turnover itself is positively associated with subsequent productivity growth of incumbents
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  • 70
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (33 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Carmin, JoAnn Achieving Urban Climate Adaptation in Europe and Central Asia
    Abstract: Many cities across Europe and Central Asia are experiencing the impacts of climate change, but most have not integrated climate adaptation into their agendas. This paper examines the threats faced and measures that can be taken by cities in the region to protect buildings, heritage sites, municipal functions, and vulnerable urban populations. In general, local governments must be proactive in ensuring that existing buildings are climate ready, paying particular attention to emerging technologies for retrofitting the prefabricated, panel style buildings that dominate the landscape while assessing the viability of homes situated in flood plains, coastal areas, and steep slopes. They also must ensure that new developments and buildings are designed in ways that account for climatic fluctuations. Although the resilience of all populations needs to be considered, historical patterns of discrimination require that special provisions are made for the poor and for ethnic minorities such as the Roma because these groups will be most at risk, but are least likely to have access to adequate resources. Urban climate adaptation requires national-level support and local commitment. However, centralized planning and expert-led decision-making under the former regimes may affect the ability of cities to pursue programmatic approaches to adaptation. Therefore, while national governments need to make adaptation a policy priority and ensure that municipalities have adequate resources, local government agencies and departments must be transparent in their actions and introduce participatory and community-based measures that demonstrate respect for diverse stakeholders and perspectives
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  • 71
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (36 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Andersen, Lykke E Social Impacts of Climate Change in Peru
    Abstract: This paper uses district level data to estimate the general relationship between climate, income and life expectancy in Peru. The analysis finds that both incomes and life expectancy show hump-shaped relationships, with optimal average annual temperatures around 18-20ºC. These estimated relationships were used to simulate the likely effects of both past (1958-2008) and future (2008-2058) climate change. At the aggregate level, future climate change in Peru is estimated to cause a small reduction in average life expectancy of about 0.2 years. This average, however, hides much larger losses in the already hot areas as well as substantial gains in currently cold areas. Similarly, the average impact on incomes is a modest reduction of 2.3 percent, but with some districts experiencing losses of up to 20 percent and others gains of up to 13 percent. Future climate change is estimated to cause an increase in poverty (all other things equal), but to have no significant effect on the distribution of incomes
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  • 72
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (36 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Ahmed, Syud Amer Climate Volatility and Poverty Vulnerability in Tanzania
    Abstract: Climate models generally indicate that climate volatility may rise in the future, severely affecting agricultural productivity through greater frequency of yield-diminishing climate extremes, such as droughts. For Tanzania, where agricultural production is sensitive to climate, changes in climate volatility could have significant implications for poverty. This study assesses the vulnerability of Tanzania’s population to poverty to changes in climate variability between the late 20th century and early this century. Future climate scenarios with the largest increases in climate volatility are projected to make Tanzanians increasingly vulnerable to poverty through its impacts on the production of staple grains, with as many as 90,000 additional people, representing 0.26 percent of the population, entering poverty in the median case. Extreme poverty-increasing outcomes are also found to be greater in the future under certain climate scenarios. In the 20th century, the greatest predicted increase in poverty was equal to 880,000 people, while in the 21st century, the highest possible poverty increase was equal to 1.17 million people (approximately 3.4 percent of the population). The results suggest that the potential impacts of changes in climate volatility and climate extremes can be significant for poverty in Sub-Saharan African countries like Tanzania
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  • 73
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (46 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Mattoo, Aaditya Reconciling Climate Change and Trade Policy
    Abstract: There is growing clamor in industrial countries for additional border taxes on imports from countries with lower carbon prices. The authors confirm the findings of other research that unilateral emissions cuts by industrial countries will have minimal carbon leakage effects. However, output and exports of energy-intensive manufactures are projected to decline potentially creating pressure for trade action. A key factor affecting the impact of any border taxes is whether they are based on the carbon content of imports or the carbon content in domestic production. Their quantitative estimates suggest that the former action when applied to all merchandise imports would address competitiveness and environmental concerns in high income countries but with serious consequences for trading partners. For example, China’s manufacturing exports would decline by one-fifth and those of all low and middle income countries by 8 per cent; the corresponding declines in real income would be 3.7 per cent and 2.4 per cent. Border tax adjustment based on the carbon content in domestic production, especially if applied to both imports and exports, would broadly address the competitiveness concerns of producers in high income countries and less seriously damage developing country trade
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  • 74
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (105 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Kessides, Ioannis N Regionalizing Telecommunications Reform in West Africa
    Abstract: In recent years, there has been an increasing recognition that significant welfare gains could be realized through deep forms of regional integration which entail harmonization of legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks. Reforms that reduce cross-border transaction costs and improve the performance of “backbone” infrastructure services are arguably even more important for the creation of an open, unified regional economic space than trade policy reforms narrowly defined. This paper assesses the potential gains from regionalized telecommunications policy in West Africa. To this end, the paper: (i) discusses how regional cooperation can overcome national limits in technical expertise, enhance the capacity of nations credibly to commit to stable regulatory policy, and ultimately facilitate infrastructure investment in the region; (ii) identifies trade-distorting regulations that inhibit opportunities for regional trade and economic development, and so are good candidates for regional trade negotiations to reduce indirect trade barriers; and (iii) describes substantive elements of a harmonized regional regulatory policy that can deliver immediate performance benefits
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  • 75
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (32 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Demirguc-Kunt, Asli Basel Core Principles and Bank Soundness
    Abstract: This paper studies whether compliance with the Basel Core Principles for effective banking supervision is associated with bank soundness. Using data for more than 3,000 banks in 86 countries, the authors find that neither the overall index of compliance with the Basel Core Principles nor the individual components of the index are robustly associated with bank risk measured by Z-scores. The results of the analysis cast doubt on the usefulness of the Basel Core Principles in ensuring bank soundness
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  • 76
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (42 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Malouche, Mariem Trade and Trade Finance Developments in 14 Developing Countries Post September 2008
    Abstract: In the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008, drop in the supply of trade finance, a critical engine for trade transactions, has become an acute concern for the development community. Banks were increasing pricing on trade finance transactions to cover increased funding costs and higher credit risks, and trade was dropping drastically in most countries, with global trade projected to decline in 2009 for the first time in decades. Yet, little was known about the real impact of the crisis on developing country’s capacity to export. The World Bank has commissioned a firm and bank survey on trade and trade finance developments in developing countries during the first quarter of 2009 to collect field information. In total, 425 firms and 78 banks were surveyed in 14 developing countries across five regions. This paper summarizes the findings of the survey as well as discusses the type of policies governments and international organizations put in place to mitigate the impact of the crisis. In sum, the survey findings confirmed that the global financial crisis has constrained trade finance for exporters and importers in developing countries. But the impact varied by the firm size, sectoral activity, and countries’ integration into the global economy. In particular, SMEs were particularly affected, and export diversification was made more difficult, especially in low income countries. Nevertheless, drop in demand has emerged as the top concern of firms at the time when the survey was conducted in March-April 2009
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  • 77
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (31 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Rudolph, Heinz P State Financial Institutions
    Abstract: There is no doubt that on average the performance of state financial institutions around the world has been below the lowest expectations. Lack of governance, management skills, regulation, and transparency, and misguided incentives have contributed to discredit these institutions for supporting the development of local financial markets. However, the pro-active role that some state financial institutions have played in the recent crisis in allocating credit to sectors cyclically not attractive for commercial banks has brought back the question of whether some state ownership in the banking system would be preferable. This paper analyzes the experience of four state financial institutions that have performed relatively well in the past: Canada's Business Development Bank, Chile's BancoEstado, South Africa's Development Bank of Southern Africa, and Finland's Finnvera plc. The author finds that these institutions have different checks and balances to mitigate eventual mismanagement of resources. The author also finds that little progress has been made in measuring the policy performance of these institutions
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  • 78
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: Online-Ressource (30 p)
    Edition: 2009 World Bank eLibrary
    Parallel Title: Arena, Marco Pro-Cyclical Fiscal Policy in Brazil
    Abstract: The empirical literature on budget cyclicality has generally focused more on assessing the degree of pro-cyclicality in federal (central government) revenues and expenditures and less on budget cyclicality at the sub-national level in multi-tiered systems. This paper attempts to contribute to the literature on budget cyclicality by examining how sub-national fiscal revenues and expenditures are linked to the business cycle in Brazil, particularly after the introduction of the Fiscal Responsibility Law. It explains the degree of pro-cyclicality across Brazilian states, and assesses whether intergovernmental transfers help to stabilize states’ finances. These issues are addressed using both a time-series and a cross-section dimension at the Brazilian state level for the period 1991-2006. The empirical evidence suggests the existence of a pro-cyclical fiscal policy in Brazil at the state level. However, the introduction of the Fiscal Responsibility Law helped to reduce Brazilian states’ spending-side pro-cyclicality. For the Brazilian states, the main source of the observed pro-cyclicality is found in the behavior of tax revenues directly collected by the state governments. Intergovernmental transfers (federal transfers to the states) are not associated with changes in gross state product, but they are pro-cyclically aligned with national gross domestic product, which could amplify the pro-cyclical behavior of sub-national expenditures
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  • 79
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Water and Sanitation Program
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This briefing note provides a rapid scan of partnership initiatives by the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) to improve the state of water and sanitation services in Africa. The note aims to highlight the gains and challenges of the major collaborative initiatives, focusing on where progress has been made or activities are ongoing at a strategic, thematic, and regional or country level. The collaboration is now focusing on: a) intensifying operational cooperation and joint work in additional African countries, including fragile and post-conflict countries; b) continuing to share information and to participate in capacity-building activities, with an emphasis on training in operational contexts; c) intensifying joint work in water supply, and particularly sanitation and hygiene; and, d) developing a monitoring system focused on results rather than inputs
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  • 80
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Transport Papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: A supply chain is a system of resources, organizations, people, technologies, activities and information involved in the act of transporting goods from producer to consumer and user. This (SCS) guide is intended for trade and transport government officials, port authorities and transport, cargo and logistics communities, in particular in developing countries. The purpose of the guide is to make concerned trade and transport-related officials, managers and personnel in developing countries acquainted with, and aware of, the many initiatives mushrooming in the field of supply chain security, what these will mean for their respective organizations, and how to tackle the inlaid challenges. This chapter attempts to clarify the background and current status of the multitude of programs that exist across the world today. This is achieved by, firstly, giving a brief account of the changing security environment (post 9/11) and its resulting implications for SCS programs. This is important as it helps to explain the motivation of the programs which are later expanded upon in more detail within the chapter. Within this section, the motivations for different types of programs, not directly linked to the events of 9/11 but to other reasons, such as combating illegal activities, enhancement of efficiency and standardization are also explained. Secondly, a list of the main programs is present under four main subheadings: compulsory programs, major voluntary programs, regional or national programs, and others. Tables are presented at the end of the section summarizing the main points of each program. Finally, some of the issues surrounding the programs are presented in the concluding section
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  • 81
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: Local and Community Driven Development (LCDD) is an approach that gives control of development decisions and resources to community groups and representative local governments. Poor communities receive funds, decide on their use, plan and execute the chosen local projects, and monitor the provision of services that result from it. It improves not just incomes but people's empowerment and governance capacity, the lack of which is a form of poverty as well. LCDD operations have demonstrated effectiveness at delivering results and have received substantial support from the World Bank. Since the start of this decade, our lending for LCDD has averaged around US
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  • 82
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: One of the objectives of a GFDRR funded project in Armenia (Institutional Arrangements on Disaster Risk Management and Reduction) is awareness building among the decision makers, professional engineering and construction community, and local self-governments on the modern, anti-seismic technologies successfully developed and implemented in Armenia. To raise awareness on the seismic isolation technology it was decided to first evaluate the functioning of all seismic isolation systems in the already constructed buildings in Armenia. Then based on the carried out observations to analyze the results, to draw lessons from the findings and to present the conclusions and recommendations to the wider engineering and construction community, as well as to the decision makers in the construction industry. For that purpose monitoring and evaluation of the technical conditions of the seismic isolation systems in the buildings which were seismically isolated for more than a decade ago was carried out. This initiative was very useful, as it helped to answer to the frequently asked questions and concerns on the sustainability and effectiveness of the technology, of the seismic isolators. It also helped to draw lessons and recommend solutions for improving their construction and maintenance practices
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  • 83
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This report seeks to inform the development of a framework for addressing governance reform in fragile and conflict affected environments through are view of international experiences. The report analyzes the experience both of countries that sustained a transition to peace and those that fell back into conflict. Pertinent lessons will be drawn selectively from a range of fragile and conflict affected countries, including Haiti, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mozambique, Liberia, Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, and Angola. No specific typologies have been adopted or formed in order to assess these lessons, because typologies can be limiting and experiences can be better assessed based on the specificity of each country's context. The first section of the report sets out broadly accepted definitions of key terms such as governance, state building, and fragility. The second section reviews experiences with diverse governance dimensions and explores the objectives, opportunities, and constraints associated with each
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  • 84
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: The case for scaling up mitigation efforts is urgent and has been made repeatedly in the last few years whether denominated in gigatonnes of needed reductions in greenhouse gas emissions per year or tens of 'gigadollars' of needed annual investments in zero and low carbon technologies and systems. The World Bank is now beginning to actively engage partners it contemplates in its new carbon partnership facility. As these discussions 'get down to business', it will be helpful to have a better understanding of the types of scaling up opportunities and the steps that need to be taken to get proper policy frameworks in place (internationally and domestically) to ensure carbon finance plays an effective role. This paper is organised as follows : Section 2 provides detail on what 'scaling up' means in practice. It draws from literature looking at this question from a range of perspectives; and Section 3 looks at the policy and investment situation for scaling up activities that exists today, i.e. in advance of any new policy instruments being considered in a post-2012 context
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  • 85
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This paper summarizes a new database that sheds light on the impact of trade-related policy developments over the past half century on distortions to agricultural incentives and thus also to consumer prices for food in 75 countries spanning the per capita income spectrum. Price support policies of advanced economies hurt not only domestic consumers and exporters of other products but also foreign producers and traders of farm products, and they reduce national and global economic welfare. On the other hand, the governments of many developing countries have directly taxed their farmers over the past half-century, both directly (e.g., export taxes) and also indirectly via overvaluing their currency and restricting imports of manufactures. Thus the price incentives facing farmers in many developing countries have been depressed by both own-country and other countries' agricultural price and international trade policies. The authors summarize these and realted stylized facts that can be drawn from a new World Bank database that is worthy of the attention of political economy theorists, historians and econometricians. These indicators can be helpful in addressing such questions as the following: where is there still a policy bias against agricultural production? To what extent has there been overshooting in the sense that some developing-country food producers are now being protected from import competition along the lines of the examples of earlier-industrializing Europe and Japan? What are the political economy forces behind the more-successful reformers, and how do they compare with those in less-successful countries where major distortions in agricultural incentives remain? And what explains the pattern of distortions across not only countries but also industries and in the choice of support or tax instruments within the agricultural sector of each country?
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  • 86
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: The objective of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which trade agreements affect agricultural trade policy volatility. Using a new panel database compiled as part of the World Bank's agricultural distortions research project, the author estimate the effect of regionalism on the volatility of price distortions measured by the absolute value of their first differences, averaged, for each country and year, over all agricultural goods. Using an instrumental-variable approach to correct for the endogeneity of regional trade agreements, (RTAs), the author fined that participation in RTAs has a significantly negative effect on agricultural trade-policy volatility. The author find that the World Trade Organization (WTO) agricultural agreement also contributed to reducing agricultural trade-policy volatility, in spite of the weak disciplines involved, but the effect is only weakly identified. The results are robust to a variety of robustness checks and hold, in particular, for the Latin American sub-sample
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  • 87
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This paper analyzes the political and institutional factors which are behind the dramatic changes in distortions to agricultural incentives in the transition countries in East Asia, Central Asia, and the rest of the former Soviet Union, and in Central and Eastern Europe. The paper explains why these changes have occurred and why there are large differences among transition countries in the extent and the nature of the remaining distortions
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  • 88
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This chapter begins with a brief summary of the long history of national distortions to agricultural markets. It then outlines the methodology used to generate annual indicators of the extent of government interventions in markets, details of which are provided in Anderson and appendix A. A description of the economies under study and their economic growth and structural changes over recent decades is then briefly presented as a preface to the main section of the chapter, in which the nominal rates of assistance and consumer tax equivalents (NRA and CTE) estimates are summarized across regions and over the decades since the 1950s. These estimates are discussed in far more detail in the regional chapters that follow. A summary is also provided of an additional set of indicators of agricultural price distortions presented in chapter eleven that are based on the trade restrictiveness index first developed by Anderson and Neary (2005). In chapter twelve the focus shifts from countries to commodities, and all the various distortion indicators are used to provide a sense of how distorted are each of the key farm commodity markets globally. Then chapter thirteen uses the study's NRA and CTE estimates to provide a new set of results from a global economy-wide model that attempts to quantify the impacts on global markets, net farm incomes and welfare of the reforms since the early 1980s and of the policies still in place as of 2004. The chapter concludes by drawing on the lessons learned to speculate on the prospects for further reducing the disarray in world agricultural markets
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  • 89
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: In a recent survey of European economic growth since 1950, Crafts and Toniolo (2008) conclude that incentive structures are a crucial explanator of comparative growth rates of the economies of east and west Europe. Pre-empting that, a 2006 report on trade performance and policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia included as one of its key recommendations the need to reduce the mean and variance of the tariff equivalents of trade barriers, and in particular to reduce unilaterally the policy regimes' anti-export bias, especially in countries exporting primary products (Broadman 2006). To progress such reform in Europe's transition economies efficiently and effectively, and to see how recent policies line up with those of the European Union (EU), requires better information on the extent of reform during the past two decades and of current policy influences on incentives within and between sectors. Immediately prior to their transition to market economies, policies in the region greatly distorted producer and consumer incentives, especially for agricultural products. Those distortions have been reduced substantially in several countries, but large variations remain across the region and distortions appear to be growing again in some countries. Now is thus an opportune time to examine how policies affecting agriculture are evolving in this region, including as part of the adjustment to EU accession for ten of the transition economies in the region
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  • 90
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: The Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations stalled in 2008 owing in no small degree to a lack of agreement on the terms of substantially reducing trade-distorting support for agricultural products and to what extent this will be beneficial to developing countries. Nicaragua presents an interesting case in point, being one of the poorest economies in Latin America with still a relatively large agricultural sector and high degrees of rural poverty. In 2005, the country signed a free trade agreement with the United States. This chapter provides a quantitative analysis addressing that question. It does so using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Nicaragua coupled with a micro-simulation methodology. The first section provides background information on trade reform policies and macroeconomic trends in Nicaragua, with special reference to the agricultural sector and rural poverty. The section that follows describes the main features of the CGE model and the micro-simulation methodology used to assess the impact on poverty and inequality. The author then lay out the model scenarios considered, which include liberalizations of agricultural and all merchandise goods trade by the rest of the world and by Nicaragua itself. That is followed by a summary analysis of results. This analysis includes tests for the sensitivity of the results with respect to assumptions regarding the responsiveness of trade to price liberalization, as identified through the relevant trade elasticities. The final section provides conclusions and possible policy implications
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  • 91
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: Although Mozambique has considerable agricultural potential, rural poverty remains extremely high. This paper examines the extent to which global and domestic price distortions affect agricultural production and national poverty. The author develops a computable general equilibrium (CGE) and micro-simulation model of Mozambique that is linked to the results of a global model. This framework is used to examine the effects of eliminating global and national price distortions. Model results indicate that agriculture is adversely affected by current trade distortions due to policies in the rest of the world. While a removal of all merchandise trade distortions will reduce import prices, it will also raise agricultural production and reduce poverty. By contrast, removing only agricultural price distortions abroad will have little effect on Mozambique's agricultural sector. Model results indicate that Mozambique's own distortions are also biased against agriculture, with producers of processed agricultural products enjoying high protection levels. Removing these distortions causes a significant expansion of agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a reduction in both poverty and inequality. The findings therefore suggest that removing own-country and rest-of-world distortions will have positive implications for agriculture and for the overall economy in Mozambique, and in particular it will reduce its poverty and inequality
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  • 92
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER)
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: In 2009, Zambia joined the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) trust fund program, the goal of which is to help countries improve their capacity to design, carry out, analyze, and use assessments for improved student learning. As part of the READ trust fund program, and in order to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its existing assessment system, Zambia participated in a formal exercise to benchmark this system under The World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) program. SABER is an evidence-based program to help countries systematically examine and strengthen the performance of different aspects of their education systems. SABER-student assessment is a component of the SABER program that focuses specifically on benchmarking student assessment policies and systems. The goal of SABER-student assessment is to promote stronger assessment systems that contribute to improved education quality and learning for all. The importance of assessment is linked to its role in: providing information on levels of student learning and achievement in the system; monitoring trends in education quality over time; supporting educators and students with real-time information to improve teaching and learning; and holding stakeholders accountable for results. The SABER-student assessment framework is built on the available evidence base for what an effective assessment system looks like. The framework provides guidance on how countries can build more effective student assessment systems. The framework is structured around two main dimensions of assessment systems: the types/purposes of assessment activities and the quality of those activities. Assessment systems tend to be comprised of three main types of assessment activities, each of which serves a different purpose and addresses different information needs. These three main types are: classroom assessment, examinations, and large scale, system level assessments. This report focuses specifically on policies in the area of student assessment
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  • 93
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Environment Department Papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: Climate change presents a profound challenge to food security and development. Negative impacts from climate change are likely to be greatest in regions that are currently food insecure and may even be significant in those regions that have made large gains in reducing food insecurity over the past half-century. Adaptation in the agricultural sector is being given a high priority within this effort because of the inherent sensitivity of food production to climate and the strong inter-linkages that exist between climate, agriculture, and economic growth and development. The purpose of this report is to review the major effects of climate change on the agricultural sector; to examine the causes of vulnerability; and to suggest a range of potential options and investment opportunities for supporting adaptation efforts and, more generally, for building adaptive capacity. This report primarily focuses on appropriate strategies for adapting to climate change impacts that are projected to occur over the next one to two decades, although several issues covered in this report are important for long-term adaptation needs as well. This report also describes opportunities for linking adaptation and mitigation, and it discusses the importance of mainstreaming adaptation into development
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  • 94
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This paper uses new data on agricultural policy interventions to examine the political economy of agricultural trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Historically, African governments have discriminated against agricultural producers in general (relative to producers in non-agricultural sectors), and against producers of export agriculture in particular. While more moderate in recent years, these patterns of discrimination persist. They do so even though farmers comprise a political majority. Rather than claiming the existence of a single best approach to the analysis of policy choice, the authors explore the impact of three factors: institutions, regional inequality, and tax revenue-generation. The authors find that agricultural taxation increases with the rural population share in the absence of electoral party competition; yet, the existence of party competition turns the lobbying disadvantage of the rural majority into political advantage. The authors also find that privileged cash crop regions are particular targets for redistributive taxation, unless the country's president comes from that region. In addition, governments of resource-rich countries, while continuing to tax export producers, reduce their taxation of food consumers
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  • 95
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: In this paper, the authors examine the political economy drivers of the variation in agricultural protection, both across countries and within countries over time. The paper starts by listing the key insights provided by both the theoretical and empirical literature on the political economy of trade policy formulation. The authors then set out a basic framework that allows us to put forth various testable hypotheses on the variation and evolution of agricultural protection. The authors find that both the political ideology of the government and the degree of income inequality are important determinants of agricultural protection. Thus, both the political-support-function approach as well as the median-voter approach can be used in explaining the variation in agricultural protection across countries and within countries over time. The results are consistent with the predictions of a model that assumes that labor is specialized and sector-specific in nature. Some aspects of protection also seem to be consistent with predictions of a lobbying model in that agricultural protection is negatively related to agricultural employment and positively related to agricultural productivity. Public finance aspects of protection also seem to be empirically important
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  • 96
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This paper focuses on the political economy of United States (U.S.) farm policy since the Uruguay round trade negotiations concluded in 1994 and established the World Trade Organization (WTO). The continued ability of the powerful farm lobby in the U.S. to elicit support in the political arena is evident from this analysis. Yet there have been some substantial changes in policy that have reduced their distortionary effects, as well as some setbacks to liberalizing reform. New Doha round commitments could put further constraints on subsidies provided by some U.S. policy instruments. And despite the ability of the farm lobby to retain its support programs through 2012, there are several political uncertainties about the alignments that have allowed U.S. farm support to endure
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  • 97
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Other papers
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: Britain contrary to received wisdom was not a free trader for most of the 1800s and, despite repeal of the Corn Laws, continued to have higher tariffs than the French until the last quarter of the century. War with Louis fourteenth from 1689 led to the end of all trade between Britain and France for a quarter of a century. The creation of powerful protected interests both at home and abroad led to the imposition of prohibitively high tariffs on French imports notably on wine and spirits, when trade with France resumed in 1714. Protection of domestic interests from import competition allowed the state to raise domestic excises which provided increased government revenues despite almost no increases in the taxes on land and income in Britain. The state ensured compliance not simply through the threat of lower tariffs on foreign substitutes but also through the encouragement of a trend towards monopoly production in brewing and restricted retail sales of beer. This history is analyzed in terms of its effects on British fiscal and commercial policy from the early 1700s to the end of the nineteenth century. The result is a fuller, albeit revisionist account of the rise of the modern state that calls into question a variety of theses in economics and political science that draw on the naive view of a liberal Britain unilaterally moving to free trade in the nineteenth century
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  • 98
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Recent Economic Development in Infrastructure
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: To be credible, any plan for scaling up infrastructure in Africa must rest on a thorough evaluation of how fiscal resources are allocated and financed. Because in every plausible scenario the public sector retains the lion's share of infrastructure financing, with private participation remaining limited, a central purpose of such an evaluation is to identify where and how fiscal resources can be better used if not increased without jeopardizing macroeconomic and fiscal stability. The stakes are high, because the magnitude of Africa's infrastructure needs carries a commensurate potential for misuse of scarce fiscal resources. The authors analyze recent public expenditure patterns to identify ways to make more fiscal resources available for infrastructure. The authors do this in three ways. First, we quantify the level and composition of public spending on infrastructure so as to match fiscal allocations to the particular characteristics of individual subsectors and to countries' macroeconomic type (low-income fragile, low-income no fragile, oil-exporting, and middle-income). Second, the authors evaluate public budgetary spending for infrastructure against macroeconomic conditions to get a sense of the scope for making additional fiscal resources available based on actual allocation decisions in recent years. And, third, the authors look for ways to make public spending for infrastructure more efficient, so as to better use existing resources. Any exercise of this kind encounters data limitations. First, because it was not feasible to visit all sub national entities, some decentralized infrastructure expenditures probably have been underrepresented, with particular implications for the water sector. Second, it was not always possible to fully identify which items of the budget are financed by donors, and contributions by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to rural infrastructure projects are likely to have been missed completely. Third, it was not always possible to obtain full financial statements for all of the infrastructure special funds that the authors identified. Fourth, accurate recording of annual changes in fixed capital formation (capital expenditure) of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) remains a methodological challenge. Fifth, accurate measurement of existing public infrastructure stock will require further methodological development
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  • 99
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Washington, D.C : The World Bank
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Investment Climate Assessment
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: The purpose of this handbook is to provide policy makers with a framework to assess a tax system in its entirety, measure its various parameters and how it is administered, and defines best practices for tax policy and administration that will yield a tax system that is simple and predictable and does not create an undue burden on private enterprise. This handbook is primarily designed for policy makers and tax practitioners. The goal is to analyze the impact of income tax, the value added tax (VAT), and other local taxes that are imposed on business. This handbook does not analyze the effects of trade and labor taxes such as social security. The administration of the customs duty is unique and has been addressed extensively in the literature on customs modernization. Labor taxes primarily imposed on salaried individuals are not covered by this handbook, even though their incidence affects business. VAT has been included even though it is a tax on consumption because the administrative burden to comply with it is primarily on business
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  • 100
    Language: English
    Pages: 1 Online-Ressource
    Series Statement: Risk and Vulnerability Assessment
    Series Statement: World Bank E-Library Archive
    Abstract: This report addresses the fact that natural disasters have caused vast social upheaval and economic damage to Armenia. This ongoing vulnerability to natural disasters has led Armenia to appreciate the advantages of developing a comprehensive strategy to help minimize ensuing fiscal exposure because the national budget will never be adequate to mitigate, respond, and recover from these recurrent but unavoidable crises. Since the Spitak earthquake, Government has reorganized its emergency management system and established many seismic mitigation activities and created a Ministry of Emergency Situations (MoES) and established a cabinet-level Minister responsible for disaster response. Government may wish to build on these achievements. The report is also based on a study carried out in Armenia under the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) project, which analyzed disaster risks, assessed existing systems, mechanisms, and institutional capacities, and made recommendations for developing a comprehensive national disaster reduction and preparedness agenda, which could form the basis for a natural disaster reduction project
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