This report contains the World Bank Group Boards' calendar for the period March to May 2014, specifying the Boards' engagements, such as meetings and briefings, for the aforementioned time period.
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What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immediately preceding the filing of a petition for protection.
... انظر المزيد + A decomposition methodology allows a comparison of imports from two groups of countries supplying the same product: those that are named in the petition and those that are not. The same decomposition can be applied to products quite similar to the imports in question, but not subject to a petition. The results suggest that industries typically seek protection when faced with a specific pattern of shocks. First, a persistent positive relative supply shock favors imports from named countries. Second, a negative demand shock hits imports from all sources just prior to domestic industries' petition for protection. The relative supply shock is a broad one; it applies both to named commodities and to the comparison product group. The import demand shock, by contrast, is narrow, hitting only named products. The latter shock is also large: import growth over the two-year window is 15 percentage points lower in named products than in reference products, with most of this gap arising in the final two quarters before the petition. The negative import demand shock appears to be a key event in the run-up to the filing of a petition. It has been missed by previous studies using more aggregated data.
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Financial constraints are widespread in developing countries, where even short-term credit is limited. Finance held by firms as working capital is a substantial proportion of sales revenue, yet the role of working capital is largely neglected by existing models of financial constraints.
... انظر المزيد + This paper presents a dynamic model of the firm that incorporates working capital by introducing a delay between factor payments and the receipt of revenue. In contrast with previous models, the working capital model predicts that firms under binding constraints will substitute between labor and capital in response to demand shocks, causing investment to be countercyclical. For firms near the margin of being constrained, constraints bind when positive production opportunities arise. Output growth is therefore constrained in response to positive shocks but not to negative shocks. Simulations suggest that models without working capital may understate the predicted effects of financial constraints on production efficiency, firm profit and growth over time. The predictions are tested with the Bangladesh Panel Survey data for manufacturing firms. Consistent with the theory, there is evidence that constraints bind when output price increases, that investment by constrained firms is countercyclical, and that output response to positive shocks is dampened for firms that are sometimes constrained. The results also are important for policy. In order to maximize growth, efforts to relieve credit constraints should be focused on periods when demand shocks are high.
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This paper uses regression analysis to identify which country context, reform content, process, and project management variables predict the performance of public sector management projects, as measured by the Independent Evaluation Group's project outcome ratings.
... انظر المزيد + The paper draws on data from a large sample of World Bank public sector management projects that were approved between 1990 and 2013. It contributes to an emerging literature that uses cross-country regressions to analyze public sector management reform patterns. The findings suggest that political context factors have a greater impact on the performance of public sector management projects than on other projects. Specifically, public sector management projects perform better in countries with democratic regimes than autocratic ones. They fare better in the presence of programmatic political parties and in more aid-dependent countries. Project managers' subjective risk assessments predict performance in public sector management operations better than objective risk indicators. These findings suggest that the performance of public sector management projects would benefit from a better alignment of project design with political context and from a more open dialogue about risk between task team leaders and management.
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This report contains the World Bank Group Boards' calendar for the period February - April 2014, specifying the Boards' engagements, such as meetings and briefings, for the aforementioned time period.
... انظر المزيد +رؤية أقل ـ
This report contains the World Bank Group Boards' calendar for the period February - April 2014, specifying the Boards' engagements, such as meetings and briefings, for the aforementioned time period.
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The report includes the thematic and chronological listing of items pertaining to the Board and and committees work programs for the third quarter of FY14 to the first quarter of FY15.
... انظر المزيد + Additional information on the work program, including a database of forthcoming Board items, which is updated on an ongoing basis, is available on the Executive Directors' Portal (EDsPortal). An updated executive directors' work program is discussed each month at the Executive Directors' steering committee meeting.
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This report concerns the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and post conflict reconstruction, especially with ways in which ICTs can be used by governments and donors to support the transition from violence to stability.
... انظر المزيد + The report is divided into two parts: part one presents an overview and framework for analysis; and part two presents' case studies. The World Bank Group (WBG) has been concerned with sustainable recovery from violent conflict since its origins in 1944 as indicated by the name of its leading institution, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The role of ICTs in development has also been prominent within the Bank's portfolio since the 1990s, as they have developed rapidly in technological complexity and geographic reach, becoming ever more central to government and business, to the sharing of knowledge, and to interactions between individuals and within communities. This report gives an overview of the relationship between conflict, reconstruction and the role of ICTs. It builds on experience within the Bank as well as on a wide range of practitioner, academic, and other literature. It draws on five case studies of aspects of ICT development in societies emerging from conflict, which were commissioned by the Bank and which are reported in subsequent chapters. These case studies were specifically chosen to reflect the experiences of widely differing countries, at different stages of recovery from conflict: Afghanistan following decades of civil war followed by international intervention; Liberia following a negotiated settlement to protracted civil war; Timor-Leste since its troubled acquisition of independence; Rwanda seeking stability in the aftermath of genocide; and Tunisia, which recently experienced not civil war but insurrection leading to a change of government.
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While debt-financed productive public investment raises a countrys debt ratios in the short run, it can also generate higher growth, revenues, and exports, leading over time to lower debt ratios.
... انظر المزيد + This paper develops a framework to assess whether countries meet the conditions for realizing the net benefits over the costs of public investment debt financing. While it is possible to achieve debt sustainability with an appropriate mix of concessional and non-concessional financing, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition. It is also important to ensure the operational viability of public investment projects by having in place adequate project management: (i) project screening and appraisal, (ii) a clear connection between capital and recurrent expenditures once the projects are launched, and (iii) safeguards for appropriate project implementation and facilities operations. To illustrate the strength of these results, the paper carries out three measurement exercises: (a) a simulation of the degree to which the ratio of optimal public investment responds to changes in key parameters related to project management in a general equilibrium model; (b) application of the public investment management (PIMa) index to benchmark a country's public investment management capacity; and (c) presentation of the results of the Investment, Savings, and Macroeconomic Vulnerabilities tool aimed at tracking country choices in public finance and the impact of public projects on private investments.
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ورقة عمل خاصة ببحوث السياسات WPS6766 FEB 01, 2014
Cavalcanti, Carlos B.; Marrero, Gustavo A.; Le, Tuan Minh
Governments invest billions of dollars annually in long-term projects. Yet deep uncertainties pose formidable challenges to making near-term decisions that make long-term sense.
... انظر المزيد + Methods that identify robust decisions have been recommended for investment lending but are not widely used. This paper seeks to help bridge this gap and, with a demonstration, motivate and equip analysts better to manage uncertainty in investment decisions. The paper first reviews the economic analysis of ten World Bank projects. It finds that analysts seek to manage uncertainty but use traditional approaches that do not evaluate options over the full range of possible futures. Second, the paper applies a different approach, Robust Decision Making, to the economic analysis of a 2006 World Bank project, the Electricity Generation Rehabilitation and Restructuring Project, which sought to improve Turkey's energy security. The analysis shows that Robust Decision Making can help decision makers answer specific and useful questions: How do options perform across a wide range of potential future conditions? Under what specific conditions does the leading option fail to meet decision makers' goals? Are those conditions sufficiently likely that decision makers should choose a different option? Such knowledge informs rather than replaces decision makers' deliberations. It can help them systematically, rigorously, and transparently compare their options and select one that is robust. Moreover, the paper demonstrates that analysts can use the same data and models for Robust Decision Making as are typically used in economic analyses. Finally, the paper discusses the challenges in applying such methods and how they can be overcome.
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This paper studies interactions between access to finance, product innovation, and labor supply in a two-period overlapping generations model with an endogenous skill distribution and credit market frictions.
... انظر المزيد + In the model lack of access to finance (induced by high monitoring costs) has an adverse effect on innovation activity not only directly but also indirectly, because too few individuals may choose to invest in skills. If monitoring costs fall with the number of successful projects, multiple equilibria may emerge, one of which, a middle-income trap, characterized by low wages in the design sector, a low share of the labor force engaged in innovation activity, and low growth. A sufficiently ambitious policy aimed at alleviating constraints on access to finance by innovators may allow a country to move away from such a trap by promoting the production of ideas and improving incentives to invest in skills.
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This paper investigates the factors associated with foreign direct investment "surges" and "stops," defined as sharp increases and decreases, respectively, of gross foreign direct investment inflows to the developing world and differentiated based on whether these events are led by waves in greenfield investments or mergers and acquisitions.
... انظر المزيد + Greenfield-led surges and stops occur more frequently than mergers and acquisitions-led ones and different factors are associated with the onset of the two types of events. Global liquidity is the only factor significantly associated with a surge, regardless of its kind, while decline in global economic growth and a surge in the preceding year are the only predictors of a stop. Greenfield-led surges and stops are more likely in low-income and resource-rich countries than elsewhere. Global growth, financial openness, and domestic economic and financial instability enable mergers and acquisitions-led surges. These results differ from those in the literature on surges and stops and are particularly relevant in countries where foreign direct investments dominate capital flows.
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