World Bank Development Research Articles

Global infant mortality trends and attributable determinants – an ecological study using data from 192 countries for the period 1990–2011

Infant mortality rate (IMR) is regarded as an important indicator of population health. IMR rates vary substantially with the highest found in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to the lowest in Europe. Identifying spatial disparities in IMR and quantifying attributable risk factors is essential for policymakers when tailoring time-appropriate interventions at a global, regional, and country level. Data for 192 countries were extracted from the World Bank Development Indicator database for the period 1990–2011. Spatial clustering was used to identify significant higher-risk IMR countries. A robust ecological generalized linear negative binomial regression model was used to quantify risk factors and associated decomposition values (Shapley). Significant reductions were observed in IMR for all of the World Health Organization regions for the period 1990–2011 except for SSA, which indicated a reversal of this trend in the 1990s due to HIV. Significant high-risk clustering of IMR is also indicated in SSA countries and parts of Asia. Maternal mortality (survival), lack of water and sanitation and female education were confirmed as prominent and high attributable risk factors for IMR. Distinct temporal changes in the attributability of these factors were observed, as well as significant heterogeneity with regards to the most attributable factor by region and country. Our study suggests that maternal mortality is the most prominent attributable risk factor for infant mortality, followed by lack of access to sanitation, lack of access to water, and lower female education. Variation exists across regions and countries with regards to the most attributable factor. Our study also suggests significant underestimation of IMR in regions known for poorer data quality. The results will aid policymakers in re-tailoring time-appropriate interventions to more effectively reduce IMR in line with Millennium Development Goal 4.

Examining the Relationship between the Communication Skills and Self-efficacy Levels of Physical Education Teacher Candidates

The purpose of the present research is examining the relationship between the communication skills and self-efficacy levels of physical education teacher candidates. The sample of the research was selected via random sampling. A total of 130 students; 55 students studying at Near East University, School of Physical Education and Sports, Department of Teaching in Sports and Physical Education Department, and 75 students studying at Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Department of Physical Education and Sports participated in the research. In the present research; “Communication Skills Inventory” developed by Ersan and Balci (1998), “Teacher Competence Expectation Inventory” (TCEI) developed in accordance with the teacher competence indicators in the YOK (Board of Higher Education)/World Bank Development of National Education project (1998), and personal information form were used as data collection tools. Pearson Correlation Analysis was used to determine the relationship between communication skills and self-efficacy levels of teacher candidates; and significance tests were used to test whether there are significant differences in the communication skills and self-efficacy levels of participants in terms of demographic data. According to research findings; there is a positive significant correlation between the communication skills and self-efficacy levels of teacher candidates. There are no significant differences between communication skills and self-efficacy levels across genders (p>0.05).

Entrepreneurship and poverty reduction in Cameroon: A Vector Autoregressive approach

This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurship on poverty alleviation in Cameroon and determines the nature of the causality that exists between them using the vector autoregressive approach. The study uses data from the Cameroon National Institute of statistics and World Bank Development Indicators for the period 1980-2013. The results show that entrepreneurship has a significant negative impact on poverty in Cameroon and that there exists a significant bi-directional positive causality between entrepreneurship and poverty reduction. From a policy perspective, the study concludes that training and retraining of entrepreneurs as well as organizing entrepreneurship skills acquisition programmes are vital to boost entrepreneurship in order to reduce poverty in the country.JEL Classification: E23, F2, F21, F43 Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Poverty reduction, Vector Autoregressive Approach

Gender, education and labour market: evidence from Mauritius

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of women in the small island economy by focussing on the education sector and labour market access. First, we analyse the educational path of women in Mauritius and second we examine the labour market opportunities available to them. We link the two sectors by adopting a gender perspective. Third, we investigate whether the same opportunities are made available to both men and women and whether or not there exist a gender gap in economic participation in the country. Design/methodology/approach – The author used data from the World Bank Development Indicators (2012) for a comparative analysis of the gender situation in Mauritius relative to other African countries. Gender statistics were also made available from the statistical office: statistics, Mauritius. The Global Gender Gap Report (2012) and the SADC Gender Protocol Barometer 2012 were used as secondary data. Findings – The analysis reveals that though girls’ outperform boys at all education levels, starting from primary, secondary and tertiary level, their access to job opportunities are reduced. Female unemployment rate is higher than that of male unemployment and even for those women who manage to enter the labour market, they remain in the low-occupation jobs. This puzzling relationship between good educational performance and female unemployment or low-occupation may first be explained by the wrong choice of subjects at secondary and tertiary levels. Mauritian women are more likely to obtain a degree in education and humanities which are the traditional areas rather than moving to the non-traditional spheres of science and engineering. Hence, not only is it difficult for them to penetrate the labour market which is already saturated in these traditional disciplines but jobs in these fields may not be in the high wage range. Consequently, these subject choices have repercussions for the occupations they choose and the wages they earn. Significant and persistent gaps remain in the fields of study that women and men choose as part of their formal education. These gaps translate henceforth into gender differences in employment and ultimately into differences in productivity and earnings. Originality/value – No study has focused on the puzzling link between good education performance of girls and their inability to access the labour market in Mauritius.

The United Nations and One Health: the International Health Regulations (2005) and global health security.

The One Health approach encompasses multiple themes and can be understood from many different perspectives. This paper expresses the viewpoint of those in charge of responding to public health events of international concern and, in particular, to outbreaks of zoonotic disease. Several international organisations are involved in responding to such outbreaks, including the United Nations (UN) and its technical agencies; principally, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO); UN funds and programmes, such as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Children's Fund; the UN-linked multilateral banking system (the World Bank and regional development banks); and partner organisations, such as the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). All of these organisations have benefited from the experiences gained during zoonotic disease outbreaks over the last decade, developing common approaches and mechanisms to foster good governance, promote policies that cut across different sectors, target investment more effectively and strengthen global and national capacities for dealing with emerging crises. Coordination among the various UN agencies and creating partnerships with related organisations have helped to improve disease surveillance in all countries, enabling more efficient detection of disease outbreaks and a faster response, greater transparency and stakeholder engagement and improved public health. The need to build more robust national public human and animal health systems, which are based on good governance and comply with the International Health Regulations (2005) and the international standards set by the OIE, prompted FAO, WHO and the OIE to join forces with the World Bank, to provide practical tools to help countries manage their zoonotic disease risks and develop adequate resources to prevent and control disease outbreaks, particularly at the animal source. All these efforts contribute to the One Health agenda.

Reconsidering Regime Type and Growth: Lies, Dictatorships, and Statistics

Some recent papers have concluded that authoritarian regimes have faster economic growth than democracies. These supposed growth benefits of autocracies are estimated using data sets in which growth rates rely heavily on data reported by each government. Governments have incentives to exaggerate their economic growth figures, however, and authoritarian regimes may have fewer limitations than democracies on their ability to do so. This paper argues that growth data submitted to international agencies are overstated by authoritarian regimes compared to democracies. If true, it calls into question the estimated relationship between government type and economic growth found in the literature. To measure the degree to which each government's official growth statistics are overstated, the economic growth rates reported in the World Bank's World Development Indicators are compared to a new measure of economic growth based on satellite imaging of nighttime lights. This comparison reveals whether or not dictators exaggerate their true growth rates and by how much. Annual GDP growth rates are estimated to be overstated by 0.5–1.5 percentage points in the statistics that dictatorships report to the World Bank.

World Bank,World Development Report 2014: Risk and Opportunities

Population and Development ReviewVolume 40, Issue 2 p. 373-374 BOOK REVIEWSFull Access World Bank, World Development Report 2014: Risk and Opportunities Huraera Jabeen, Huraera Jabeen Research Fellow, Population Council, New YorkSearch for more papers by this author Huraera Jabeen, Huraera Jabeen Research Fellow, Population Council, New YorkSearch for more papers by this author First published: 14 June 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00680.xCitations: 1AboutRelatedInformationPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessClose modalShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article.Citing Literature Volume40, Issue2June 2014Pages 373-374 RelatedInformation RecommendedFinancial Debentures and the China Development Bank's Financial InnovationDebt Capital Markets in China, [1]Collateralized borrowing around the world: Insights from the World Bank Enterprise SurveysYuting Fan, Ha Nguyen, Rong Qian, International Journal of Finance & EconomicsThe World Bank and Petroleum Development in the Third WorldHASAN S. ZAKARIYA, Natural Resources ForumWorld BankSusan Hagood Lee, The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, [1]Bank LendingPrivate Capital Markets: Valuation, Capitalization, and Transfer of Private Business Interests, [1]

Determinants of Demand for International Tourism in Sri Lanka: An Econometric Evaluation

International tourism has become a popular global leisure event and emerged as a major source of foreign exchange earnings for the developing countries. This study seeks to investigate the determinants of demand for international tourism in Sri Lanka within the framework of bounds test approach to cointegration. Data were gathered from formal sources of various publications of World Bank and Tourism Development Authority of Sri Lanka. Data analysis was performed using Unit root tests followed by bounds test to cointegration based on Autoregressive Distributed Lag. The results reveal that tourism price in the country, travelling cost, income and exchange rates, tourism prices at alternative destinations are significant determinants of the international tourism demand to the country in the long run. The implication of these results for policy makers is that a more attentions is required to pay for the economic factors associated with the international tourism in order to keep the tourism price in the country at a competitive level.

A New Look at School Enrolment in Ghana: A Statistical Analysis

This paper assesses the determinants of school enrolment in Ghana during the period from1970-2012 using data from World Bank Development Indicators.The study employed the Bayesian Moving Average model (BMA) in order to address the issue of model uncertainty. By making use of 28 regressors as possible determinants of school enrolment, the results of the empirical analysis show that percentage of female teachers in the community, number of schools in the community, household expenditure, labour force with primary education, progression rate to secondary level. Among others are the factors that influence enrolment level. The results are robust with the change of coefficient priors in the estimated model. Government should introduce the quota system where more females will be trained as teachers and also introduce more programmes to reduce fertility rate.

Impacts of the SADC Free Trade Agreement on South African Agricultural Trade

Trade is an essential component of modern society, with nations signing bilateral trade agreements to engage in various forms of economic integration. Developing countries in southern Africa are also involved in economic integration to underpin development. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) became a free trade area in 2008 for the economic integration of its members. This study evaluates the impact of the SADC Free Trade Agreement (SADC FTA) on South African agricultural trade using the Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) specification of gravity model to determine the significance of variables within the model. Bilateral trade data were obtained from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics (UN Comtrade) database and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), while data on gross domestic product and population were sourced from the World Bank Development Indicators (WDI) database. The results show that there has been a net trade-creating effect and increasing intra-SADC bloc trade in beef. Intra-regional trade in maize has also been stimulated by the implementation of the agreement.

Southeast Asia. Gambling with the land: The contemporary evolution of Southeast Asian agriculture. By Rodolphe De Koninck and Jean-François Rousseau. Singapore: NUS Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 250. Maps, Plates, Notes, Bibliography and Index.

Southeast Asia. Gambling with the land: The contemporary evolution of Southeast Asian agriculture. By Rodolphe De Koninck and Jean-François Rousseau. Singapore: NUS Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 250. Maps, Plates, Notes, Bibliography and Index. - Volume 45 Issue 1

Measuring Transparency

Transparency is often viewed as crucial to government accountability, but its measurement remains elusive. This concept encompasses many dimensions, which have distinct effects. In this article, we focus on a specific dimension of transparency: governments' collection and dissemination of aggregate data. We construct a measure of this aspect of transparency, using an item response model that treats transparency as a latent predictor of the reporting of data to the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The resultant index covers 125 countries from 1980 to 2010. Unlike some alternatives (e.g., Freedom House), our measure—the HRV index—is based on objective criteria rather than subjective expert judgments. Unlike newspaper circulation numbers, HRV reflects the dissemination of credible content—in that it has survived the World Bank's quality control assessment. In a validation exercise, we find that our measure outperforms newspaper circulation as a predictor of Law and Order and Bureaucratic Quality as measured by the ICRG, particularly in autocracies. It performs as well as newspaper circulation in predicting corruption. These findings suggest that data dissemination is a distinct, and politically relevant, form of transparency.

Problems and Prospects of Weather Index Based Crop Insurance in Developing Countries: A Case for Rural Farmers in Bangladesh

This desk study conceptualizes weather-index based crop insurance as an instrument to graduate poor farmers out of poverty trap. I examine the advantages of this product over traditional crop insurance based on developing countries experience. The author tries to address the problems and challenges in implementing this insurance product in low income countries. Based on literature it addresses some problems and issues in implementing this product in Bangladesh considering context specific issues of this country. The main objective of this paper is to theoretically assess weather-index based crop insurance as an instrument to graduate poor farmers out of poverty trap. This study is a completely desk based one. Data have been collected from literatures of different sources such as journals, working papers, World Bank and other development organizations’ websites and research publications those are relevant to the study. Proper preparation for index measurement, premium determination, flexible product design, wider stakeholder involvement, public private partnership, and a ‘big push’ from government and donors through seed financing can promote weather index based crop insurance in Bangladesh.

Tackling enterprises operating in the informal sector in developing and transition economies: a critical evaluation of the neo-liberal policy approach

Over the past decade or so, there has been widespread recognition that a large and growing proportion of the global workforce is employed in informal sector enterprises. To explain this, neo-liberals contend that enterprises operate in the informal sector due to high taxes, public sector corruption and too much state interference in the free market and that the remedy is therefore to reduce taxes, public sector corruption and the regulatory burden via minimal state intervention. To evaluate critically this neo-liberal policy approach, this paper explores whether cross-national variations in the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises are associated with cross-national variations in the level of tax rates, corruption and state interference. To do this, International Labour Organisation data on the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises in 43 developing and transition economies is compared with cross-national variations in tax rates, corruption and levels of state intervention using World Bank development indicators. The finding is that there is little or no evidence to support the neo-liberal policy approach that decreasing tax rates, public sector corruption and the regulatory burden via minimal state intervention, reduces the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises. Instead, higher tax rates and levels of regulation and state intervention are found to be associated with lower (not higher) levels of employment in informal sector enterprise. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications.

Eating up the world’s food web and the human trophic level

Trophic levels are critical for synthesizing species' diets, depicting energy pathways, understanding food web dynamics and ecosystem functioning, and monitoring ecosystem health. Specifically, trophic levels describe the position of species in a food web, from primary producers to apex predators (range, 1-5). Small differences in trophic level can reflect large differences in diet. Although trophic levels are among the most basic information collected for animals in ecosystems, a human trophic level (HTL) has never been defined. Here, we find a global HTL of 2.21, i.e., the trophic level of anchoveta. This value has increased with time, consistent with the global trend toward diets higher in meat. National HTLs ranging between 2.04 and 2.57 reflect a broad diversity of diet, although cluster analysis of countries with similar dietary trends reveals only five major groups. We find significant links between socio-economic and environmental indicators and global dietary trends. We demonstrate that the HTL is a synthetic index to monitor human diets and provides a baseline to compare diets between countries.

ASIA'S ROLE IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC ARCHITECTURE

The global economic and financial landscape has been transformed over the past decade by the growing economic size and financial power of emerging economies. The new Group of Twenty summit process, which includes the largest emerging economies, has established high‐level international policy cooperation in this new setting. This article argues that effective global economic governance will also require changes in key global organizations—such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and the Financial Stability Board—and closer collaboration between global and regional organizations. We suggest that federalism be introduced on a global scale by creating hierarchies of global and regional organizations with overlapping ownership structures in various functional areas (as is already the case with the World Bank and regional development banks in the area of development finance). Asia could contribute to this transformation by building effective institutions to promote macroeconomic and financial stability and deepen regional trade and investment integration. Similar logic could be applied to a broader issue of providing international public goods, such as environmental and climate protection, communicable disease control, and disaster risk management. (JEL F02, F13, F33, F55, O59)

Experience-based corporate corruption and stock market volatility: Evidence from emerging markets

This paper reassesses how “experience-based” corporate corruption affects stock market volatility in 14 emerging markets. We match the World Bank enterprise-level data on bribes with a unique cross-country macroeconomics dataset obtained from the World Bank development indicators. It is found that wider coverage of “realized” corporate corruption in the emerging markets investigated reduces the stock market volatility, attributed to decrease in uncertainty about government policy with regard to the business environment, as implied by the general equilibrium model of Pastor and Veronesi (2012). Overall, our results suggest that stock price volatility decreases as the uncertainty about government policy becomes more predictable, which is consistent with the testable hypotheses of Pastor and Veronesi (2012).

Tracing Poverty and Inequality in International Development Discourses: An Algorithmic and Visual Analysis of Agencies’ Annual Reports and Occasional White Papers, 1978–2010

AbstractNoting limited attention by international development agencies to inequalities compared to global poverty, we ask how these two challenges have been framed in agencies’ policy publications during the past several decades. Following a recent application of algorithmic analysis to health policy narratives in the UK, we use text-mining software to compare the frequency of two alternative conceptualisations of poverty and inequality in three different document categories: the World Bank's World Development Reports, the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Reports and a set of white papers by bilateral donor agencies. In a second step, we visualise each document's degree of contextual similarity in using the two conceptualisations of poverty and inequality with all documents in the same source category. We find that while references to poverty have, on average, been twice as prominent as references to inequality, conceptualisations of poverty and inequality as well as the textual contexts in which they appear differ both temporally and substantively between agencies included in our sample. We show how such agency-specific framing patterns can be leveraged politically to forge more effective social policy coalitions. We also outline follow-up research capable of capturing the politics of language underpinning our observations.

Assessing the Effect of the Cameroon’s Investment Charters on Private Investment

The Cameroon government has implemented a series of investment legislations, the latest of them being that of 2002 with the aim of boosting investments and stimulating economic growth. This paper while focusing on the latest investment code contends that the various investment legislations have had a positive effect on private investments. Data for the study is collected from the World Bank Development Indicators, covering a period of 31 years from 1980 to 2010. The estimation technique used for this study is the Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) estimation technique. The analyses (both descriptive and empirical) showed that the institution of the investment charter between 1991 and 2002 did not improve the level of private investment. However, we did obtain results indicating that the introduction of the investment charter in April 2002 resulted to an improvement in the level of private investment. Other results obtained showed that domestic credit to the private sector, GDP growth and electricity production play a positive and statistical significant influence on the level of private investment in the country. An important conclusion is that the policy structures of the 2002 investment charter should be fully implemented so as to encourage and enhanced private investment in the country.

Urban transport and CO2 emissions: some evidence from Chinese cities

The work presented below was conducted as part of the World Bank's economic and sector work titled ‘Urban Transport and Climate Change’. It is first a compendium of data—most of it collected as part of the ‘China–GEF–World Bank Urban Transport Partnership Program’—and also provides a preliminary analysis of urban transport characteristics, energy use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a diverse set of cities in China. This working paper is not in itself intended to be a strategy for urban transport and climate change in China. It is the view of the authors that this research could be an input toward the development of such a strategy in China and more broadly. Although transport in general, and urban transport in particular, is acknowledged to be an important and growing source of GHG emissions, work still needs to be done to develop robust and standardized datasets and frameworks to support a decision‐making process. The paper is intended as a background document to support ongoing discussions about a climate change strategy and to establish a dataset to be made available as a platform for future studies and further refinement. It is hoped that others will take advantage of the dataset created for this study and use it as a basis for projections, comparative analysis, and to test their own hypothesis. Reviewers of this paper have also raised many specific possibilities and interesting ideas for further work, which are summarized in the conclusions. The authors would particularly like to thank AusAID (the Australian Government's overseas aid program), ESMAP (Energy Sector Management Assistance Program), and GEF (Global Environment Facility) who provided partial financing for this work. The authors would also like to acknowledge the management of the World Bank's Sustainable Development units in East Asia & Pacific Region and Latin American & the Caribbean Region for their support.This article is categorized under: Energy Efficiency > Systems and Infrastructure Energy Infrastructure > Systems and Infrastructure Energy and Climate > Systems and Infrastructure