The Joint Ministerial Committee of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on the Transfer of Real Resources to Developing Countries, the Development Committee, held its eighty-ninth meeting on April 12, 2014, in the Preston Auditorium of the World Bank in Washington, DC.
... انظر المزيد + The meeting consisted of a single session, preceded by an informal Ministerial-level lunch for Members only on the same day. Members circulated their written statements in advance and these are part of this document. Also included is a note by the International Monetary Fund Managing Director distributed ahead of the meeting. The meeting started at 3:15 p.m. with opening statements by Dr. Kim, President of the World Bank Group, and Ms. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, and ended at 5:30 p.m. It was chaired by Mr. Marek Belka, President, National Bank of Poland. The Agenda (Annex A) was adopted at the beginning of the meeting, followed by a discussion of the agenda topic: a paper entitled 'growth in the post-crisis global economy: policy challenges for developing countries'. In addition to the above discussion topic, a paper entitled 'progress report on mainstreaming disaster risk management in World Bank Group Operations' was submitted to the Committee as a background report. Ministers commented on these documents in their written statements to the Development Committee. The Communique (Annex B) was adopted at the end of the meeting and records the salient points and outcome of the Ministerial discussion.
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This paper proposes a method for estimating distribution functions that are associated with the nested errors in linear mixed models. The estimator incorporates Empirical Bayes prediction while making minimal assumptions about the shape of the error distributions.
... انظر المزيد + The application presented in this paper is the small area estimation of poverty and inequality, although this denotes by no means the only application. Monte-Carlo simulations show that estimates of poverty and inequality can be severely biased when the non-normality of the errors is ignored. The bias can be as high as 2 to 3 percent on a poverty rate of 20 to 30 percent. Most of this bias is resolved when using the proposed estimator. The approach is applicable to both survey-to-census and survey-to-survey prediction.
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The paper assesses the impact of overall inequality, as well as inequality among the poor and among the rich, on the growth rates along various percentiles of the income distribution.
... انظر المزيد + The analysis uses micro-census data from U.S. states covering the period from 1960 to 2010. The paper finds evidence that high levels of inequality reduce the income growth of the poor and, if anything, help the growth of the rich. When inequality is deconstructed into bottom and top inequality, the analysis finds that it is mostly top inequality that is holding back growth at the bottom.
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A large fraction of the total supply of paper is produced with technologies that have serious adverse consequences on the environment and cause significant health problems, such as cancer.
... انظر المزيد + This paper reports on how Internet adoption affects paper consumption. The study used country-level panel data on Internet penetration and paper consumption disaggregated into various paper categories. The empirical strategy is to use fixed-effect models to study whether countries with faster Internet penetration growth have experienced faster declines in paper consumption. The analysis finds that Internet penetration significantly decreases aggregate paper consumption. Further, the estimates show that Internet growth reduces consumption for the paper categories that are more likely to be affected by the diffusion of the Internet (paper used to print newspapers and books and magazines), whereas the growth of the Internet does not have a statistically significant impact on a paper category unlikely to be affected by the Internet (such as sanitary paper).
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This paper shows how Dutch disease effects may arise solely from a shift in demand following a natural resource discovery. The natural resource wealth increases the demand for non-tradable luxury services due to non-homothetic preferences.
... انظر المزيد + Labor that could be used to develop other non-resource tradable sectors is pulled into these service sectors. As a result, manufactures and other tradable goods are more likely to be imported, and learning and productivity improvements accrue to the foreign exporters. However, once the natural resources diminish, there is less income to purchase the services and non-resource tradable goods. Thus, the temporary gain in purchasing power translates into long-term stagnation. As opposed to conventional models where income distribution has no effect on economic outcomes, an unequal distribution of the rents from resource wealth further intensifies the Dutch disease dynamics within this framework.
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Open Data initiatives are transforming how governments and other public institutions interact and provide services to their constituents. They increase transparency and value to citizens, reduce inefficiencies and barriers to information, enable data-driven applications that improve public service delivery, and provide public data that can stimulate innovative business opportunities.
... انظر المزيد + As the gatekeepers of official statistics, National Statistics Offices (NSOs) produce many datasets that could typically comprise the foundation of an Open Data program. They may also have relationships with other data producing agencies in the national statistical system and have expertise in dealing with the many technical and data quality issues attendant in publishing data. In short, they are extremely well placed to make a valuable contribution to Open Data initiatives. Despite these advantages, NSOs do not always feature prominently in government-sponsored Open Data programs and they may be missing an important opportunity to expand the use and re-use of the data they produce. The goal of this working paper is to better understand the opportunities and challenges that Open Data presents to NSOs and to identify what steps and solutions are needed to enable NSOs to play a valuable role in national or sub-national Open Data initiatives.
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Ponzis are among the most ubiquitous and least understood phenomena of economic life. They acquired a certain salience with the global financial crisis of 2008 and the crash of Bernie Madoffs celebrated Ponzi scheme.
... انظر المزيد + This paper explains the structure of Ponzi schemes and goes on to argue that what makes this such a troubling phenomenon is its ability to be camouflaged amidst legitimate practices. It is shown, for instance, that the common practice of giving stock options to employees could be a potential Ponzi that allows corporations to flourish for a while by borrowing from its own future. The paper goes on to discuss the need for intelligent regulation to incise harmful Ponzis (not all Ponzis are harmful) while taking care not to damage other legitimate activities that surround them.
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Knowledge, learning, and innovation are one of eight objectives that will be monitored in the Bank's new strategy. The independent evaluation group (IEG) is conducting a program of learning and results evaluations to promote a better understanding of how the World Bank acquires, captures, and transfers knowledge and learning in its lending operations, and what scope there is for improving.
... انظر المزيد + The objective of the program is to delineate attributes of effective learning in World Bank lending. These attributes refer to learning into lending (inputs into project design); learning while lending (feedback and modifications of design and implementation while the project is underway); and learning from lending (lessons from the project that were transmitted to other projects). The evaluation program will assess how the Bank can become better at generating, accessing, and using learning and knowledge in its lending operations. It acknowledges the importance of the feedback from knowledge to learning and from learning back to enhanced knowledge. The report is organized as follows: chapter one gives approach and context. Chapter two explores two essential aspects of learning - knowledge exploitation and knowledge exploration and the factors influencing them. Chapter three examines the contribution of mentoring. Chapter four addresses the extent to which incentives, leadership, and culture are aligned to promote learning in lending. Chapter five considers the implications of the report's findings, for the Bank's change process, for IEG, and for the design of the second evaluation in IEG's learning and results series.
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This paper reviews key issues in the 'cash versus food' debate, including as they relate to political economy, theory, evidence, and practice.
... انظر المزيد + In doing so, it benefited from a new generation of 12 impact evaluations deliberately comparing alternative transfer modalities. Findings show that differences in effectiveness vary by indicator, although they tend to be moderate on average. In some cases differences are more marked (i.e., food consumption and calorie availability), but in most instances they are not statistically significant. In general, transfers' performance and their difference seem a function of the organic and fluid interactions among factors like the profile and 'initial conditions' of beneficiaries, the capacity of local markets, and program objectives and design. Costs associated with cash transfers and vouchers tend to be substantially lower relative to food. Yet methods for cost-effectiveness analysis vary and need to be more standardized and nuanced. The reviewed evaluations are helping to shift the debate from one shaped by ideology, political economy and 'inference' of evidence to one centering on robust and context-specific results.
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In countries with limited access to finance, firms accumulate retained earnings to finance indivisible investment projects. McKinnon (1973) illustrates that when cash is used as a primary store of value, inflation may discourage investment as it increases the cost of accumulating retained earnings.
... انظر المزيد + This paper formalizes this argument in a dynamic framework and provides a simple calibration of the model that suggests sizable effects of inflation on investment. The mechanism is particularly relevant for small firms, as firms with lower cash flows must accumulate retained earnings for longer periods of time to meet the price of indivisible investment goods. Consistent with the model, empirical evidence suggests that inflation disproportionately reduces investment in small firms.
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Despite the growing body of literature examining the effectiveness of transparency and accountability initiatives, there remains limited substantiation for whether and how open budgeting contributes to reductions in poverty and improvements in the lives of the poor.
... انظر المزيد + This paper reviews available evidence and conclude that institutional changes can contribute to higher-level outcomes in certain contexts. The approach first draws from existing studies of transparency and accountability initiatives and then follows their references to broaden the evidence base. The findings highlight the importance of measuring budget transparency, accountability, and participation and tracing their outcomes along an incremental, nonlinear results chain. Logical links or ongoing loops in this sequence include the interplay or interdependency among these three dimensions; the subsequent achievement of key, often mutually reinforcing, intermediate development outcomes; and ultimately, improved program or service delivery as the key lever for influencing development impact. Rather than establishing standard indicators, the process begins to identify which aspects of the institutional change are valid for measurement and what contextual factors to consider. Overall, this review serves as a starting point and underscores the need for further investigation to establish effective measurement practices of institutional change and build an evidence base for understanding the relative robustness of institutional change paths and the context in which they are likely to matter.
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The paper provides a detailed review of Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the 21st century." It focuses on the new contributions of the book, and in particular on its unified treatment of economic growth, functional income distribution, and concentration of personal income.
... انظر المزيد + It concludes that Piketty's reinvigoration of classical and empircally-drven approach is likely to have a profound impact on economics.
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