November 14, 2024
Retooling Development Aid in the 21st Century - The Importance of Budget Support
Global threats such as pandemics, climate change, inequality, and conflict have made it increasingly difficult to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, making it necessary to rethink aid modalities. In this session, Moritz Piatti-Fünfkirchen highlights the role of budget support as an efficient instrument to support reform and spur inclusive growth in an uncertain world and changing international financial architecture. He discusses evidence of its effectiveness in delivering financing and supporting key economic reforms across a diverse set of countries. He also discusses perceived shortcomings and suggest critical changes that could enhance the effectiveness of budget support as a versatile instrument to address the development challenges of the next decade.
October 31, 2024
Political Distortions, State Capture, and Economic Development in Africa
In this session, Professor Leonard Wantchekon examines the role of political distortions in driving economic growth in Africa and how existing development theories based on historical factors such as pre-colonial and colonial institutions or ethnic diversity may not explain some new data from the region. He introduces a new framework focused on political distortions, which includes state capture, the role of political connections, and others in driving the variation in economic outcomes in Africa. Based on this framework, he discusses policies that may curb such distortions, including changes to campaign financing rules, bureaucratic reform, free trade agreements, and technology.
October 10, 2024
Who Lends to Africa and How? Introducing The Africa Debt Database
Africa’s sovereign debt markets are not well understood, partly due to a lack of data. Professor Christoph Tresbesch will introduce the Africa Debt Database (ADD), the most detailed dataset on external borrowing by African governments, covering over 7000 individual loans and bonds, especially their financial terms from 2000 to 2020. He will highlight the record lending boom of the 2010s driven by large sovereign bond issuances in London and New York and growing lending by Chinese state-owned banks. The data reveals significant variations in lending terms across countries and creditors, with sovereign bonds interest rates averaging 6%, Chinese banks 3%, and multilateral organizations just 1%. Many governments in Africa borrow large amounts from both private and official creditors at different rates, using cheap concessional loans to service high-interest debts.
September 19, 2024
The Negligible Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso
Professor Pauline Rossi will talk about a randomized trial conducted in Burkina Faso to test the oft-cited hypothesis that limited access to contraception is an important driver of high fertility rates in West Africa. The results do not support this hypothesis. Women who were given free access to medical contraception for three years did not have lower birth rates. Free contraception did not influence fertility even in combination with other interventions introduced to address possible inefficiencies leading to low demand for free contraception, specifically misperceptions about the child mortality rate, limited exposure to opposing views about family size and contraception, and social pressure.
May 30, 2024
SHOCKING OFFERS: GENDER, WAGE INEQUALITY, AND RECESSIONS IN ONLINE LABOR MARKETS
Using data from the largest online job portal in Nigeria, the speaker will discuss the (a) gender differences in salary offers for jobs, and (b) the response of (a) to recessions. Jobs in industries where the number of job applicants skews female offer lower starting salaries than jobs in industries where applicants skew male. During Nigeria’s 2016 recession, overall job applications rose, but applications to jobs in industries that skew male increased more than applications to jobs in industries that skew female. Salary offers fell sharply for jobs in male-skewed industries compared to female-skewed industries. In accordance with this relative shift in applications, in 2016, the salary-offer gender gap almost disappeared.
May 16, 2024
FINANCING UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE IN HIGH-INFORMALITY ECONOMIES: EVIDENCE FROM SENEGAL
Presented by Abdoulaye Ndiaye, Assistant Professor of Economics, New York University
On Thursday, May 9th, 2024 Professor Abdoulaye Ndiaye shared findings from a study conducted in Senegal that evaluates the welfare impact of three distinct UI schemes, each with different enforcement levels and funding sources. Among these, broad-based taxation through a VAT, inflation tax, or external funding can compensate for weak enforcement (i.e., high false UI claim rates), leading to substantial and quantifiable welfare gains. Moreover, safety net expansions reduce loan default rates, potentially fostering greater credit access. The results suggest that increasing the prevalence of UI in low-income countries could raise standard measures of consumer welfare.
May 1, 2024
SUPPORTING WOMEN’S LIVELIHOODS AT SCALE: EVIDENCE FROM A NATIONWIDE MULTI-FACETED PROGRAM
Presented by Corinne Low, Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, University of Pennsylvania
The success of multi-faceted “graduation” programs at reducing poverty raises three questions: can the impacts of these programs be maintained when implemented by governments at scale, will positive effects be offset by negative spillovers, and can bundled programs be streamlined without losing impact? On Thursday, April 25th Corrine Low, Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, University of Pennsylvania, presented results from a multi-arm randomized evaluation which showed that a nationwide livelihood program implemented by the government of Zambia yielded consumption and earnings increases comparable to graduation programs without negative economic spillovers on non-beneficiaries. However, the effects were entirely driven by the asset transfer portion of the bundled intervention, indicating a streamlined package could be a promising poverty alleviation strategy for developing-country governments.
April 4, 2024
THE DESIGN OF DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS TO BUILD LOCAL GOVERNMENT CAPACITY: EVIDENCE FROM TANZANIA
Presented by Stuti Khemani, Senior Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
The weak capacity of local governments to deliver public goods and services has been regarded as one of the fundamental obstacles to economic development in poor countries. Consequently, international development partners have, for decades, pursued projects to build capacity, but with little evidence on impact. On Thursday, March 28th, 2024, Stuti Khemani shared findings from research that evaluates an exemplary project that provided grants and capacity-building assistance to local governments in Tanzania. The project led to improvements in several measures of capacity in local governments receiving the project, but these improvements are not significantly different from similar changes in local governments which did not receive the project.
March 15, 2024
ASPIRING TO A BETTER FUTURE: CAN A SIMPLE PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTION REDUCE POVERTY?
Presented by Kate Orkin, Associate Professor in Economics and Public Policy, Oxford University
On Thursday, March 7th, 2024, Kate Orkin discussed a randomized control experiment in Kenya that combined unconditional cash transfers with a workshop teaching technique to raise aspirations and plan to achieve them. The workshop substantially raises aspirations, investment, and living standards. The findings suggest that helping people living in poverty set higher aspirations can raise investment and living standards, but improving economic conditions can activate the same process.
December 6, 2023
THINK GLOBALLY, ACT GLOBALLY: OPPORTUNITIES TO MITIGATE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES
Presented by Seema Jayachandran, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University.
On Thursday, Nov. 30th, 2023, Seema Jayachandran discussed several reasons why high-income countries seeking to mitigate climate change might have greater impact if they invest their resources in opportunities in low- and middle-income countries. She presented economic counterarguments such as the challenge of monitoring emissions levels in low- and middle-income countries, ethical considerations, the importance of not double-counting mitigation funding as development aid, and policy steps that might help to realize this opportunity.
November 29, 2023
The Economics of Sustainable Development
The World Bank, in collaboration with George Washington University (GWU) and the University of Virginia (UVA), will host the 1st World Bank-GWU-UVA Conference on “The Economics of Sustainable Development”.
November 21, 2023
THE SEARCH FOR GOOD JOBS: EVIDENCE FROM A SIX-YEAR FIELD EXPERIMENT IN UGANDA
Presented by Anna Vitali, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dartmouth College
On Thursday, Nov. 16th, 2023, Anna Vitali presented results from a field experiment that tracked young job seekers utilizing two standard labor market interventions to impact their search for good jobs: vocational training, vocational training combined with matching youth to firms, and matching only. The analysis highlights the foundational but separate roles of skills and expectations in job search, how interventions cause youth to become optimistic or discouraged, and how these matters for long run sorting and individual labor market outcomes.
November 6, 2023
IS ABSENTEEISM OF PUBLIC SERVICE PROVIDERS A LOW-EFFORT NORM? EVIDENCE FROM TEACHERS IN UGANDA
Presented by James Habyarimana, Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University
On Thursday, Nov. 2nd , 2023, James Habyarimana presented evidence from the public education sector in Uganda on how measured rates of teacher absenteeism may be interpreted as empirically valid expectations among peers and, hence, a low-effort norm. New types of interventions can change norms through (1) communication and deliberation among peer groups and (2) signals from “prominent agents” like local government leaders. He shared results from implementing these interventions at a small scale, using an RCT design.
October 27, 2023
NAVIGATING FISCAL CHALLENGES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Presented by Antonio David, Deputy Division Chief, African Department, International Monetary Fund
Sub-Saharan African countries have been hit, in recent years, by a cascading series of shocks that have exacerbated fiscal vulnerabilities. Significant reforms are needed to rebuild buffers and preserve the sustainability of public finances. This seminar, held on Thursday, October 19th, 2023, Antonio David argues that a strategic approach to fiscal policy is needed, as policies in the region typically lack an effective anchor and are excessively focused on short-term goals. He proposes a novel method, tailored to the low-income country context, which relies on the principle of the preservation of debt-servicing capacity. Results using this method point to a median debt anchor of 55 percent of GDP in the region.
June 1, 2023
GLOBAL UNIVERSAL BASIC SKILLS: CURRENT DEFICITS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR WORLD DEVELOPMENT
Presented by Ludger Woessmann, Director, ifo Center for the Economics of Education; Professor of Economics, University of Munich
On Thursday, June 1st 2023, Ludger Woessmann discussed findings from mapping achievement (based on micro data of international and regional achievement tests) onto a common (PISA) scale, and estimating the share of children not achieving basic skills for 159 countries that cover 98.1% of world population and 99.4% of world GDP. Economic analysis suggests that the present value of lost world economic output due to missing the goal of global universal basic skills amounts to over $700 trillion over the remaining century, or 11% of discounted GDP.
April 6, 2023
NEW EVIDENCE ON SECTORAL LABOR PRODUCTIVITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Presented by Ákos Valentinyi, Professor of Macroeconomics, University of Manchester
Moving labor from agriculture to manufacturing – “industrialization” – is often viewed as essential for the development of poor countries. On Thursday, March 30th , using recent data on comparable labor productivity levels in agriculture and manufacturing for 64 mostly poor countries, Ákos Valentinyi presented new evidence on the channels through which industrialization can help poor countries close the productivity gap with rich countries.
March 29, 2023
SERVICES, JOBS, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA
Presented by Matteo Fiorini, Trade Policy Analyst, OECD
In this seminar, held on Thursday, March 23rd , 2023, Matteo Fiorini discusses the key role of services activities for employment, skills, and economic development in Africa. Using administrative unit level data from 13 African economies, he discusses two novel pieces of evidence by first, presenting a descriptive snapshot of changes in the composition of employment over time and across geographies, and second, correlations between services and economic development, using per capita nightlight luminosity as a proxy. Findings show (1) a strong positive association between high skills services and economic development; (2) substantial heterogeneity across industries within services; and (3) a mediating role of market conditions and technology in the relation between services and economic development.
March 14, 2023
PUBLIC GOVERNANCE VERSUS CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: EVIDENCE FROM OIL DRILLING IN FORESTS
Presented by James Cust, Senior Economist, Africa Office of the Chief Economist, World Bank
Petroleum companies look for oil and gas in some of the most remote and biodiverse forested areas on the planet. In this seminar, held on Thursday, March 9th, 2023, James Cust highlights the following results: 1) Oil wells drilled in countries with better public governance, measured by democracy scores, are associated with substantially lower forest loss in the period after drilling. 2) In contrast, there is no evidence of less forest clearance among companies with presumptively ‘better’ corporate governance practices, such as major international companies, publicly listed companies, or members of an industry association committed to high environmental standards. These findings do not support a “pollution halo” effect, whereby companies might bring better environmental practices with them, exceeding domestic environmental standards.
March 13, 2023
Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs
Please join us for a presentation of the regional flagship report Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs followed by a discussion with national and regional policymakers, private sector representatives, and think-tanks on how to increase productive use of digital technologies (DTs) to transform economies and create jobs. This robust analysis provides strategies that can be adopted to capitalize on growing evidence that internet availability enhances job creation, and that poverty reduction policies to boost DTs will fuel more and better jobs for the continent, which is poised to have the largest workforce in the world by 2100.
March 1, 2023
STRUCTURAL REFORMS AND LABOR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: INTRA OR INTER-REALLOCATION CHANNEL?
Presented by Emmanuel B. Mensah, Assistant Professor, Utrecht University and Wilfried Kouamé, Economist, World Bank
In this seminar, held on Thursday, February 23rd, 2023, Emmanuel Mensah and Wilfried Kouamé employ sectoral data to draw conclusions on how structural reforms—implemented during the period 1975–2005—affected differences in cross-country aggregate labor productivity growth in developing countries. They discuss how the effects of reforms on productivity growth are distributed between the intrasectoral and intersectoral components of labor productivity growth.
December 19, 2022
THE AFTERMATH OF DEBT SURGES
Presented by Franziska Lieselotte Ohnsorge, Manager, Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Practice Group, World Bank
In this seminar, held on Thursday, December 15th, Franziska Lieselotte Ohnsorge discusses an encompassing menu of options that have, in the past, helped lower debt burdens. These include the orthodox options such as enhancing growth, fiscal consolidation, privatization, and wealth taxation, and heterodox options such as inflation, financial repression, debt default and restructuring. She shows that the mix of feasible options depends on country characteristics and the type of debt.
November 28, 2022
RETHINKING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Presented by Nathan Nunn, Professor of Economics, University of British Columbia
In this seminar held on Thursday, November 17, 2022, Professor Nunn shares a summary, reflection, and assessment of the current state of economic development in both the policy and academic worlds. In terms of development policy, currently, the primary focus is on policy interventions, namely, foreign aid, aimed at fixing the `deficiencies' of developing countries. Academic research also has a similar focus, except with an emphasis in rigorous evaluation of interventions to estimate causal effects.
November 16, 2022
TAX AVERSION AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IN AFRICA
Presented by James Robinson, Professor and Institute Director of The Pearson Institute, University of Chicago
On Thursday, November 10, 2022, James Robinson discussed evidence on how a large proportion of Africans prefer lower taxation and fewer public goods despite the low levels of taxation and public good provision in Africa. He argues that this phenomenon cannot be explained by standard arguments about problems of accountability, governance or state capacity. Instead, it reflects deeply seated ideas about the nature of the state and its potential threats to the autonomy of society.
October 18, 2022
TWO SIDES OF GENDER: SEX, POWER, AND ADOLESCENCE
Presented by Manisha Shah Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Los Angeles
On Thursday, October 6, 2022, Manisha Shah presented findings from a randomized controlled trial that offered females a goal setting activity to improve their sexual and reproductive health outcomes, and offered their male partners a soccer intervention, which educates and inspires young men to make better sexual and reproductive health choices. Both interventions reduced female reports of intimate partner violence. Impacts were larger among females who were already sexually active at baseline. She also discussed a game theory model she developed to understand the mechanisms at play. In line with the model, the soccer intervention improved male attitudes around violence, sexual, and reproductive health and reduced sexual activity.
September 19, 2022
STAPLE FOOD PRICES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT
Presented by Cedric Okou Economist, International Monetary Fund
On Thursday, September 15, 2022, Cedric Okou presented a paper on the domestic and external drivers of local staple food prices in Sub-Saharan Africa. Data on domestic market prices of the five most consumed staple foods from 15 countries show that external factors drive food price inflation, but domestic factors can mitigate these vulnerabilities. Estimations show that Sub-Saharan African countries are highly vulnerable to global food prices, with the pass-through from global to local food prices estimated close to unity for highly imported staples. Economic policy can lower food price inflation, as the strength of monetary policy and fiscal frameworks, the overall economic environment, and transport constraints in geographically challenged areas account for substantial cross-country differences in staple food prices.
November 30, 2022
FISCAL DOMINANCE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA REVISITED
Presented by Mika Saito, Deputy Division Chief, African Department, International Monetary Fund
Fiscal dominance has always been a pressing problem as it can contribute to inflation and macroeconomic instability, and increasingly so as fiscal deficits and public debt are rising in many SSA countries. In this seminar held on Wednesday, November 30, 2022, Mika Saito discusses the causes and consequences of fiscal dominance over monetary policy in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). She shares findings from recent research that shows that legal limits and availability of alternative financing options play an important role in determining the extent to which government deficits tend to be financed by the central bank.