World Bank Research E-Newsletter [May-June 2007]
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World Bank Research E-Newsletter [May-June 2007]
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New Research Book: International Migration, Economic Development and Policy
Contact Us
Strengthening education: Approaches that work
Privacy Policy
Poverty and conflict in Nepal
Research Highlights 2006
The Globalization of Corporate Finance in Developing Countries
Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, Bled, Slovenia
Webcast: Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies
IFC-FT Essay Competition 2007
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New Research Book: International Migration, Economic Development and Policy
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Edited by Caglar Ozden and Maurice Schiff, this new research book confirms that migration reduces
extreme poverty in developing countries--by as much as 35 percent in migrant households in Mexico.
Further, new findings show that migration from parts of South Asia boosts girls' education and healthcare
back home. For example, migration in Pakistan increases girls' school enrolment by as much as 54
percent compared with just 7 percent for boys. Also, migrants command higher wages on return to their
home country than workers with no international exposure. One study shows that migrants returning to
Egypt earn about 38 percent more than non-migrants with similar profiles. In a groundbreaking finding,
the book also shows that migration to Europe is associated with lowered fertility rates in Morocco and
Turkey.
About the book (and download overview)
Order the book
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Strengthening education: Approaches that work
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Achievements in education in developing countries include the number of out-of-school children falling by
21 million between 1999 and 2004 (UNESCO). But large gaps still exist, particularly in education
opportunities for girls or children from disadvantaged groups, and in shortfalls in learning outcomes.
World Bank researchers provide rigorous new evidence from Cambodia and Ecuador that enrollment can
be encouraged by cash transfers to households on the condition that `target' children (for example, girls)
are sent to school. They also find that in some contexts, public access to information on education
financing and quality can help communities to hold teachers and others accountable for issues such as
absenteeism. Further, the private sector plays a growing role in some countries like Pakistan and India,
where research shows learning is faster in private schools and school quality is higher by some
measures, despite their teachers in rural areas being paid far less than public school counterparts. In this
article, F. Halsey Rogers summarizes evidence about approaches that work well to strengthen education.
Featured article
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Poverty and conflict in Nepal
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Since 1945, more than 70 civil wars have resulted in about 20 million deaths, displacing over 67 million
people. Why do such conflicts occur and what sustains them? Quy-Toan Do and Lakshmi Iyer examine
civil war in Nepal, finding that poverty is the single biggest determinant of whether a district will
experience conflict. They estimate, over the period 1996-2004, that a 10 percentage point increase in
poverty is associated with 24 additional conflict-related deaths in a district. Geographic variables such as
elevation and forest cover also correlate significantly with conflict intensity. In contrast, variables
measuring social divisions such as caste polarization or linguistic fractionalization do not have a
significant association with conflict intensity, suggesting that support for conflict comes from economically
deprived areas and not from social divisions.
Research Brief
Working paper
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Research Highlights 2006
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In June 2007, the World Bank's principal research unit, the Development Research Group (DECRG),
published Research Highlights 2006, the second in an annual series that describes the major research
themes and highlights of the year and provides a comprehensive list of the unit's published output. The
group has made a major contribution to the stock of applied knowledge on development processes and
policies, ranging from providing data (e.g., on World Trade Organization Disputes) and analytical tools
(e.g., for poverty analysis) to detailed micro evaluations (e.g., of cash incentives for girls' education) and
broad macro analysis (e.g., of tropical forests and of aggregate economic volatility).
Download Report
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The Globalization of Corporate Finance in Developing Countries
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Net private capital flows to developing countries reached a record $647 billion in 2006, although the rate
of growth of these flows slowed from 34 percent in 2005 to 17 percent in 2006. Emerging Europe
attracted an increasing share of the overall flows and equity financing grew much faster than debt, says
Global Development Finance 2007. Despite commitments made by donors, aid flows were disappointing,
and the shift from official to private sources of finance continued. The report predicts that higher interest
rates and emerging capacity constraints will slow the very fast growth of developing countries in the past
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World Bank Research E-Newsletter [May-June 2007]
http://newsletters.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=615...
few years, with global growth falling from 4 percent in 2006 to around 3.5 percent in 2009. This
realignment could also temper some of the positive global financial conditions that have prevailed in
many developing countries over the past four years.
Story
Global Development Finance 2007 website
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Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, Bled, Slovenia
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In a world awash in private capital, it is vital to harness the power of the private sector to solve key
development challenges. The 2007 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) in
Bled, Slovenia from May 17-18 on `Development and the Private Sector' discussed these issues with
more than 400 participants from over 80 countries. Three topics were explored: financial inclusion;
factors that matter most for the business climate; and the provision of public services by non-state actors.
Story
Papers
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Webcast: Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies
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The second OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy was held in Istanbul, June 27-30.
Webcast
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IFC-FT Essay Competition 2007
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The International Finance Corporation and the Financial Times invite entries to their annual essay
contest about the role of the private sector in international development. The top prize is a US$20,000
cash award, and winning essays will be published on the IFC and FT web sites. Entries will be accepted
until September 30, 2007.
Application details; prize essays from previous year
As per our summer publishing schedule, the next issue of this newsletter will be published at the end of
August.
The World Bank Research Digest is available online at http://econ.worldbank.org/research_digest
Archived issues of this newsletter are available online at: http://econ.worldbank.org/research_newsletter
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New Policy Research Working Papers
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These papers, and all older papers, are also available using the Document Search on the Bank's
Development Economics Research website and on the Social Sciences Research Network.
4221. Disarming fears of diversity : ethnic heterogeneity and state militarization, 1988-2002. (Eric
Neumayer, Indra de Soysa)
4222. Skills shortages and training in Russian enterprises. (Anna Lukyanova, Rostislav Kapelyushnikov,
Vladimir Gimpelson, Yevgeniya Savchenko, Hong Tan)
4223. China and the knowledge economy : challenges and opportunities. (Shuilin Wang, Douglas
Zhihua Zeng)
4224. Accounting for Mexican income inequality during the 1990s. (Rafael E. De Hoyos)
4225. Returns to education in the economic transition : a systematic assessment using comparable data.
(Erwin R. Tiongson, Stefano Paternostro, Luca Flabbi)
4226. Does money matter ? The effects of cash transfers on child health and development in rural
Ecuador. (Norbert Schady, Christina Paxson)
4227. Indigenous peoples in Latin America : economic opportunities and social networks. (Trine Lunde,
Emmanuel Skoufias, Harry Anthony Patrinos)
4228. Poverty, social divisions, and conflict in Nepal. (Lakshmi Iyer, Quy-Toan Do)
4229. Measuring microenterprise profits : don't ask how the sausage is made. (Christopher Woodruff,
David McKenzie, Suresh de Mel)
4230. Returns to capital in microenterprises : evidence from a field experiment. (Christopher Woodruff,
David McKenzie, Suresh de Mel)
4231. Work-related migration and poverty reduction in Nepal. (Elena Glinskaya, Mikhail
Bontch-Osmolovski, Michael Lokshin)
4232. Do workers in Chile choose informal employment? A dynamic analysis of sector choice. (Truman
G. Packard)
4233. Indian manufacturing : a slow sector in a rapidly growing economy. (Beyza P. Ural, Devashish
Mitra)
4234. Immigrant overeducation : evidence from Denmark. (Chantal Pohl Nielsen)
4235. A framework for thinking about enterprise formalization policies in developing countries. (Thomas
Kenyon)
4236. The Mexican pension annuity market. (Gregorio Impavido)
4237. Export structure and growth : a detailed analysis for Argentina. (Monica Parra Torrado, James
Parks, Alejandro Guerson)
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World Bank Research E-Newsletter [May-June 2007]
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4238. On the effect of prior assumptions in Bayesian model averaging with applications to growth
regression. (Mark F. J. Steel, Eduardo Ley)
4239. Credit information quality and corporate debt maturity : theory and evidence. (Chendi Zhang,
Marco Sorge)
4240. Giving children a better start : preschool attendance and school-age profiles. (Marco Manacorda,
Sebastian Galiani, Samuel Berlinski)
4241. India rising - faster growth, lower indebtedness. (Marina Wes, Brian Pinto, Gaobo Pang)
4242. Democratic Jihad ? Military intervention and democracy. (Havard Hegre, Lene Siljeholm
Christiansen, Nils Peter Gleditsch)
4243. Population size, concentration, and civil war : a geographically disaggregated analysis. (Clionadh
Raleigh, Havard Hegre)
4244. The size and effectiveness of automatic fiscal stabilizers in Latin America. (Rodrigo Suescun)
4245. A poverty-focused evaluation of commodity tax options. (B. Essama-Nssah)
4246. Choosing the currency structure for sovereign debt : a review of current approaches. (Martin
Melecky)
4247. The impact of remittances on poverty and human capital : evidence from Latin American
household surveys. (J. Humberto Lopez, Pablo Fajnzylber, Pablo Acosta)
4248. Monetary policy, structural break, and the monetary transmission mechanism in Thailand. (Heiko
Hesse)
4249. What is the impact of international remittances on poverty and inequality in Latin America?
(Humberto Lopez, Pablo Fajnzylber, Cesar Calderon, Pablo Acosta)
4250. Economic information and finance : more information means more credit, fewer bad loans, and
less corruption. (Roumeen Islam)
4251. The living conditions of children. (Harry Anthony Patrinos)
4252. About urban mega regions : knowns and unknowns. (Shahid Yusuf)
4253. Poverty, inequality, and social disparities during China's economic reform. (David Dollar)
4254. The causes of civil war. (Marta Reynal-Querol, Simeon Djankov)
4255. Public finance, governance, and growth in transition economies : empirical evidence from
1992-2004. (Aristomene Varoudakis, Erwin R. Tiongson, Taras Pushak)
4256. Nigeria's growth record : Dutch disease or debt overhang ? (Sweder van Wijnbergen, Gaobo
Pang, Nina Budina)
4257. Consumption risk, technology adoption, and poverty traps : evidence from Ethiopia. (Luc
Christiaensen, Stefan Dercon)
4258. The cost of being landlocked : logistics costs and supply chain reliability. (Jean Francois Marteau,
Gael Raballand, Jean-Francois Arvis)
4259. Are all labor regulations equal ? Assessing the effects of job security, labor dispute, and contract
labor laws in India. (Carmen Pages, Ahmad Ahsan)
4260. Civil war risk in democratic and non-democratic neighborhoods. (Clionadh Raleigh)
4261. Climate change impacts on animal husbandry in Africa : a Ricardian analysis. (Sungno Niggol Seo,
Robert Mendelsohn)
4262. From creativity to innovation. (Shahid Yusuf)
4263. HIV/AIDS and social capital in a cross-section of countries. (Antonio C. David)
4264. Financing of the private sector in Mexico, 2000-05 : evolution, composition, and determinants.
(Emanuel Salinas Munoz, Constantinos Stephanou)
4265. The structure of import tariffs in the Russian Federation : 2001-05. (David Tarr, Oleksandr
Shepotylo)
4266. The Economic Community of West African States : fiscal revenue implications of the prospective
economic partnership agreement with the European Union. (Lynge Nielsen, Simplice G. Zouhon-Bi)
4267. Financial intermediation in the pre-consolidated banking sector in Nigeria. (Heiko Hesse)
4268. Power to the people : evidence from a randomized field experiment of a community-based
monitoring project in Uganda. (Jakob Svensson, Martina Bjorkman)
4269. Shadow sovereign ratings for unrated developing countries. (Sanket Mohapatra, Prabal De, Dilip
Ratha)
4270. Jump-starting self-employment ? Evidence among welfare participants in Argentina. (Emanuela
Galasso, Rita Almeida)
4271. Construction, corruption, and developing countries. (Charles Kenny)
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