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THIS MONTH IN RESEARCH |
Welcome to the February edition of the research newsletter which focuses on food and nutrition security. The latest World Food Security Outlook suggests that global food security is expected to stabilize in 2024, following a period of significant insecurity. However, the threat of food insecurity still looms over nearly one billion people. The World Bank has mobilized $45 billion to address this challenge, with evidence showing the effectiveness of prompt government and humanitarian actions. For example, research by Abay et al. (2023) finds that Ethiopia’s safety net program significantly mitigated the pandemic's impact on food insecurity, particularly for the poor and those in remote areas. This month’s newsletter takes a broader look at food and nutrition security, exploring what it takes for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to develop systems that can sustain high-quality nutrition, even during economic shocks. While the benefits of globalization have been questioned—especially in light of the Russia-Ukraine war and its effects on food prices, recent studies highlight the importance of market integration. Examples from Bangladesh (Blankespoor et al. 2022) and Sri Lanka (Ghose et al. 2023) illustrate the benefits of greater market integration and the risks of protectionism. The research highlighted in this issue also discusses the role of government support in combating malnutrition and the economic benefits of investing in nutrition interventions. Galasso and Wagstaff (2019) document the significant economic costs associated with childhood stunting, with countries suffering a per capita income penalty of 5-7 percent due to childhood stunting among their present-day workforce. The research finds that scaling up a package of ten nutrition interventions in 34 countries would reduce stunting by 20 percent and generate a rate-of-return of 12 percent. Unfortunately, a reduction of 20 percent would still fall short of SDG targets. Papers featured this month emphasize the need for broad economic growth and structural transformation, including labor shifts from agriculture to other sectors, as a long-term solution to food security. As Deininger et al. (2022) argue, the movement of labor out of agriculture into other sectors of the economy—along with increases in the productivity of the agricultural sector—is an essential step in economic development. Deininger and Ali (2023) document the unprecedented reforms to Ukraine’s agricultural land market begun in 2020-21 in the face of great obstacles with the aim of improved equity, investment, and credit access. An ongoing research project in collaboration with EU Kyiv University, Kyiv School of Economics, and the EU Delegation to Ukraine will continue to document the effects of the reforms, as well as the impact of the Russian invasion on food production and the effect of a cash grant transmitted digitally to small farmers. Finally, the newsletter previews forthcoming research (Policy Research Report) on the challenges posed by climate change and conflict, with projects focusing on climate resilience, social vulnerability in conflict settings, and the adaptability of India's agricultural markets. New insights from these and other research projects highlighted in this issue of the newsletter aim to help provide policy makers the knowledge and tools to ensure food and nutrition security in the future. |
Fertilizer Import Bans, Agricultural Exports, and Welfare: Evidence from Sri Lanka Devaki Ghose, Eduardo Fraga, and Ana Fernandes, Policy Research Working Paper 10642, December 2023 In May 2021, the government of Sri Lanka made a bold and unexpected move: it banned the import of all chemical fertilizers overnight. This decision provided a unique, real-world experiment for understanding the crucial role of fertilizer in agriculture, especially in a developing economy where farming is a cornerstone of livelihood and trade. The ban cut fertilizer imports into the country by more than 90%, lowering crop yields by 1.3 percent to 14.3 percent depending on the crop, and led to losses of $137.7 million in foregone agricultural exports which more than offset the $11.5 million saved from fertilizer imports. Using a quantitative trade model, the paper finds that the welfare effect of the ban was equivalent to a 1.5 percent income reduction on average, with losses concentrated among farmers and among regions specialized in the cultivation of relatively fertilizer-intensive crops. |
Brian Blankespoor, M. Shahe Emran, Forhad Shilpi, and Lu Xu, Journal of Economic Geography, vol. 22, July 2022 | Working Paper Version This study explores the transformative impact of the Jamuna Bridge in Bangladesh, a massive infrastructure project that halved average trade costs and connected 26 million people by road to the nation's capital. Opened in 1998, the bridge spans over one of the largest rivers in the world and provides uninterrupted road connection for people residing in the chronically poverty-ridden areas in Northwest Bangladesh to the growth centers in the East (the economic core), including the capital city Dhaka and port city Chittagong. Overall, the bridge reduced average freight costs by 50 percent and average travel time from areas in the Northwest to Dhaka city by 3 to 4 hours. Additionally, the bridge led to significant positive effects on population density, agricultural productivity, and night-lights. Taken together, the bridge led to economic revival in the Jamuna hinterland with increased agricultural productivity and population density despite a decline in the share of manufacturing employment. |
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH OF INTEREST
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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS What is the impact of conflict and climate change on agricultural production and income inequality? Erhan Artuc and Bob Rijkers, in collaboration with the Poverty & Equity Global Practice The war in Ukraine triggered a ban on exports of cereals and fertilizers and caused a rapid price increase for staple crops and a shortage of essential agricultural inputs. In addition to this unexpected shock, future climate change is also threatening agricultural productivity. In this project, we develop a new quantitative model and novel public dataset to analyze the impact of such shocks on agricultural production and income inequality in more than 50 developing countries. How can land market functioning and food security be supported in a time of crisis? Klaus Deininger and Daniel Ali, in collaboration with EU Kyiv University, Kyiv School of Economics, CMU & EU Delegation to Ukraine This project is documenting the effects of recent legal and institutional reforms in Ukraine that allow for land to be sold or used as collateral for the first time in decades. The team is analyzing the effect of the reform on state land prices and use efficiency, evaluating the impact of the Russian invasion on food production, and assessing the impact of a cash grant transmitted digitally to small farmers using cadastral data, remote sensing, and phone surveys. Does market power in India's agricultural markets hinder farmer adaptation to climate change? Ruozi Song and Rajat Kochhar This project is examining the impact of market power held by middlemen in India's agricultural sector, finding that this power worsens the decline in agricultural production during extreme heat shocks. Only farmers in high-competition areas tend to adjust to anticipated price rises from climate shocks by increasing their use of inputs, suggesting that reducing government-imposed trade restrictions and market segregation could reduce farmers' economic losses from extreme weather by 13.8 percent. |
Emanuela Galasso and Adam Wagstaff, Economics & Human Biology, vol. 34, August 2019 | Working Paper Version Stunting in childhood is associated with adverse outcomes throughout life including impaired brain development, which leads to lower cognitive and socioemotional skills, lower levels of educational attainment, and hence lower incomes. In this paper, the researchers undertake two calculations. The first asks how much lower a given country’s per capita income is today resulting from having a fraction of its workforce been stunted in childhood. On average, the paper estimates that the per capita income in the developing world would have been 5 to 7 percent higher if nobody in the current workforce had been stunted in childhood. The penalty is estimated to be higher in Africa and South Asia, at around 9 percent of GDP per capita. In the second calculation, the researchers estimate the economic value and the costs associated with scaling up a package of nutrition interventions. Using a package of 10 nutrition interventions with data on both effects and costs, the estimated rate-of-return to gradually introducing this program over a period of 10 years in 34 countries that together account for 90 percent of the world’s stunted children is estimated to be 12 percent. Also see: Policy Research Note: The Economic Costs of Stunting and How to Reduce Them |
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS Resilient Development: Accelerating Climate Resilience of Households, Farmers, and Firms Forhad Shilpi, Policy Research Report The forthcoming Policy Research Report on Resilient Development focuses on enhancing resilience to climate shocks in low- and middle-income countries, targeting households, farms, and firms. It builds a micro-foundation for understanding adaptation behaviors under severe climate uncertainty, offering new insights and policy recommendations to boost climate resilience, including behavioral changes, financial instruments, and social protection strategies. Measuring Social Vulnerability to Compounded Shocks in FCV Settings Kibrom Tafere and Benoit Decerf This project is examining how natural and man-made shocks affect households, particularly in fragile, conflict, and violence (FCV) settings. It aims to understand the varying levels of social vulnerability and its determinants in these settings—including demographics, the economy, and geography—to design effective policies for mitigating welfare losses amidst escalating conflict and climate change-related shocks. |
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT |
Victor M. Aguayo, Shawn K. Baker, Kathryn G. Dewey, Emanuela Galasso, et al., Nature Food, February 2023 | Online Event Scaling up effective actions to improve child nutrition is more urgent than ever. Better nutrition is critical for protecting children from disease and death in the short term, and for building human capital and opportunities in the long term. In this paper, the researchers evaluate a relatively new and highly impactful preventive intervention to reduce child undernutrition: small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS) used to enrich the diets of children 6 to 23 months of age. Based on a meta-analysis of numerous randomized trials, SQ-LNS, reduced relative risk of multiple adverse outcomes including mortality by 27 percent, severe wasting by 31 percent, severe stunting by 17 percent, iron deficiency anaemia by 64 percent, and developmental delay by 16 to 19 percent. Evidence shows that SQ-LNS are a highly cost-effective intervention that can save lives, prevent malnutrition, and enable children to grow and thrive. This paper concludes that SQ-LNS should be scaled up and integrated into programmes to promote maternal and child nutrition and well-being during the critical first 1,000 days in populations where child undernutrition is prevalent and dietary quality is very poor. Also see:
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Emanuela Galasso, Ann M Weber, Christine P Stewart, Lisy Ratsifandrihamanana, and Lia C H Fernald, The Lancet Global Health, vol. 7, September 2019 | Policy Note Hundreds of millions of the world's children have poor nutrition and, as a consequence, experience delays in physical and mental health and development. In this paper, a cluster-randomised controlled trial evaluated the effects of delivering LNS and early stimulation to children during the first 1000 days of life. This trial integrated new intervention strategies into an existing community-based programme, which provides growth monitoring, nutrition education, and health referrals for treatment. The study enrolled 3738 households, including 1248 pregnant women, and 2490 children aged 0–11 months at baseline who were assessed at 1-year and 2-year intervals. Evidence suggests that lipid-based nutrient supplementation (LNS) and home visits can be effective approaches to preventing chronic malnutrition and promoting child development in low-income settings. The researchers find that LNS for children for a duration of 12 months only benefited growth when it began at an early age, suggesting the need to supplement infants at age 6 months in a very low-income context. Also see:
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ADDITIONAL RESEARCH OF INTEREST
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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS A Multi-sector Approach to Stunting Reduction in Rwanda Jonathan Akuoku, Chiara Dell’Aira, Jed Friedman, and Harold Alderman This project evaluates a new Rwandan national program introduced in half of Rwanda’s districts that aims to reduce child stunting through a coordinated multi-sector approach. As there are multiple causes of stunting, this program combines nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions that hope to improve the availability and quality of nutrition services as well as alleviate financial and other constraints that restrict a household’s nutrition intake. Coordinating Communities and Health Facilities to Reduce Stunting in Cambodia Harold Alderman, Jed Friedman, Miguel Pugliese Garcia, and Anne Provo Cambodia hopes to improve nutrition outcomes and reduce child stunting through the introduction of nutrition-focused service delivery grants to primary care health facilities alongside the development of targeted community- and home-based nutrition services. The project evaluates the net impact of this multi-pronged strategy for stunting reduction, as well as the effectiveness of each individual approach, in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. Does the expansion of healthcare services improve agricultural productivity and food security? Kibrom Tafere, Mesay Gebresilasse, and Kibrom Abay This project combines administrative data on health facility construction in Ethiopia with panel data from crop-cutting agricultural sample surveys. The objective is to study how improved access to healthcare services affects input use, crop choice, agricultural productivity, and food security. How does iodine deficiency affect the nutritional and learning outcomes of children? Kibrom Tafere, Robel Alemu, and William Masters This study leverages the disruption in iodized salt supply due to the Ethio-Eritrean war to examine the impact of iodine deficiency on children's health, nutrition, and learning outcomes. By exploiting the natural variance in environmental iodine due to soil and crop differences, the research provides a large-scale analysis of iodine deficiency's effects on human development, offering insights into the value of salt iodization and micronutrient fortification. How does variation in the targeting modalities of social protection programs affect food security? Kibrom Tafere, Kibrom Abay, Guush Berhane, and Daniel Gilligan This study examines the efficacy of various targeting strategies for social transfer programs in conflict-affected areas through the randomization of selection criteria for beneficiary households. It aims to identify the most effective targeting methods, evaluate the performance of community-based targeting (CBT) under varying transfer budgets, and analyze the results of CBT when communities are granted full discretion versus when a rule-based framework guides selection of beneficiaries. Refugee and Host Integration through the Safety Net: Evidence from Ethiopia Girum Abebe, Denis Egger, Alfredo Manfredini, Sandra V. Rozo, and Christina Wieser This project is evaluating the integration of refugees into Ethiopia's national public works and livelihoods program. A randomized control trial of 12,000 households aims to measure the impact of the Refugee and Host Integration through the Safety Net (RHISN) program on participants' economic, social, and psychological well-being, the effectiveness of mixed refugee-host public works groups, and the broader economic and social effects on the local community. Do remittances work as a safety net? Xavier Gine and Alejandro de la Fuente This project investigates the role of remittances as a financial safety net in Nicaragua, utilizing data on nearly one million Banpro clients and household surveys from 2017 to early 2021. Findings reveal a significant increase in international remittances to Nicaragua during the pandemic, predominantly from first-time senders using Banpro, indicating the use of remittances to cope with the severity of the pandemic rather than a shift from informal to formal remittance channels. |
AGRICULTURE: FINANCE, PRODUCTIVITY & STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION |
Efficiency and Equity of Input Subsidies: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania Xavier Giné, Shreena Patel, Bernardo Ribeiro, and Ildrim Valley, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, October 2022 In the past few decades, agricultural yields in the developing world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have remained stagnant compared to those in developed countries. And yet, agricultural sector growth can reduce poverty significantly. Input subsidy programs (ISPs) have been proposed as a policy tool to improve agricultural productivity. To test how best to target these subsidies while balancing efficiency and equity concerns, researchers implemented a field experiment where beneficiaries of an ISP were selected either via a lottery or a local committee. In lottery villages, where subsidies may have been given to eligible but unproductive farmers, the evidence suggests that the subsidies displaced private purchases of fertilizer and that a secondary market developed as beneficiaries were more likely to sell inputs to non-beneficiaries. In contrast, in non-lottery villages there is no evidence of displacement nor of elite capture. In both cases, however, the impacts of the ISP on agricultural productivity and welfare are limited, suggesting that resources should instead be directed at complementary investments, such as improving soil quality and irrigation. |
Structural Transformation of the Agricultural Sector In Low- and Middle-Income Economies Klaus Deininger, Songqing Jin, and Meilin Ma, Annual Review of Resource Economics, October 2022 | Working Paper Version In the course of economic development, the share of individuals employed in agriculture decreases. Meanwhile, farm size, labor productivity, and wages in the general economy and the agricultural sector increase. In this paper, the researchers conduct a comprehensive review of the literature exploring the causes and consequences of the transformation. The researchers discuss: 1) the size and determinants for the persisting wage gap between agriculture and non-agricultural, 2) policy-induced barriers to structural changes, 3) the role of trade costs and technical change in shaping the nature of structural transformation and comparative advantage of regions, and 4) how the overall development of an economy affects the relationship between farm size and farm productivity and hence changes competitiveness of different scales of farms. This paper concludes by identifying questions for policy and research and the ways in which new sources and interoperability of data can help answer these questions. |
What is the impact of index insurance on agriculture and food security? Xavier Giné, et al. Climate change is increasing the severity of adverse weather events such as floods and droughts, thereby increasing the risk for farmers and generating fluctuations in household consumption that are not perfectly insured. Households use a variety of risk-management strategies, including traditional forms of mutual insurance, but their effectiveness is limited when facing aggregate shocks. In the absence of government-provided social safety nets or mandatory insurance schemes that provide protection against natural disasters, farmers try to smooth income fluctuations by growing crops with stable but low yields and may limit their upfront investments in profitable technologies like fertilizer. As a result, farmers may enter a cycle of low-risk and low-return agricultural production. Advocates of index insurance—which pays out based on a predefined event such as drought rather than actual losses incurred—argue that it is an effective solution to cope with production risk. Index insurance is transparent, inexpensive to administer, enables quick payouts, and minimizes moral hazard and adverse selection problems associated with other risk-coping mechanisms and insurance programs. In a series of projects, researchers have evaluated the barriers to adoption of index insurance among agricultural households and its impact on various outcomes including consumption and food security. In an experiment in India, researchers find that insurance provision causes farmers to invest more in higher-return but rainfall-sensitive cash crops, particularly among educated farmers—suggesting that financial innovation can mitigate the real effects of uninsured production risk. Conversely, when randomly offered either an insured or uninsured loan, farmers in Malawi were less likely to take a loan bundled with an insurance policy that was forgiven if the rains were poor. A potential explanation is that farmers in Malawi are used to government bailouts that forgive their loans in case of poor harvest. As a result of this implicit insurance, bundling a loan with formal insurance is effectively a more expensive loan without an added insurance coverage. Also see:
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ADDITIONAL RESEARCH OF INTEREST
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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS Can subsidy-induced fertilizer overuse be reduced through information? Klaus Deininger and Daniel Ali, in collaboration with the State Governments in Karnataka and Odisha and IRMA At a cost of US$3 billion in 2023, India’s fertilizer subsidies are a drain on the budget, a hazard to the environment, and possibly a drag on farmers’ long-term welfare and adoption of more sustainable practices and diversification. Massive soil tests are being conducted to test if providing farmers with parcel-specific soil health management recommendations reduces fertilizer use, improves productivity, and potentially even fosters diversification into higher-value crops. Can micro-insurance boost the efficiency in the productivity of smallholders? Klaus Deininger and Daniel Ali, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture Ethiopia; UC Davis, International Center for Evaluation and Development; and Nyala Insurance Ltd. Imperfections in rural credit and insurance markets undermine smallholder productivity and food security via use of sharecropping as a second-best substitute in rural settings. This project is leveraging Ethiopia’s recently established digital rural land registry to explore whether commercial insurance can overcome these inefficiencies. What is the credit market impact of massive titling of residential land? Klaus Deininger and Daniel Ali, in collaboration with IIM Ahmedabad and Reserve Bank of India Starting in 2020, Indian states completed drone surveys of more than a third of the country’s villages and distributed property documents to all households in 61,000 of these villages. The project is currently assessing the intervention’s impact on credit access, and may also assess the impact on women entrepreneurship, local land use planning, and property tax collection. |
RECENT & UPCOMING EVENTS FROM THE DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH GROUP |
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UPDATES FROM ACROSS THE DEPARTMENT |
Little Nomads: Economic and Social Impacts of Migration on Children This brief highlights the key findings of a working paper that reviews the main findings of 113 studies produced between 1990 and 2023, focusing on the impact of migration on various child groups affected through the migration path. The findings reveal that migration influences children’s outcomes in complex and context-dependent ways, and that the impacts of migration are highly dependent on household demographics and public policies in hosting countries. Read the Brief | Working Paper | More Research from Sandra Rozo |
Longitudinal Survey of Forced Migrant Children from Venezuela It is estimated that by early 2021, there were more than 110 million displaced people, of whom 41% are children under the age of 18. To better understand the challenges facing these children, Sandra Rozo, Andrés Moya, and Tatiana Hiller developed the Longitudinal Survey of Forced Migrant Children from Venezuela (VenRePs-Kids) to generate longitudinal data and information on the human development status of Venezuelan migrant children in Colombia. The survey reveals gaps in physical health, cognitive development, and access to public services. Read the Brief | LinkedIn Post | More Research from Sandra Rozo |
Satellite Data: A Game Changer in GHG Monitoring In their efforts to tackle climate change, countries have committed to curbing their carbon emissions through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Also, the Global Methane Pledge, backed by over 120 nations, aims to substantially reduce methane emissions levels by 2030. The lack of accurate and consistent carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH4) emissions data has hindered these and other efforts to rapidly reduce emissions. Recognizing the urgent need for a comprehensive and reliable GHG monitoring scheme, a multi-disciplinary team at the World Bank launched an initiative to leverage advancements in satellite based GHG measurements to fill the global information gap. |
Climate Change as a Major Threat to Sustainable Development: The case of sea-level rise in the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta in Asia Families in coastal Bangladesh are already on the “front line” of climate change. Their experience gives a preview of the kinds of future decisions faced by hundreds of millions of families worldwide that will be confronted by similar threats well before 2100. In this presentation delivered at Harvard Graduate School in December 2023, Susmita Dasgupta discussed the multifaceted threats from sea-level rise in the Ganges Delta, as well as policy and adaptation measures to respond to these threats. |
Development Research Group Expert Wins Best Paper Award Congrats to Development Research Group Researcher Oyebola Okunogbe for her Best Paper Award from American Economic Association for her paper “Technology, Taxation, and Corruption. She and co-author Victor Pouliquen use experimental variation to examine the impact of electronic tax filing (to replace in-person submission to tax officials) using data from Tajikistan firms. The pair of researchers find that e-filing reduces the time firms spend on taxes by 40 percent. Further, among firms previously more likely to evade, e-filing doubles taxes paid. Technology, Taxation, and Corruption: Evidence from the Introduction of Electronic Tax Filing | Twitter Post | More Research from Oyebola Okunogbe |
Detecting tariff evasion in low-income countries: New evidence from matched transaction-level data Low-income countries raise less revenue as a share of GDP than high-income ones, derive a larger share of their revenues from border taxes and are more prone to tariff evasion. Identifying which trade transactions are at risk of being fraudulent is challenging as true tariff liability is typically unobserved. A new VoxEU column addresses this issue by matching import transaction data from Madagascar with export transaction data from France. |
How trade economists busted corruption at the port At the major port in Madagascar, a handful of corrupt customs officials were cheating their government out of millions of dollars of tax revenues. In an episode from the Trade Talks Podcast, Ana Margarida Fernandes explains how her team used economic tools to catch them and how the corruption later returned in a new form. Listen to the Podcast Episode | Corruption in Customs | More Research from Ana Margarida Fernandes |
BLOGS |
Development Impact Blog Job Market Guest Post Roundup Now in its 13th year, the Development Impact blog hosts an annual series of blog posts by job market candidates on their job market paper. This roundup includes all the posts from December 5 to December 15, plus the final wrap-up post:
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A new series of blog posts is bringing the latest research to bear on the potential role industrial policy can, should, or shouldn’t play in government economic policy in low- and middle-income countries. Productivity as a guide for industrial policies Tristan Reed | Let's Talk Development | February 14, 2024 “What remains challenging is identifying which exports a government should prioritize. The conventional economic wisdom suggests focusing on industries that are held back by market failures, where the individual rationality of entrepreneurs doesn't align with the societal good. A classic example is the learning-by-doing process, which might require initial government subsidies to kickstart production and learning. Examples like subsidies for pharmaceuticals research and solar panel development demonstrate this approach. However, market failures are nuanced and idiosyncratic, making it very difficult to generalize this strategy across many industries.” Micro-industrial policy: The empirical evidence on whether governments can successfully directly support firms David McKenzie | Development Impact | January 23, 2024 “In both developed and developing countries, there is a renewed interest in industrial policy. Governments are moving beyond basic regulatory and macroeconomic strategies, actively providing direct support to firms in the forms of subsidies, grants, training, and other assistance. The goal is to help generate new jobs, foster innovation, improve productivity, and accelerate the development of new green technologies. However, skepticism remains, particularly in developing countries, where industrial policy often conjures images of unproductive, politically connected firms.” |
Riding into a greener future: How widespread use of subways could slash CO₂ emissions Brian Blankespoor, Susmita Dasgupta, David Wheeler | Data Blog | February 14, 2024 “The climate crisis is getting worse, with both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and COP28 in its final agreement emphasizing the urgency of steep greenhouse gas emissions reductions to keep global warming below 1.5°C as overshooting 1.5° C might have a catastrophic impact. |
A Surprising Truth: Wealthy areas in low- and middle-income countries face higher ambient air pollution levels Patrick Behrer, Sam Heft-Neal | Let's Talk Development | February 07, 2024 “Air pollution is a global concern, with low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experiencing significantly higher levels of ambient air pollution compared to wealthy countries. However, within LMICs, the question arises: who is most exposed to ambient air pollution around the world? Our blog explores the complexities of air pollution exposure within LMICs, highlighting the differences from wealthier countries and the role of urbanization and economic opportunity.” |
Should we evaluate more algorithms? Berk Özler | Development Impact | February 7, 2024 “When it comes to using algorithms using machine learning models in pertinent policy decisions, my impression is that people fall into three groups: the first group, perhaps older and more seasoned, says “No, thank you.” Don’t these things have bias? Will people accept them? Many won’t understand them, etc. The second group, perhaps younger and more tech savvy, might be too eager to deploy them: this can save so many lives, so much money! The third group, perhaps the largest, falls in between: they might see that the new technology has potential – empathizing with the second group – but also might be a bit weary of the downside risks – siding with the first. This group, I like to think, would like to know more to proceed cautiously…” |
If you have uneven attrition by treatment status, should you just focus remaining surveying on the group with lower response so far? David McKenzie | Development Impact | January 30, 2024 “I received a question recently from a friend that reflects a common issue facing many impact evaluation researchers as they collect follow-up data: “After all our initial survey efforts, the response rate is 87% for the treatment group and 77% for the control group, with this difference statistically significant. Shall we tell the survey company to now focus all of their attention on just trying to survey remaining control group individuals to close this gap? Or should we worry this will somehow bias the results?” I first noted there are many similarities to a post Berk wrote a while back on whether you should use extra contact information if it is only available for the treatment group, which had some excellent discussion in the comments as well. But since there are a few differences and it is one that faces many people doing impact evaluations, I thought I’d discuss it a bit more here.” |
How is satellite data revolutionizing the way we track greenhouse gas emissions around the world? Susmita Dasgupta, Brian Blankespoor, Karolina Ordon | Data Blog | January 25, 2024 “According to data published by the European Union’s climate change service Copernicus, this past 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded in human history with June being the warmest month—overtaking by far the record registered in 2016. No one could argue against the importance of tracking temperature increases in order to measure how fast (and intensely) our planet is warming. But, how is the world monitoring those elements making our planet hotter and hotter? How are countries—and the international community—confidently tracking the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)?” |
What can (or should) we expect from public works? Part 2 Kathleen Beegle, Emanuela Galasso | Development Impact | January 23, 2024 “Back in July, we blogged about the conditions under which we would expect medium-term effects to materialize from public works in low-income country contexts, with a focus on productivity. In their forthcoming AER paper, Franklin, Imbert, Abebe, and Mejia-Mantilla 2023 (gated and ungated) provide an important contribution to the evidence on the impact of public works, with a well-designed at scale experiment. And they do so in some notably unique ways, including in terms of the setting (an urban context), the scale (the program employed nearly 4% of all adults in the city, and about one-in-five households in treated areas), and the way they account for indirect effects in the evaluation of anti-poverty programs (which in this urban setting takes the form of commuting and wage spatial spillovers).” |
Exploring the puzzle of trade discrepancies in international trade statistics Hiau Looi Kee | Let’s Talk Development | January 17, 2024 “In international trade a striking phenomenon often occurs — importing and exporting countries record significantly different customs statistics for the same shipments. This results in notable discrepancies, where import figures are frequently much larger than export figures. A classic example of this is observed in the 2018 trade data between the US and China. The US recorded US$563 billion in overall imports from China, while China recorded US$480 billion in exports to the US. This discrepancy of nearly US$83 billion, or 15 percent, is not just puzzling, but also distorts the actual trade scenario, potentially leading to public misperceptions and misguided policy decisions.” |
Is your counterfactual spouse in that country you never moved to working or not? David McKenzie | Development Impact | January 16, 2024 “A common research question in the migration and development literature is “what is the impact of an individual migrating on other members of their family such as their spouse or children.?”. For example, there are many papers that look at impacts on children’s education, spousal labor supply, or household income. This literature typically considers the family as fixed or predetermined. However, in practice migration changes how families form, dissolve, and are conceptualized, so that migration involves not only different counterfactual outcomes for the migrant, but also potentially different counterfactual families associated with them.” |
Subways connect people with opportunity, and they slash carbon emissions in half Somik Lall, Susmita Dasgupta, David Wheeler | Let's Talk Development | January 11, 2024 “Cities around the world struggle with the high road congestion and commuting costs — in time and money — that result from poor transport infrastructure and limited public transit. Such congestion makes it difficult for people to get to work and for families to send kids to school and access healthcare. But public transit — especially subway systems — are expensive to build and usually extremely expensive to operate. A study of 207 subway projects in 47 countries finds that it costs US$200 million to expand subways by one kilometer. KPMG International, a globally recognized financial consulting firm, has estimated that annual outlays for operations and maintenance at 2 percent of initial investments.” |
Most popular Development Impact posts of the past year David McKenzie | Development Impact | January 10, 2024 “While we ease our way into writing new posts for the new year, I thought I’d take a look back, using our blog analytics platform to see who was reading Development Impact in 2023, and which posts were most read. One note here is that many of our readers just receive the blog posts in their email, and these email reads don’t show up in the overall statistics here. We also miss people reading posts through Feedly or other RSS feeds. We had 416,715 unique visitors to the blog in 2023, with one-third of readers in the United States, and then the UK, India, Philippines, and Canada rounding out our top five countries. There were 56 countries from which we got at least 1,000 unique visitors, which is pleasing to us as we try to provide (niche) content of interest to readers around the world.” |
Can financial incentives protect female sex workers from gender-based violence? Lessons learned from a randomized trial of a lottery intervention in Tanzania Rebecca Hémono, Marianna Balampama, Damien De Walque, William H. Dow | Nasikiliza | December 08, 2023 “Gender-based violence (GBV) is a pervasive global health crisis; one in three women worldwide experience GBV in their lifetime – and key vulnerable groups, such as female sex workers, are disproportionately at risk. Improving a woman’s financial autonomy has been hypothesized to mitigate GBV by addressing poverty and economic insecurity, which can increase dependency on violent partners or clients. This has led researchers to investigate the effects of economic interventions on violence, and some have found that providing large sums of money to women or households via cash transfers or social safety net programs can reduce intimate partner violence in certain contexts.” |
Exploring business reform committees: Insights and key learnings Dorina Georgie, Vavarun Eknath, Michael Woolcock | Let’s Talk Development | December 05, 2023 “All countries have a government, and all governments are different. But there is a universal principle: a good governing structure is key to developing regulations that are fit for purpose. To learn more about the structure of governments and contribute to the debate on institutional capacities and strategies for the development of business regulations, we collected novel granular data on business reform committees across 160 economies from 2020 to 2022. These data, combined with relevant sources such as Business Ready, can better inform governments on business regulatory reforms - important to firms and society at large.” |
To read more of our blogs, see: Let’s Talk Development | Development Impact | All About Finance To read previous editions of the newsletter, see: Research Newsletter Archive |
This newsletter is produced by the Development Research Group, part of the Development Economics Vice Presidency of the World Bank Group. The Development Research Group is the World Bank's principal research department, covering a broad range of topics and countries. Research plays a crucial role in learning from past policies and shaping the future. The department undertakes catalytic research with the aim of generating new knowledge on what works in development. With its cross-cutting expertise, the Development Research Group supports effective policy making within and beyond the World Bank. |