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on Development |
| By: | Omer Faruk Akbal; Mr. Seung M Choi; Mr. Futoshi Narita; Jiaxiong Yao |
| Abstract: | Quarterly GDP statistics facilitate timely economic assessment, but the availability of such data are limited for more than 60 developing economies, including about 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as more than two-thirds of fragile and conflict-affected states. To address this limited data availablity, this paper proposes a panel approach that utilizes a statistical relationship estimated from countries where data are available, to estimate quarterly GDP statistics for countries that do not publish such statistics by leveraging the indicators readily available for many countries. This framework demonstrates potential, especially when applied for similar country groups, and could provide valuable real-time insights into economic conditions supported by empirical evidence. |
| Keywords: | Developing economies; fragile and conflict-affected states; GDP; low-income countries; nowcasting; sub-Saharan Africa |
| Date: | 2023–08–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2023/158&r=dev |
| By: | Ivo Steimanis (University of Marburg); Max Burger (University of Marburg); Bernd Hayo (University of Marburg); Andreas Landmann (Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg); Bjoern Vollan (University of Marburg) |
| Abstract: | The literature regarding the effects of environmental hazards on social preferences is mixed and partially contradictory. The lack of a baseline in these studies is a severe methodological constraint, as it is hard to identify heterogeneous treatment effects through experience in the recovery process. We exploit a panel of incentivized behavioral measures of solidarity conducted before and after the devastating damages caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. We find that Haiyan’s impact on individuals’ degree of solidarity was non-linear: solidarity was negatively affected in villages with medium damages, whereas no significant impact was observed in those villages that were most and least affected. A potential explanation for this non-linear effect is differences in people's experiences concerning the aid process and help from other villagers. In villages with medium damages, the quality of the aid process and help from other villagers was perceived to be significantly worse than that received by more and less affected villages. Lastly, survey evidence shows that the non-linear effects persist almost 10 years after the disaster. |
| Keywords: | Social preferences, environmental hazard, natural experiment, social dynamics, Typhoon Haiyan, Philippines |
| JEL: | Q54 C93 D91 O12 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mar:magkse:202319&r=dev |
| By: | Roos Haer; Gudrun Østby |
| Abstract: | Education is associated with a range of positive micro and macro effects. It is hence no surprise that donors have recently increased the amount of official development aid specifically focused on restoring and maintaining education in less-developed states. While much attention has been paid to the effect of aid on educational enrolment at the country level, there is a clear knowledge gap at the subnational level. |
| Keywords: | Aid, Education, Enrolment, Nigeria, Africa |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2023-103&r=dev |
| By: | Dix-Carneiro, Rafael (Duke University); Kovak, Brian K. (Carnegie Mellon University) |
| Abstract: | We survey the recent literature studying the effects of globalization on inequality in Latin America. Our focus is on research emerging from the late 2000s onward, with an emphasis on empirical work considering new mechanisms, studying new dimensions of inequality, and developing new methodologies to capture the many facets of globalization's relationship to inequality. After summarizing both design-based and quantitative work in this area, we propose directions for future work. Our overarching recommendation is that researchers develop unifying frameworks to help synthesize the results of individual studies that focus on distinct aspects of globalization's relationship to inequality. |
| Keywords: | globalization, inequality, Latin America |
| JEL: | F14 F62 F66 J0 O10 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16363&r=dev |
| By: | Padilla-Romo, María (University of Tennessee); Peluffo, Cecilia (University of Florida) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides evidence on how having violence-exposed peers who migrated to nonviolent areas affects students' educational trajectories in receiving schools. To recover our estimates, we exploit the variation in local violence across different municipalities in the context of Mexico's war on drugs and linked administrative records on students' educational trajectories. We find that peer exposure to violence in elementary school imposes persistent negative effects on students in nonviolent areas. Having elementary school violence-exposed peers has detrimental effects on students' academic performance in a high school admission exam and grade progression. For every ten students previously exposed to local violence who migrated to Mexico City's metro area, approximately five incumbent students in safe municipalities are placed in lower-ranked and less-preferred schools. |
| Keywords: | local violence, peer effects, educational trajectories |
| JEL: | I24 I25 O15 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16374&r=dev |
| By: | Ravi Kanbur (Cornell University); Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez (King’s College London); Andy Sumner (King’s College London) |
| Abstract: | The decline in global inequality over the last decades has spurred a "sunshine" narrative of falling global inequality that has been rather oversold, in the sense, we argue, it is likely to be temporary. Our work first formalizes the intuition that the fall in global inequality will eventually reverse. We derive the location of the turning point for a specific measure of inequality: the mean log deviation. We make use of a custom-built database of global income to estimate this turning point. We find there is a potentially startling global inequality "boomerang, " possibly in the mid-to-late 2020s, which would have happened even if there were no pandemic, and that the pandemic is likely to bring forward the global inequality boomerang. The scholarly significance of the main finding is that there is a new type of Kuznets curve, where inequality first falls and then rises as middle-income countries grow fast and approach the income levels of rich countries. The policy significance is that interventions to counteract the upward movement in global inequality will require even stronger focus on lowering the within-country inequality component of global inequality. |
| Keywords: | global inequality, inequality boomerang, COVID-19 pandemic |
| JEL: | D31 D63 O15 |
| Date: | 2022–05–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:615&r=dev |
| By: | Ginevra Floridi (School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburg); Maria Gargiulo (Nuffield College, Department of Sociology, and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford); José Manuel Aburto (Nuffield College, Department of Sociology, and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford, Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Interdisciplinary Center on Population Dynamics, University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | Since 2006, Mexico has experienced a surge in homicide violence due to national policies and international influences on drug trafficking activities. While the effects of the so-called “Drug War” have been extensively studied in demography and social science research, whether and how the increase in homicides has affected fertility is unknown. This study provides a comprehensive account of the relationship between homicides and changes in fertility rates and desires in Mexico. Using fixed-effects models and a staggered difference-in-differences estimator, we study the effect of homicidal violence on the total fertility rate (TFR) across all Mexican municipalities between 2000–2020. Then, using random-intercept and fixed-effects models, we analyse the association between changes in homicide rates and fertility desires for 6, 341 women from the Mexican Family Life Survey (2002–2012). Our findings show no average effect of homicides on TFR for the whole period considered, although TFR declined slightly faster (by 0.1 children per woman) in municipalities experiencing very large homicide spikes between 2010 and 2015. We find no association between municipality-level homicide rates and fertility desires, consistent across educational levels and by parity. Our results show remarkable continuity in the Mexican fertility decline despite the rapid escalation of violence. |
| Keywords: | fertility preferences, Latin America, total fertility rate, Violence |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:399&r=dev |
| By: | Paul I. Ko; Ryo Makioka; Karim Nchare |
| Abstract: | Sub-Saharan African economies have experienced accelerated economic growth in the past two decades. In this paper we study the impact of trade-induced structural change on employment and value-added shares in sub-Saharan African economies. We find that sub-Saharan African economies have increasingly become net importers of manufacturing goods. Similar to other countries, an increase in manufacturing imports negatively impacts manufacturing employment shares. In contrast, an increase in exports positively impacts agricultural employment shares. |
| Keywords: | Trade, Structural change, Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2023-104&r=dev |
| By: | Bancalari, Antonella (Institute for Fiscal Studies, London); Bernal, Pedro (Inter-American Development Bank); Celhay, Pablo (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile); Martinez, Sebastian (International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie)); Sánchez, Maria Deni (Inter-American Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | We study the efficiency in health systems generated by community health teams, a common strategy in low- and middle-income countries for primary healthcare delivery. We exploit the rollout of a nation-wide expansion of coverage to this model in El Salvador. Using a panel dataset of municipalities spanning 2009-2018 from consultation and hospital records of almost 4 million episodes, we show that investing in community-based healthcare, which relied on less-specialized health workers, led to a more efficient allocation of care. Preventive care increased and curative care and hospitalizations from preventable conditions decreased, while coverage in curative care for previously unattended chronic diseases increased. |
| Keywords: | community-based healthcare, efficiency, access |
| JEL: | I15 I18 H21 H51 |
| Date: | 2023–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16350&r=dev |
| By: | Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm |
| Abstract: | The present study has examined the effect of export product quality improvement on inclusivity in developing countries. Inclusivity is measured by three factors considered simultaneously, namely an increase in the real per capita income, a reduction in within-country income inequality, and poverty reduction. The analysis covers 101 developing countries over the period from 1980 to 2014, and uses primarily the two-step system Generalized Method of Moments estimator. It shows that export product quality improvement results in greater inclusivity, especially in countries that face high levels of economic growth volatility, including large magnitudes of external shocks. Likewise, export product quality improvement leads to a greater inclusivity in countries that experience high levels of export product concentration. The analysis sheds light on the positive contribution of export product quality improvement to inclusivity in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Export product quality, Inclusivity |
| JEL: | D63 F14 O11 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:274651&r=dev |
| By: | Lopez Garcia, Italo (University of Southern California); Luoto, Jill E. (University of Southern California); Aboud, Frances E. (McGill University); Fernald, Lia C.H. (University of California at Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | We present results two years after the end of a group-based parenting intervention tested in a cluster randomized control trial in rural Kenya. The original program consisted of 16 fortnightly village-based sessions over 8 months and had large positive impacts on children's cognition and parenting behaviors immediately after its end. Over the next two years, a random half of intervention villages received a light-touch "booster" intervention to offer continued yet less intensive program support. With and without the booster extension, early program impacts were sustained two years later, albeit smaller in magnitude. Boosters had a small positive added value on parenting behaviors and children's socioemotional development, despite the interruption of COVID-19 to their delivery. Sustained impacts on children's development were strongly mediated by improvements in parenting behaviors, disadvantaged families accrued the largest benefits, and two years later our program remains one of the most cost-effective and potentially scalable programs globally to date. These results point to encouraging paths forward for maximizing the reach and longer-term effectiveness of early childhood development programs to improve child development in low-resource remote settings. |
| Keywords: | parenting intervention, parenting behaviors, early child development, group-based delivery, rural Kenya |
| JEL: | H43 I10 I20 I38 O15 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16392&r=dev |
| By: | Juan F. Vargas (Department of Economics, Universidad del Rosario); Miguel E. Purroy (Harvard Kennedy School); Felipe Coy (Princeton University); Sergio Perilla (Department of Economics, Universidad del Rosario); Mounu Prem (Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance) |
| Abstract: | Criminal groups use violence strategically to manipulate the behavior of victims and bystanders. At the same time, violence is a stimulus that causes fear, which also shapes people’s reactions. Taking advantage of the randomness in the timing of antipersonnell and mine accidents in Colombia, as well as their coordinates relative to those of voting polls, we identify the effect of violence-induced fear (independent from intentions) on electoral behavior. Fortuitous landmine explosions reduce political participation. We further disentangle whether the type of fear caused by landmine explosions responds to an information channel (whereby people learn about the risk of future victimization) or by the salience of the explosion (which causes individuals to make impulsive decisions, driven by survival considerations), and show evidence in favor of the latter. While the turnout reduction takes place across the ideological spectrum, we document that the explosions induce a shift in the political preferences of individuals who do vote. These findings point to worrisome potential consequences for the consolidation of democracies in places affected by conflict. |
| Keywords: | Conflict, fear, Landmine explosions, salience, voting |
| JEL: | D72 D74 P48 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:398&r=dev |
| By: | Patricia Justino |
| Abstract: | Violent conflicts affect the lives and livelihoods of almost one quarter of the world's population. But the effects of violent conflict are not uniform. This study assesses the differential effects of violent conflict on young people's education, job prospects, and forms of civic engagement and investigates using available (limited) data the potential role of young people in supporting peace and stability in their communities in Afghanistan, Colombia, Mexico, and Nepal. The empirical analysis points to two suggestive patterns. |
| Keywords: | Youth, Violent conflict, Peace, Civic participation |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2023-101&r=dev |