Improving access to productive employment is a key policy challenge, especially in low-income countries (LICs), where the only asset in abundance is labor.
... See More + Building on ongoing research on earnings mobility, this study uses unusually rich longitudinal data from Ghana and Tanzania to identify engines of, and barriers to, earnings and earnings mobility. It examines the role of individual characteristics such as gender, age, and skills and characteristics of the job, but it also focuses on the role of job switches for example, moves into and out of self-employment. It zooms in particularly on the drivers of transitions between low-paying and high-paying jobs, and addresses questions such as whether being low paid is a transitory or permanent phenomenon, and whether it has a scarring effect on an individual's employment prospects. The extent to which earnings dynamics differ for women and young adults is also discussed in detail. The cross-country comparison of earnings dynamics and labor market transitions helps shed light on the institutional factors that promote labor market mobility and entrepreneurship. The report is organized as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two presents a brief review of related literature. Chapter three gives a descriptive overview of the labor markets in the two countries. Chapter four examines the determinants of earnings levels. Chapter five examines determinants of earnings growth. Chapter six focuses on low-pay and high-pay transitions and analyzes whether the experience of being in a low-paying job undermines an individual's future earnings prospects. Chapter seven discusses key policy implications.
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Publication 88483 MAY 29, 2014
Falco, Paolo; Kerr, Andrew; Paci, Pierella; Rijkers, Bob
This report presents a summary of the projected global economic growth for 2014. Global growth is projected to accelerate at a greater rate in 2014 than the previous year.
... See More + Much of the initial acceleration reflects a pick-up in high-income country growth, which after years of extreme weakness and outright recessions, appear to be finally emerging from the global financial crisis. Although developing country growth in 2013 was relatively weak, it has been improving, partly reflecting strengthening growth in high-income countries, but also a recovery from earlier weakness in large middle-income countries, such as India and China. However, prospects will be sensitive to market reactions to quantitative easing withdrawal. On a positive note, strengthening trade is expected to be a bolstering factor.
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Bitcoin has had a volatile journey since it was launched in 2009, attracting attention among conventional investors as well as the black market.
... See More + Regulators and policy makers are also following Bitcoin, raising the occasional eyebrow as they evaluate Bitcoin's risks and benefits and how to regulate this little understood virtual currency. Some media reports have confused Bitcoin with more popular electronic money (e-money) schemes used in many low-income countries to reach the unbanked. But the two are markedly different and should not be conflated. This brief provides information about Bitcoin and contrasts Bitcoin with e-money to avoid alarm about the former to the detriment of the latter.
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Bitcoin has had a volatile journey since it was launched in 2009, attracting attention among conventional investors as well as the black market.
... See More + Regulators and policy makers are also following Bitcoin, raising the occasional eyebrow as they evaluate Bitcoin's risks and benefits and how to regulate this little understood virtual currency. Some media reports have confused Bitcoin with more popular electronic money (e-money) schemes used in many low-income countries to reach the unbanked. But the two are markedly different and should not be conflated. This brief provides information about Bitcoin and contrasts Bitcoin with e-money to avoid alarm about the former to the detriment of the latter.
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Bitcoin has had a volatile journey since it was launched in 2009, attracting attention among conventional investors as well as the black market.
... See More + Regulators and policy makers are also following Bitcoin, raising the occasional eyebrow as they evaluate Bitcoin's risks and benefits and how to regulate this little understood virtual currency. Some media reports have confused Bitcoin with more popular electronic money (e-money) schemes used in many low-income countries to reach the unbanked. But the two are markedly different and should not be conflated. This brief provides information about Bitcoin and contrasts Bitcoin with e-money to avoid alarm about the former to the detriment of the latter.
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This paper studies how firm-level export performance is affected by Real Exchange Rate (RER) volatility and investigates whether this effect depends on existing financial constraints.
... See More + The empirical analysis relies on export data for more than 100,000 Chinese exporters over the 2000-6 period. The results confirm a trade-deterring effect of RER volatility. Firms' decision to begin exporting and the exported value decrease for destinations with higher exchange rate volatility; besides, this effect is magnified for financially vulnerable firms. As expected, financial development seems to dampen this negative impact, especially on the intensive margin of export. These results provide micro-founded evidence suggesting that the existence of well-developed financial markets allows firms to hedge exchange rate risk. The results also support a key role of financial constraints in determining the macro impact of RER volatility on real outcomes.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6638 OCT 01, 2013
Mobile banking services offer great potential to expand financial services, particularly payment services, to the poor. They also provide a convenient and cost effective way to access bank accounts.
... See More + This paper constitutes a first attempt to explain statistically what factors contribute to mobile banking usage, with a particular focus on the regulatory framework. The authors construct an index that measures the existence of laws and regulation that support mobile banking activity for 35 countries. Using variations in regulatory environments across these countries and armed with newly released data on mobile banking usage by approximately 37,000 individuals in these 35 countries, the paper sheds light on the importance of laws and regulation in supporting mobile banking. The analysis finds that a supporting regulatory framework is associated with higher usage of mobile banking for the general population as well as for the unbanked.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6652 OCT 01, 2013
Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: financial markets; high-income economics; and developing economies.
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Providing financing to Mexican sub-national governments was challenging due to various market conditions and regulations. First, specific constitutional provisions required the states to borrow exclusively in local currency and from local financial institutions.
... See More + Secondly, the spread charged over the IBRD cost of funds by the local financial intermediary (state-owned development bank, BANOBRAS) to states and municipalities resulted in an uncompetitive overall cost. Finally, the financial intermediaries had traditionally hedged against foreign currency exposure through a foreign exchange trust fund established by the Ministry of Finance, effectively concentrating all foreign exchange risk relating to foreign currency borrowing by sub-nationals in the hands of the federal government. These issues and constraints all contributed to an unattractive pricing structure for IBRD loans to sub-sovereigns in Mexico and an inefficient allocation of foreign exchange exposure for the government.
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This overview, followed by five supporting reports, identifies these challenges of tomorrow, points to key choices ahead, and recommends not just what needs to be reformed, but how to undertake the reforms.
... See More + The overview is divided into nine chapters. The first chapter examines the characteristics of Chinas development since 1978; considers future opportunities, challenges, and risks; and describes a vision of China in the year 2030. The second chapter maps a new strategy that will realize this vision, focusing on the key choices ahead for China to sustain rapid economic and social development and become a modern, harmonious, and creative high-income society before 2030. Chapters three to eight elaborate on each of the six pillars of the new strategy: consolidating Chinas market foundations; enhancing innovation; promoting green development; ensuring equality of opportunity and social protection for all; strengthening public finances; and achieving mutually beneficial win-win relations between China and the rest of the world. The ninth and final chapter addresses implementation challenges, including the sequencing of reforms and overcoming obstacles that are likely to emerge.
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This overview, followed by five supporting reports, identifies these challenges of tomorrow, points to key choices ahead, and recommends not just what needs to be reformed, but how to undertake the reforms.
... See More + The overview is divided into nine chapters. The first chapter examines the characteristics of Chinas development since 1978; considers future opportunities, challenges, and risks; and describes a vision of China in the year 2030. The second chapter maps a new strategy that will realize this vision, focusing on the key choices ahead for China to sustain rapid economic and social development and become a modern, harmonious, and creative high-income society before 2030. Chapters three to eight elaborate on each of the six pillars of the new strategy: consolidating Chinas market foundations; enhancing innovation; promoting green development; ensuring equality of opportunity and social protection for all; strengthening public finances; and achieving mutually beneficial win-win relations between China and the rest of the world. The ninth and final chapter addresses implementation challenges, including the sequencing of reforms and overcoming obstacles that are likely to emerge.
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The objective of the Ethiopia Sustainable Tourism Development Project is to enhance the quality and variety of tourism products and services in targeted destinations so as to increase the volume of tourism, foreign exchange, earnings and jobs.
... See More + The reallocation is found to be necessary to streamline the project activities to a more focused and realistic target and reallocate resources to meet the projects development objectives by the closing date of 31 December 2014. This will enable achievement of the Project Development Objective (PDO) and improved disbursements given the current status of the tourism sector in the country and as a result of the impact of the partial suspension on the project. Adjusting the outcome indicators of the project is also essential to have a better mechanism for tracking the project outcomes and to make sure that the financial utilization of the project is going to be satisfactory at the end of the project life. The reallocation includes an increase in works (from USD 14.29 to USD 15.83) and goods (from USD 2.22 to USD 4.28) to enable and better reflect current costs for efforts in these two categories in each of the targeted destinations. Finally, the reallocation supports the implementation of the Resettlement Action Plan including drawing upon some of the unallocated funds.
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This paper considers the effects of inaccurate real-time output data on fiscal management, both with respect to budgetary planning and fiscal surveillance.
... See More + As newer and better information becomes available, output data available in real time get revised and are likely to conflict with final figures that are only released some years later. Nevertheless, fiscal policy needs to be inevitably based on real-time figures. The paper develops a simple modeling framework to formalize these linkages and combines it with a newly compiled dataset from the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook, comprising final and real-time output data for 175 countries, over a period of 17 years. We simulate the effects of output revisions on revisions of the overall balance, the structural balance and debt accumulation. It finds that output revisions may have substantial effects on the ability of governments to correctly estimate the overall balance and the structural fiscal balance in real time, and that the effects may imply substantial debt accumulation.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6303 JAN 01, 2013
A common behavioral assumption of micro-economic theory is that income is fungible. Using household panel data from rural China and Tanzania, this study finds however that people are more likely to spend unearned income on less basic consumption goods such as alcohol and tobacco, non-staple food, transportation and communication, and clothing, while they are somewhat more likely to spend earned income on basic consumption goods such as staple food, and invest it in education.
... See More + This resonates with the widespread cultural notion that money that is easily earned is also more easily spent. Cognitively, the results could be understood within the context of emotional accounting, whereby people classify income based on the emotions it evokes, prompting them to spend hard earned money more wisely to mitigate the negative connotations associated with its acquisition. The policy implications are real, bearing for example on the choice between employment guarantee schemes and cash transfers in designing social security programs.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6298 DEC 01, 2012
Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: European stocks rise to four-month high on EU hopes; Japan's industrial output remains flat in June; in other high income countries' news; and among emerging markets in Latin America and Caribbean.
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Newsletter 73549 JUL 30, 2012
Dennis, Allen; Mohapatra, Sanket; Ju Kim, Eung; Vashakmadze, Ekaterine T.
Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: Moody's cuts its ratings on 8 Brazilian banks; Euro area confidence continues to slump in June; and among emerging markets in Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Newsletter 70687 JUN 28, 2012
Dennis, Allen; Kim, Eung Ju; Mohapatra, Sanket; Riordan, Mick
Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: developing-country stocks advance the most in a week on China; and among emerging markets in Europe and Central Asia.
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Newsletter 70686 JUN 27, 2012
Dennis, Allen; Kim, Eung Ju; Mohapatra, Sanket; Riordan, Mick
Some of the headings included in this issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG) daily economics and financial market commentary newsletter are as follows: Spanish and Italian bonds decline amid debt auctions; U.S. home prices fall at slowest pace since November 2010 as housing market continues to firm; and among emerging markets in Latin America and Caribbean.
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Newsletter 70685 JUN 26, 2012
Dennis, Allen; Kim, Eung Ju; Mohapatra, Sanket; Riordan, Mick