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Our Commitment: The World Bank’s Africa Region HIV/AIDS Agenda for Action 2007-2011 (PDF; 1.1 MB)
Source: World Bank

“Our Commitment: World Bank’s Africa Region HIV/AIDS Agenda for Action 2007-2011,” is the result of extensive consultation with over 30 African partner countries and institutions, as well as donors, UN agencies, non-governmental organizationsand others seeking to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. It builds on what has been learned in the emergency response to HIV/AIDS and reaffirms the World Bank’s commitment to combatting HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The Agenda for Action will contribute substantially to the long-term, sustainable response required to overcome this enormous development challenge facing sub-Saharan Africa.

From: UN Pulse

Microfinance meets the market
Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

Microfinance institutions have proved the possibility of providing reliable banking services to poor customers. Their second aim is to do so in a commercially-viable way. This paper analyzes the tensions and opportunities of microfinance as it embraces the market, drawing on a data set that includes 346 of the world’s leading microfinance institutions and covers nearly 18 million active borrowers. The data show remarkable successes in maintaining high rates of loan repayment, but the data also suggest that profit-maximizing investors would have limited interest in most of the institutions that are focusing on the poorest customers and women. Those institutions, as a group, charge their customers the highest fees in the sample but also face particularly high transaction costs, in part due to small transaction sizes. Innovations to overcome the well-known problems of asymmetric information in financial markets were a triumph, but further innovation is needed to overcome the challenges of high costs.

+ Full Report (PDF; 165 KB)

Implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low-income countries
Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

In many poor countries, the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food, many of whom are relatively poor, while hurting net food consumers, many of whom are also relatively poor. The impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse, but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects, and can only be determined by looking at real-world data. Results using household data for ten observations on nine low-income countries show that the short-run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country, but, that poverty increases are much more frequent, and larger, than poverty reductions. The recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 1.1 MB)

Rising food prices: Policy options and World Bank response (Word; 175 KB)
Source: World Bank

The rising trend in international food prices continued, and even accelerated, in 2008. U.S. wheat export prices rose from $375/ton in January to $440/ton in March, and Thai rice export prices increased from $365/ton to $562/ton. This came on top of a 181 percent increase in global wheat prices over the 36 months leading up to February 2008, and a 83 percent increase in overall global food prices over the same period.

Increased bio-fuel production has contributed to the rise in food prices. Concerns over oil prices, energy security and climate change have prompted governments to take a more proactive stance towards encouraging production and use of bio-fuels. This has led to increased demand for bio-fuel raw materials, such as wheat, soy, maize and palm oil, and increased competition for cropland. Almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to 2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for bio-fuels production in the U.S., while existing stocks were depleted by an increase in global consumption for other uses. Other developments, such as droughts in Australia and poor crops in the E.U. and Ukraine in 2006 and 2007, were largely offset by good crops and increased exports in other countries and would not, on their own, have had a significant impact on prices. Only a relatively small share of the increase in food production prices (around 15%) is due directly to higher energy and fertilizer costs.

The observed increase in food prices is not a temporary phenomenon, but likely to persist in the medium term. Food crop prices are expected to remain high in 2008 and 2009 and then begin to decline as supply and demand respond to high prices; however, they are likely to remain well above the 2004 levels through 2015 for most food crops. Forecasts of other major organizations (FAO, OECD, and USDA) that regularly monitor and project commodity prices are broadly consistent with these projections. Predictions of high food price in the medium run are further strengthened when we factor in the impact of policies aimed at achieving energy security and reduced carbon dioxide emissions, which may present strong trade-offs with food security objectives.

Financing lifelong learning
Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

This paper describes and analyzes different financial schemes to promote lifelong learning. Considered are financial instruments to stimulate successful early learning, financial aid schemes and subsidization mechanisms. Theoretical analyses about funding of early learning have mainly focused on vouchers. Yet, the available empirical evidence is more ambiguous about the effects of vouchers than about the effects of conditional cash transfers and financial incentives for pupils and teachers. Positive effects of financial incentives to pupils are not restricted to high ability pupils, as low ability students also seem to benefit. The evidence regarding the effects of subsidy forms is limited. The most prominent knowledge gaps regarding the effects of various financing schemes related to lifelong learning are the effects of vouchers in compulsory education; financial aid schemes for students; and entitlements and individual learning accounts.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 176 KB)

Can cost-benefit analysis guide education policy in developing countries?
Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

Cost-benefit analysis in education is an important tool in the economists’ arsenal. However, it is essential that research, especially on the social benefits of education, make further progress to make cost-benefit more analysis. There is a need for more research on the effects of policy interventions on outcomes beyond access to a year in school and what they earn as a result, such as on what children actually learn. Such research should focus on ensuring that the interventions are attributable to outcomes. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to go through the discipline of noting the benefits and costs, even if social rates of return cannot be calculated robustly.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 172 KB)

The quality of medical advice in low-income countries
Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

This paper provides an overview of recent work on quality measurement of medical care and its correlates in four low and middle-income countries-India, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Paraguay. The authors describe two methods-testing doctors and watching doctors-that are relatively easy to implement and yield important insights about the nature of medical care in these countries. The paper discusses the properties of these measures, their correlates, and how they may be used to evaluate policy changes. Finally, the authors outline an agenda for further research and measurement.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 202 KB)

Patterns of export diversification in developing countries : intensive and extensive margins
Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

This paper uses highly disaggregated trade data to investigate geographic and product diversification patterns across a group of developing nations for the period from 1990 to 2005. The econometric investigation shows that the gravity equation fits the observed differences in diversification across nations. The analysis shows that exports at the intensive margin account for the most important share of overall trade growth. At the extensive margin, geographic diversification is more important than product diversification, especially for developing countries. Taking part in free trade agreements, thereby reducing trade costs, and trading with countries in the North are also found to have positive impacts on export diversification for developing countries.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 249 KB)

Accountability in Complex Organizations: World Bank Responses to Civil Society
Source: Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Research Working Paper Series

Civil society actors have been pushing for greater accountability of the World Bank for at least three decades. This paper outlines the range of accountability mechanisms currently in place at the World Bank along four basic levels: (1) staff, (2) project, (3) policy, and (4) board governance. We argue that civil society organizations have been influential in pushing for greater accountability at the project and policy levels, particularly through the establishment and enforcement of social and environmental safeguards and complaint and response mechanisms. But they have been much less successful in changing staff incentives for accountability to affected communities, or in improving board accountability through greater transparency in decision making, more representative vote allocation, or better parliamentary scrutiny. In other words, although civil society efforts have led to some gains in accountability with respect to Bank policies and projects, the deeper structural features of the institution — the incentives staff face and how the institution is governed — remain largely unchanged.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 725 KB)

Global growth and distribution : are China and India reshaping the world?
Source: World Bank Policy Research Working Papers

Over the past 20 years, aggregate measures of global inequality have changed little even if significant structural changes have been observed. High growth rates of China and India lifted millions out of poverty, while the stagnation in many African countries caused them to fall behind. Using the World Bank’s LINKAGE global general equilibrium model and the newly developed Global Income Distribution Dynamics (GIDD) tool, this paper assesses the distribution and poverty effects of a scenario where these trends continue in the future. Even by anticipating a deceleration, growth in China and India is a key force behind the expected convergence of per-capita incomes at the global level. Millions of Chinese and Indian consumers will enter into a rapidly emerging global middle class-a group of people who can afford, and demand access to, the standards of living previously reserved mainly for the residents of developed countries. Notwithstanding these positive developments, fast growth is often characterized by high urbanization and growing demand for skills, both of which result in widening of income distribution within countries. These opposing distributional effects highlight the importance of analyzing global disparities by taking into account - as the GIDD does - income dynamics between and within countries.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 903 KB)

+ What are Middle-Income Countries?
+ Executive Summary (PDF; 3.5 MB
Download full report in sections or as single document (PDF; 3.1 MB)

New from the World Bank: Enterprise Surveys: Do Your Own Analysis

From the site:

Create your own customized tables and graphs for precisely the indicators, countries/groups, stratificaton (categorizing the data by firm size, sector, ownership, exporter), and statistics (average, count, standard deviation, minimum, maximum) that you are interested in for your own reports.

The Bank’s Enterprise Surveys team has launched a custom query tool called Do Your Own Analysis. It allows users to slice and dice firm-level, microeconomic data across 172 indicators from over 100 countries. Each query generates a custom graph that the user can cut and paste.These surveys measure business perceptions of the investment climate in countries, based on data from over 66,000 firms worldwide. They can be used to analyze
job creation and growth trends.

Source: The World Bank (via Stuart Basefsky’s IWS Documented News Service)

World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development
Source: World Bank
From press release:

The latest World Development Report calls for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries and warns that the sector must be placed at the center of the development agenda if the goals of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 are to be realized.

Titled ‘Agriculture for Development’, the reportsays the agricultural and rural sectors have suffered from neglect and underinvestment over the past 20 years. While 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, a mere 4 percent of official development assistance goes to agriculture in developing countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a region heavily reliant on agriculture for overall growth, public spending for farming is also only 4 percent of total government spending and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels.

The World Bank Group is advocating a new ‘agriculture for development’ agenda. According to the WDR, for the poorest people, GDP growth originating in agriculture is about four times more effective in reducing poverty than GDP growth originating outside the sector.

Note: Some links were not working 20 October 2007. You may have to check back.

The World Bank Booster Program for Malaria Control in Africa Report
Source: World Bank

Every year, malaria infects more than 500 million people around the world. The burden is highest in Africa, where more than 90 percent of the world’s approximately 1 million malaria deaths occur annually.
Children in many parts of Africa suffer from malaria about four times each year and it is one of the leading causes of child deaths on the continent, yet the disease is completely preventable and treatable.

The impact of the disease extends far beyond the health of victims. Malaria exacts a broad toll on human and economic prosperity, from direct prevention and treatment costs to lost wages and suffering by individuals, to diminished workforce productivity, to broader market inefficiencies that then curtail trade and investment. In total, malaria is estimated to cost Africa about US$12 billion annually in lost gross domestic product (GDP), slowing GDP growth by as much as 1.3 percent per year.

While staggering, none of these malaria facts is new—certainly not to generations of Africans who continue to suffer from the disease. What is new is that malaria control in Africa has reached a crossroad: effective interventions to control the disease now exist but must be provided on a scale to benefit all who need them.

+ Full Report (PDF; 2.4 MB)

The Fight Against Global Poverty and Inequality: The World Bank’s Approach to Core Labor Standards and Development
Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Sandra Polaski testified at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services on “The Fight against Global Poverty and Inequality: The World Bank’s Approach to Core Labor Standards and Employment Creation”. Polaski praised some recent actions by the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Finance Corporation, but expressed concern that different departments of the Bank pursue contradictory stances with regard to core labor standards and employment creation. She suggested that active oversight by the Committee could improve consistency and results from the World Bank on labor market and labor rights issues.

+ Written testimony (PDF: 333 KB)
+ Video of hearing

Development Results in Middle-Income Countries
Source: World Bank

The World Bank’s support in fostering growth and reducing poverty has contributed to the considerable economic success of MIC countries. But to produce greater development benefits, it has to become more agile and draw upon MICs’ own capacity much more systematically, connecting such capabilities to help low-income countries and to tackle global challenges. The Bank’s work has to more clearly demonstrate best practice to deliver impact beyond its limited direct role.

+ Download by chapter or as full report (PDF; 3.1 MB).