World Development最新文献

{"title":"Rewarding performance in disaster response: Evidence from local governments in Latin America","authors":"Felipe Livert ,&nbsp;Julie Anne Weaver ,&nbsp;Paola Bordón","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106828","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106828","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Given the increasing frequency of large-scale disasters, managing such emergencies is becoming an important domain of politicians’ responsibilities in office. Models of electoral accountability posit that voter reward and sanctioning in re-elections incentivizes good performance. Yet little accountability research considers how electoral incentives impact this new type of public sector responsibility. Most studies of electoral responses to disasters tend to study voter reactions to the existence of the disaster itself, rather than how politicians perform in responding to it after the fact. Those that do incorporate performance use metrics like disaster declarations or allocating relief aid, which may be relevant for national actors, but not local-level politicians whose main role in disaster response is spending the funds they receive from the central level to manage recovery efforts. Furthermore, most research studies only one disaster at a time and focuses on economically advanced countries. Our approach addresses each of these gaps by combining local-level electoral returns in Chile and Peru with detailed data on how mayors perform in responding to a variety of natural catastrophes. We find that voters do in fact reward local politicians that effectively manage disasters, providing a blueprint for how to best incentivize disaster responsiveness going forward.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106828"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143167620","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":"Who becomes a politician in a gender quota system? Evidence from India","authors":"Yuko Mori ,&nbsp;R. Manjula ,&nbsp;D. Rajasekhar ,&nbsp;Jun Goto ,&nbsp;Takashi Kurosaki","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106911","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106911","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Broad representation and competent leaders are both important factors when selecting representatives in a democracy. While gender quotas aim for the equal representation of genders, it is a challenge for non-elite women to become politicians in the context of elite dominance. In such cases, equal representation between social classes may be impeded. Gender quotas may also make the selection of competent leaders difficult if the number of qualified women is limited and if the opportunity cost of becoming a politician is high for such women. This study explores the random assignment of gender quotas across villages in India to examine the impact of gender quotas on the broadness of representation and the competence of candidates. We conducted a field survey in villages and collected information about cognitive and non-cognitive skills and the socioeconomic backgrounds of the voters and candidates in local elections. We find that female candidates with higher cognitive skills are more positively selected among voters compared to male candidates, while households with less leadership experience can participate in elections as candidates in a gender quota system. These results suggest that the quota system could have the potential to promote broad political participation and encourage meritocratic candidate selection.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106911"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143167618","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":"On the evolution of the wage premium for party membership in China","authors":"Alessia Amighini ,&nbsp;Weidi Fang ,&nbsp;Martin Zagler","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106909","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106909","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We analyze the evolution of explained and unexplained differences in wages between members of the Communist Party of China and non-members across more than two decades (1995–2018). We apply the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to disentangle the contribution to the wage gap of different levels of human capital from discrimination against non-members. We also run quantile regressions to estimate the slope of the wage premium functions applying the Machado-Mata decomposition. Our results show that the party wage premium has decreased over time, but it is still high. Our novel finding is that a positive discrimination for members of the Chinese communist party (not justified by characteristics) started in 2013 and dominates in 2018. Whilst before the party has recruited elites and paid them fairly for their qualifications, party members are now positively discriminated, and this may attract opportunists more than elites.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106909"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168006","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":"Immigration and labour productivity: A comparative effect","authors":"Blaise Gnimassoun","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.106920","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.106920","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the impact of immigration on labour productivity by distinguishing between global effects and the effects of intra-African immigration. Theoretically, intra-African immigration is expected to have relatively larger effects due to the low level of intra-African trade and the resulting differences in the prices of goods and factors. Empirically, I rely on a panel of 187 countries, including 53 African countries, over the period 1990–2019, and use a gravity-based instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity. The results show that intra-African immigration has a positive, significant, and robust impact on labour productivity in Africa. This impact is greater than the effect of immigration in the global sample and primarily occurs through improvements in total factor productivity and capital efficiency. While immigration tends to reduce capital productivity globally, intra-African immigration enhances it in Africa. Furthermore, the services sector benefits more from the positive effects of immigration.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106920"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168777","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":"Contestation, conflict and claims-making around the Lake Turkana Wind Power windfarm, northern Kenya","authors":"Jeremy Lind ,&nbsp;Daniel Salau Rogei","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106913","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106913","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Investment in large-scale renewable-energy projects has risen significantly as governments focus on green energy solutions. The general view is that renewable energy investments are beneficial, increasing national energy production from renewable sources and contributing to economic growth. However, the benefits for communities near project sites can be unclear, with less emphasis placed on the impacts on social cohesion or the rights of local populations. This paper contributes to discussions about community perspectives and responses to large land and resource based investments, stressing the role of local agency. Using the example of the Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project in northern Kenya, it examines how various stakeholders involved with specific resource-based investments perceive and challenge the development process and the distribution of project benefits and harms. It employs an ‘intersecting methodologies’ approach that includes community-based participatory research (CBPR), participatory video, and qualitative and ethnographic methods, conducted in small settlements around the LTWP area between 2017 and 2019. As the largest single private investment in Kenya’s history, life remains insecure for many residents near the LTWP wind farm. By revealing different local perspectives, the paper outlines the broader impacts and forms of contentious politics related to the LTWP project. The study finds that community strategies to seek recognition and associated rights highlight deeper conflicts involving governance and authority concerning everyday lives and livelihoods. Local agency underscores the limitations of efforts to formalize rights within a statutory legal and regulatory framework and other processes through which community stakeholders assert their inclusion in large-scale investments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106913"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168009","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":"The impact of infrastructure investment on resilience to environmental shocks: Evidence from Ecuador","authors":"Molly Lipscomb ,&nbsp;Cesar Montalvo ,&nbsp;Brendan Novak","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106903","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106903","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Increasing climate variability has direct impacts on health--particularly through vector-borne diseases. Sanitation infrastructure may have a mitigating impact on these effects. We investigate the impact of infrastructure investments on health following major weather events using a novel dataset that links information from a broad range of sources from 2001 to 2019 in Ecuador. We find that particularly high levels of precipitation increase hospitalizations from vector-borne diseases and improvements in sanitation infrastructure decrease hospitalizations. The decrease in hospitalizations from sanitation infrastructure is particularly pronounced in months when cantons (counties) have high precipitation. These effects are also largest in the cantons with the highest population density. The findings suggest that improving sanitation infrastructure is a key element in building resilience to climate change, and densely populated areas differentially benefit from improved infrastructure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106903"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168013","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":"Explaining ethno-regional favouritism in Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay ,&nbsp;Elliott Green","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106901","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106901","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A burgeoning literature on ethno-regional favouritism in Sub-Saharan Africa has found that Presidents favour their co-ethnic kin in the provision of public and private goods. However, this scholarship has largely remained empirically narrow in focus, inasmuch as it preponderantly examines only one outcome and/or country at a time and can be contrasted with a separate set of literature which finds a null or even negative relationship between co-ethnicity and goods provision. As such we conduct the largest examination to date of ethno-regional favouritism in Sub-Saharan Africa using data from the Afrobarometer and DHS across both public and private goods and at both the individual and district level. We confirm the positive effects of individual-level co-ethnicity on a variety of outcomes, but also find that these benefits only accrue to the few co-ethnics living in non-co-ethnic areas and decline as the district-level proportion of co-ethnics increases. The positive effects of individual-level co-ethnicity are weaker for objective outcomes like access to infrastructure, asset ownership and employment but are stronger for subjective measures such as self-assessed living conditions and the quality of government services. We also find that the positive effects of co-ethnicity do not decline with the proportion of local co-ethnics for subjective perceptions of presidential and ruling party performance. This relationship does not hold, however, for perceptions of other non-political institutions like the courts or police, or for local governments. These results are consistent with the argument that co-ethnics derive non-material “psychic goods” from having a co-ethnic in power, rather than the standard “quid-pro-quo” theory common in the literature, and thus complicate the idea that ethnic favouritism in the provision of public and private goods is widespread in contemporary Africa. We supplement our quantitative findings with anecdotal evidence from Nigeria which supports our argument.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106901"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168775","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":"Targeting coethnic voters, elites, or both? Evidence from aid allocation in Malawi","authors":"Dongil Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106907","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106907","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Top leaders in Africa favor their coethnic voters when allocating government resources. However, a growing literature on political elites implies the importance of those actors for mobilizing political support for top leaders—hence, the need for presidents to target elites. Do top leaders target coethnic voters, coethnic elites, or both? To address the question, I use the difference-in-differences estimation drawing upon foreign aid allocation in Malawi during 1999-2010. The results show that controlling for the share of their coethnic voters, constituencies represented by the incumbent president’s coethnic Members of Parliament (MPs) receive 13%–75% more aid disbursement per capita than those represented by non-coethnic MPs. This suggests that leaders target coethnic elites in addition to coethnic voters. I also find that this favoritism is due to coethnic MPs’ electoral mobilization capacity and their personal loyalty to the president. This study highlights the importance of coalition building centered around coethnic elites in multiethnic countries.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106907"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168776","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 effects of resource-backed loans on deforestation: Evidence from developing countries","authors":"Yacouba Coulibaly","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106905","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106905","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Resource-backed loans are used today by many resource-rich countries as an effective means of providing public goods and services. However, this type of financing can undermine environmental sustainability via deforestation. In this paper, we first use propensity score matching, which allows for self-selection bias in signature policies, to test whether resource-backed loans have a causal impact on deforestation in 64 developing countries from 2004 to 2018. Through a series of econometric and alternative specification tests, we find that resource-backed loans increase deforestation, measured by forest cover loss. Nevertheless, when we disaggregate resource-backed loans to capture the heterogeneous effects, our results indicate that mineral, tobacco, and cocoa-backed loans increase deforestation, whereas oil-backed loans have no significant direct impact on deforestation. We conclude the paper by providing recommendations for research, policy, and practice, particularly about environmental protection and biodiversity, transparency through improved institutional variables and the management of revenues from natural resources.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106905"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143168774","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":"Offsetting slow violence: Conservation, displacement and (Im)mobility at the anti-subversive capital of Colombia","authors":"Juan Felipe Riaño-Landazabal","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106912","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106912","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Scholars and communities have long argued that conservation-induced injustices worsen in armed conflict contexts, where historical warfare processes, state formation, and accumulation overlap with the imperatives of nature preservation. This paper contributes to these analyses by showing how the mutually reinforcing relationship between conservation and violence is spatialized through ordinary, often taken-for-granted, less dramatic forms of exclusion. Focusing on the Serranía de las Quinchas in Puerto Boyacá, Colombia, a region that played a critical role in the country’s armed conflict, I analyze how people’s everyday displacements and mobility regimes were transformed as a result of the entwined repertoires of conservation and violence. Ethnographic and archival research in this study describes the mobilities and space-making projects of <em>campesinos colonos</em>, and how they were gradually transformed with the emergence of development and scientific narratives related to deforestation anxiety and biodiversity loss, armed control, and present-day forms of environmental offsetting and neoliberal conservation schemes. The study highlights how mundane, gendered spatialities shifted with the territorialization of conservation’s slow violence. The literature on green grabbing often emphasizes dramatic, conservation-induced displacements; in Quinchas, however, the unjust spatial arrangements arising from conservation and violence are embedded in new, everyday mobilities that reshape local campesino life projects. This process is qualitatively distinct from the well-documented scenarios of fortress and militarized conservation. Specifically, women’s everyday mobilities have been restricted in favor of better conservation outcomes, environmental offsetting projects, and the mobility of non-human neighbors. This immobility starkly contrasts with the dynamic historical mobilities unique to campesino space-making projects. Amidst renewed debates and proposals around just and convivial conservation, this paper is cautious of the subtle, insidious risks posed by conservation’s seemingly benign temporalities, enclosures, and everyday geographies that scholars and conservation practitioners might overlook.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"188 ","pages":"Article 106912"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143167624","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}