World Development最新文献

{"title":"Shine a (night)light: Decentralization and economic development in Burkina Faso","authors":"Olivier B. Bargain ,&nbsp;Rose Camille Vincent ,&nbsp;Emilie Caldeira","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106851","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106851","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Decentralization, championed by international institutions, has been one of the most prominent public sector reforms of the last decades, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, few studies propose a quasi-experimental evaluation of its capacity to contribute to local development. We exploit the phase-in of decentralization at the commune level in Burkina Faso. We use satellite information on night-time light density as a proxy for local development levels, which has the advantage of being measured and comparable over time and space. The communes that were decentralized first can be compared to the others after the reform relative to the pre-reform situation. The difference-in-difference approach includes commune fixed effects and inverse propensity score reweighting to account for time-varying differences across communes. We find a positive impact of decentralization on the night-light intensity trends of the early-decentralized communes. This is supported by alternative measures (remote sensing of built-up settlements and a welfare index), which shows the possibly broader scope of decentralization gains. We show that decentralization did not lift all boats: only the communes with the ability to generate own-source revenues benefited from <em>effective</em> decentralization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106851"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142746384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A critical review of the state-of-the-art on social policy, conflict and peace in the Middle East and North Africa region: Why social policy matters for peace and why it is also not enough","authors":"Rana Jawad ,&nbsp;Sophie Plagerson ,&nbsp;Martina Jaskolski","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106861","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106861","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article critically examines of the current state of knowledge on the conceptual and operational intersections between social policy and peace using a comprehensive desk-based review of the literature in the MENA region. Situating itself within the conceptual framework of positive peace, the paper critically assesses the role of social policy in a diversifying landscape of compounding risks, exacerbated by global climate change, environmental degradation, structural inequality, and state fragility, which negatively affect peace.</div><div>Advocating for a broader and more critical perspective on the role of social policy in relation to peace building, the paper highlights the intrinsic value of social policy as a comprehensive framework for action − as opposed to the current emphasis in the peace literature on disparate elements of social policy: “welfare”, “protection”, “service delivery” (<span><span>Richmond, 2011</span></span>, <span><span>McLoughlin, 2018</span></span>, <span><span>Furness and Trautner, 2020</span></span>; UN and World Bank, 2018). Such a framework can lead to more nuanced and contextual analysis of social policy solutions that address structural inequalities, encompass the notion of compound risk, and foster positive peace. At the same time, the paper addresses the mixed record of social policy in relation to processes and indicators of war and peace: social policy practice in MENA (as elsewhere in the world) can act as a positive peace-sensitive tool, but also be used to maintain law and order, sometimes reflecting a form of “hegemonic pacification”. These negative forms of peace (social control or political co-option) raise further questions about the nature of peace, and the extent to which social policy can support better governance of and pathways to peace (<span><span>Chandler, 2016</span></span>, <span><span>Skocpol, 1992</span></span>). In addition, the complex ideological nature of violent conflict, particularly in MENA, adds further layers of complexity. Our key argument is that despite these limitations., greater scope should be accorded to social policy as a critical contributor to shaping social conditions that foster positive peace. Beyond that, we recognise the need for greater interactions and dialogue between advocates of both security and social pathways to peace. Conclusions include suggestions for future research: a) greater focus on what types of social policy interventions work at key points in time and in what kinds of conflict situations, b) better understanding of the dynamics of peace-sensitive social policy indicators discussed in this paper.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106861"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142746309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How wartime recruitment affects political engagement among civilians: Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire","authors":"Philip A. Martin","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106836","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106836","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Promoting civic engagement and political participation in the aftermath of armed conflict is a key challenge for post-conflict recovery and development. This study investigates whether exposure to wartime recruitment by non-state armed groups increases non-combatants’ postwar political engagement. Extending existing theories of conflict and political participation, I argue that when territorial armed groups recruit more intensively within occupied communities, <em>non</em>-combatants in those communities are likely to remain more engaged in politics in the long run. Wartime recruitment increases the perceived salience of political issues among non-combatants, and fosters a stronger sense of entitlement to make claims on the postwar state. These legacies should be especially pronounced when the recruiting armed group holds power in the postwar political order. Empirically, I draw on original survey evidence and interviews from Côte d’Ivoire, leveraging geographic variation in communities’ exposure to recruitment by both winning and losing non-state armed groups. The results confirm that greater exposure to wartime recruitment is associated with increased political engagement among non-combatants seven years after the war’s end, especially in areas of high recruitment by winning rebels. Community exposure to recruitment does not increase pro-social attitudes or confidence in government, however. The findings underscore the legacies of wartime recruitment and inform debates about how conflict processes shape the political capacities of civilians.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106836"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142746402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"To use financial incentives or not? Insights from experiments in encouraging sanitation investments in four countries","authors":"Sanghmitra Gautam ,&nbsp;Michael Gechter ,&nbsp;Raymond P. Guiteras ,&nbsp;Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106791","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106791","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We conduct a systematic re-analysis of intervention-based studies that promote hygienic latrines and evaluate via experimental methods. We impose systematic inclusion criteria to identify such studies and compile their microdata to harmonize outcome measures, covariates, and estimands across studies. We then re-analyze their data to report metrics that are consistently defined and measured across studies. We compare the relative effectiveness of different classes of interventions implemented in overlapping ways across four countries: community-level demand encouragement, sanitation subsidies, product information campaigns, and microcredit to finance product purchases. In the sample of studies meeting our inclusion criteria, interventions that offer financial benefits generally outperform information and education campaigns in increasing adoption of improved sanitation. Contrary to a policy concern about sustainability, financial incentives do not undermine usage of adopted latrines. Effects vary by share of women in the household, in both positive and negative directions, and differ little by poverty status.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106791"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142722007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Do conditional cash transfers improve intergenerational gains in educational achievement?: Evidence from Brazil’s Bolsa Familia Program","authors":"Gabriel Cepaluni ,&nbsp;Amanda Driscoll","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106852","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106852","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Conditional cash transfer programs are designed to interrupt the intergenerational cycle of poverty by improving health and educational outcomes. We evaluate the efficacy of the world’s largest CCT program utilizing educational outcomes from the complete administrative records at the intra-family level of Brazil’s <em>Bolsa Família</em> program (PBF). Although we find that younger siblings subject to the <em>Bolsa Família</em> conditionalities outperform their older, untreated siblings in educational attainment within the same household, the overall effect size remains substantively small. We consider the educational attainment of 15–17 year old beneficiaries with siblings who were above the age of 18 at the time of family enrollment. Our findings show precisely estimated positive effects due to the large sample, indicating that the program yields minimal improvements in educational outcomes for ‘treated’ children compared to their ‘untreated’ siblings. Additionally, we find modest differences across boy and girl sibling pairs, but consistent regional effects, underscoring the importance of local public goods provision for enhancing program efficacy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106852"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142722087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is the emphasis on cofinancing good for environmental multilateral funds?","authors":"Matthew J. Kotchen ,&nbsp;Andrew Vogt","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106831","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106831","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>International environmental and development agencies increasingly emphasize external cofinancing when selecting projects to fund. This paper considers whether the emphasis on cofinancing helps promote institutional objectives, or creates perverse and inefficient incentives. We present a model of project selection that can apply to any funding agency, but focus on environmental multilateral funds and climate change. We show that introducing cofinancing objectives to a fund that seeks to maximize its immediate environmental impact is redundant as best, and more likely counterproductive. We test implications of our model using project-level data from two of the leading environmental multilateral funds, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF). While tradeoffs exist between emission reductions and cofinancing, we find that they are not strong enough to imply that current cofinancing preferences are diminishing the environmental benefits that funds can claim. However, we also find that the emphasis on cofinancing in project selection is likely to be globally inefficient, as projects with greater cofinancing ratios tend to yield smaller emission reductions per gross dollar spent. This finding should sound a note of caution given the overall scarcity of financial resources available to achieve global climate goals.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106831"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142722008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impacts of armed conflict on human development: A review of the literature","authors":"Paola Vesco ,&nbsp;Ghassan Baliki ,&nbsp;Tilman Brück ,&nbsp;Stefan Döring ,&nbsp;Anneli Eriksson ,&nbsp;Hanne Fjelde ,&nbsp;Debarati Guha-Sapir ,&nbsp;Jonathan Hall ,&nbsp;Carl Henrik Knutsen ,&nbsp;Maxine R. Leis ,&nbsp;Hannes Mueller ,&nbsp;Christopher Rauh ,&nbsp;Ida Rudolfsen ,&nbsp;Ashok Swain ,&nbsp;Alexa Timlick ,&nbsp;Phaidon T.B. Vassiliou ,&nbsp;Johan von Schreeb ,&nbsp;Nina von Uexkull ,&nbsp;Håvard Hegre","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106806","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106806","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The detrimental impacts of wars on human development are well documented across research domains, from public health to micro-economics. However, these impacts are studied in compartmentalized silos, which limits a comprehensive understanding of the consequences of conflicts, hampering our ability to effectively sustain human development. This article takes a first step in addressing this gap by reviewing the literature on conflict impacts through the lens of an inter-disciplinary theoretical framework. We review the literature on the consequences of conflicts across 9 dimensions of human development: health, schooling, livelihood and income, growth and investments, political institutions, migration and displacement, socio-psychological wellbeing and capital, water access, and food security. The study focuses on both direct and indirect impacts of violence, reviews the existing evidence on how impacts on different dimensions of societal wellbeing and development may intertwine, and suggests plausible mechanisms to explain how these connections materialize. This exercise leads to the identification of critical research gaps and reveals that systematic empirical testing of how the impacts of war spread across sectors is severely lacking. By streamlining the literature on the impacts of war across multiple domains, this review represents a first step to build a common language that can overcome disciplinary silos and achieve a deeper understanding of how the effects of war reverberate across society. This multidisciplinary understanding of conflict impacts may eventually help to reconcile divergent estimates and enable forward-looking policies that minimize the costs of war.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106806"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142722006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gender differences in agricultural productivity: Puzzling evidence from West Africa","authors":"Yiriyibin Bambio","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106856","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106856","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Gender norms, institutional constraints, and gender disparities in regards to the access to production factors persist and undermine agricultural growth in developing countries. There is limited evidence regarding the comprehensive gender productivity gap across crops and countries after controlling for the gender disparities in access to productive resources. This study analyzes the gender gap in agricultural productivity in West Africa. We use a nationally representative data, which was collected from a large household sample size in eight countries using harmonized survey instruments. This analysis uses the recentered influence function. We also account for the crop and country specificities in West Africa. We find that female farmers have productivity advantages in pulses and disadvantages in cereals and cotton. Moreover, our results show that these gender differences are higher in Sahelian countries than in coastal countries, and decrease in cereals and increase in pulses along the productivity distribution. Furthermore, we also find that the structural component is the primary driver of the gender productivity gap, underscoring the importance of the returns on resources. Our study contributes to the literature by providing evidence that a comprehensive analysis can decipher the multidirectional gender productivity gap across crops and go beyond a usually aggregated female disadvantage. The findings are of great interest to policies and regional agricultural programs. They highlight disparities in the gender gap across subregions and show that this gap is a crop-level phenomenon, rendering the conventional farmer-level analysis insufficient. This study emphasizes the need to further elucidate the factors explaining the gender structural disadvantages in West Africa to improve agricultural productivity and gender equity and reduce poverty.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106856"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142722009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evidence and determinants of rural crime victimization in Tanzania","authors":"Ulrike Grote ,&nbsp;Gregor Mager ,&nbsp;Anja Faße ,&nbsp;Frank Neubacher ,&nbsp;Luitfred Kissoly","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106854","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106854","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Rural crime victimization, especially in form of theft, is a serious problem in rural areas in Sub Saharan Africa as it may undermine their sustainable development. Using the case of Tanzania, we investigate the evidence of crime and analyze the factors which determine victimization. Based on a panel dataset of 786 households from rural Tanzania, we find relatively high victimization rates of 37 % and 47 % in 2016 and 2018, respectively. The random-effects and pooled logit models reveal that living in a rural region with high levels of unemployment is positively correlated with the likelihood of victimization. Moreover, exposure to weather shocks such as floods is positively associated with the likelihood of being affected by crime. We conclude that rural crime victimization requires attention due to its high incidence in Tanzania. Improving job opportunities especially for the youth in rural Tanzania is expected to reduce the likelihood of victimization. Guardianship should be encouraged, especially during times of weather shocks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"187 ","pages":"Article 106854"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142722086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How city shrinkage affect public service provision for disadvantaged groups? Evidence from China","authors":"Hongchuan Wang ,&nbsp;Kaibo Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106823","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106823","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous research overlooks the impact of city shrinkage on disadvantaged groups. This study explores the relationship between city shrinkage and public service delivery for people with disabilities. First, principal component analysis was employed to measure the public service facility coverage index for people with disabilities, highlighting the spatial characteristics in China. Second, a regression discontinuity design was utilized to analyze the causal relationship between city shrinkage and public service. Third, ordinary least squares regression was used to identify key factors affecting public services coverage. The results showed that the population change in prefecture-level cities has widened the gap in public service delivery for people with disabilities. Places stratification within cities has been enlarged by city shrinkage. Notably, the impact of city shrinkage is predominantly observed in the periphery of cities; due to better-developed public service facilities in urban centers, the effect of city shrinkage is less pronounced there. Additionally, factors such as financial autonomy and disabled population density significantly influence the delivery of public services for people with disabilities. These findings suggest that policy-making should be tailored to urban dynamics and shrinking cities should adopt targeted strategies to enhance public services for disadvantaged people.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"186 ","pages":"Article 106823"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142706063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}