The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) Regional Capacity Building Project had a satisfactory overall outcome, a moderately satisfactory performance by the Bank and the monitoring and evaluation quality was substantial.
... See More + Some of the lessons learned were: (1) Over-dependence on a single donor can hurt substantially. (2) It will be desirable for the ACBF to not jettison its hard-won core business strengths built up over decades – especially on macroeconomic management, monitoring and think tank-based knowledge-sharing. (3) ACBF’s business model must reflect – and adapt swiftly to – its often – swiftly changing operating environment. (4) It is desirable to avoid disconnects between the regional and the national. (5) Introducing Bank-like processes and controls in bodies where they may not be appropriate may generate adverse consequences.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR4380 AUG 31, 2018
This study investigates empirically the determinants of labor shares focusing on the role of investment and exchange rate volatility. The authors use a system GMM panel approach and consider 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries along with South Africa for the period 1995-2015.
... See More + The authors results reveal that the level of a country’s investment is a significant factor driving changes in the labor share of income. This evidence is in line with the theoretical mechanism for the role of investment presented by Lawrence (2015). While the authors consider several other factors, suggested by the extant empirical literature, the authors only find evidence for the degree of a country’s exposure to the international financial system, which is inversely related with labor shares. This study is a background note for the South Africa systematic country diagnostic.
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The effect of demographics on poverty measurement based on per capita consumption is well known. The size and composition of the household can affect the well-being of everyone in the household, with respect to total consumption within that household.
... See More + Failure to address this issue may often lead to an underestimation or overestimation of poverty, especially for children. Many studies have tried to address the issue, using the generic approach of equivalence scales. However, the choice of scale is controversial and may lead to comparability problems between countries because of the different demographic structures and choice of the pivot household for establishing the per capita poverty line. Based on the World Bank's African poverty database, this study estimates poverty rates for African children using the new international poverty line of $1.90 a day defined in terms of 2011 purchasing power parity. The equivalence scales approach (Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization) is used with the adjustment suggested by Deaton after the identification of the pivot household, which is defined as the household whose per capita consumption is around the international poverty line. This study shows that taking account of demographics results in downward adjustments of child poverty, adult poverty, and child-adult poverty gaps. Moreover, breakdowns by country show that poverty may vary significantly depending on demographics, which may cause some reranking when comparing poverty between African countries. Finally, sensitivity analyses reveal that child poverty is not sensitive to the child discount factor, unlike adult poverty, but, overall, taking account of demographics is helpful for better identifying poor children.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8426 MAY 03, 2018
This note investigates the nature of corporate savings in South Africa. The first part focuses on the empirical impact of uncertainty on investment in the manufacturing sector, while the second part discusses factors influencing corporate cash hoarding and assesses whether South African firms’ behavior is peculiar.
... See More + The results show that sectoral and systemic risks – our measures of uncertainty – consistently impede investment in the South African manufacturing sector, which could explain in part for firms increasing their savings. Further reasons for that behavior include precautionary measures when economic conditions are unfavorable, increasing appetite for investment abroad at the expense of domestic investment, cash provision for amortization purposes and balance sheet management.
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On January 7, 11 and 19, 1993, Pieter P. Bottelier was interviewed on behalf of the World Bank Group Archives oral history program by John P. Lewis, Richard Webb and Devesh Kapur.
... See More + During his tenure at the Bank from 1970 to 1998, Mr. Bottelier worked in the following areas: as an economist in the Eastern Africa department (1970-1972); as a senior economist in East Asia and Pacific department (1972-1975), the Western Africa department (1975-1977) and the East Asia and Pacific department (1977-1979); as a resident chief economist in Jakarta, Indonesia (1979-1983); as a division chief in Mexico, in the Latin America region (1983-1987); as a director in the Latin America region, country department IV (1987-1991); as a director in the Europe, Middle East and North Africa region, country department II (1991-1993); as a chief of resident mission in Beijing, China (1993-1997); and as a senior adviser to the vice president for East Asia region (1997-1998).
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Brazil has traditionally been a country with low savings rates and consequently low rates of investment. Distortions in the allocation of capital are a key factor behind Brazil’s disappointing productivity performance.
... See More + This paper looks at the role of Brazil’s financial markets in determining the allocation of capital and finds that policies that were designed to overcome market imperfections have instead deepened inefficiencies.
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The Iran Economic Monitor provides an update on key economic developments and policies over the past six months. It examines these economic developments and policies in a longer-term and global context, and assesses their implications for the outlook for the country.
... See More + Its coverage has ranged from the macro-economy to financial markets to indicators of human welfare and development. This edition covers the economic growth of Iran for the year 2016. Growth performance in 2016 exceeded expectations based on the bounce back in oil production and exports. The economy registered a record growth rate of 13.4 percent according to the new GDP data published by the Central Bank of Iran. While Iran’s economy is relatively diversified for a resource-rich country, oil proceeds still play a crucial role in public finances and external accounts. Iran’s ability to increase production in 2016, despite the cuts agreed to by the rest of the OPEC members helped bring production near its pre-sanctions levels. The surge in exports led to an improvement in the current account surplus, to 3.9 percent of GDP in 2016, as growth in imports remained stagnant. Increased oil production and exports brought an increase in government revenues, however, the improvement was not enough to offset the widening expenditures; the fiscal deficit grew from 1.7 percent in 2015 to an estimated 2.2 percent in 2016. Creating fiscal space for growth will be important especially in view of the expected burden from securitization of government arrears and growing pension system liabilities. Iran managed to achieve single digit inflation in 2016, but inflationary pressures resurfaced towards the end of the year and in early 2017, as liquidity rose and the Iranian Rial continued to depreciate. Job creation remained limited. In the medium-term, the growth rates are expected to revert to an average of 4 percent, reflecting modest reintegration with the global economy in banking, trade and investment. There are significant downside risks, both domestic and external, to this moderate medium-term outlook.
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This paper finds that capital and labor incomes in the United States have become more closely associated since the 1980s. This contributed to the well-known increase in the top 1 percent's share of total income, exacerbating rising inequality in capital incomes and earnings.
... See More + The paper shows that the trend in the association is U-shaped, as the recent increase contrasts with a tendency toward a weakening association until the 1980s. The paper uses data derived from tax records, studies the asymmetries in the association, tests for robustness to alternative income definitions, and discusses the potential role of declining top marginal tax rates.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8268 DEC 11, 2017
Developments in the second half of 2017 indicate that the slowdown in Mozambique's economic performance may be taking hold, shifting this once fast-growing economy to a more modest pace of growth.
... See More + GDP growth is expected to dip to 3.1 percent in 2017, despite substantial increases in coal and aluminum exports. Whilst these exports boomed, small and medium enterprises (SMEs)have fallen back even further, especially in the manufacturing sector, which contracted for this first time since 1994. Current trends make it clear that Mozambique needs to redouble its efforts to support small and medium enterprises, and to look beyond the extractive sector for more balanced growth. The drift towards a natural resource extraction based economy with low employment generation makes the case for Mozambique to leverage off its growing and youthful population provides for future growth.
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This paper estimates the effect of China’s exchange rate changes on exports of developing countries in third markets. The degree ofcompetition between China and its developing country competitors in specific products and destinations plays a key role in the identification strategy.
... See More + The strategy exploits variation across exporters,importers, products and time—afforded both by disaggregated tradedata and bilateral exchange rates—to estimate this “competitor country effect.” There is robust evidence of a statistically and quantitatively significant effect. A 10 percent appreciation of China’s realexchange rate boosts a developing country’s exports at the product level on average by about 1.5–2.5 percent.
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Global growth gained momentum in 2017. After slowing to 2.4 percent in 2016 as investment and trade weakened, global growth accelerated to a projected 2.7 percent for 2017.Moreover, the recovery has been broad-based.Global trade also continued to strengthen and external financing conditions remain benign.Amid these positive tailwinds, along with firming oil prices and growing macro-stability, the Russian economy returned to modest growth in 2017.
... See More + The growth momentum of the second half of 2016 spilled over to 2017 and was especially strong in the second quarter this was supported by a rebound in domestic demand in the first half of 2017—which also contributed to a growth slowdown starting in the third quarter.On the production side, mineral resource extraction, transportation, and state management and provisioning for national security drove growth in the first quarter of 2017.Monetary policy remained prudent and consistent with the inflation-targeting framework. However, improvement in headline indicators masks underlying disparities and remaining vulnerabilities.
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This newsletter includes the following headings: (i) India makes huge progress in the ease of doing business rankings; (ii) pathways to prosperity – World Bank series; (iii) development dialogue : triple helix of innovation; (iv) ICR update : Punjab rural water supply and sanitation project; (v) interview; (vi) recent project signings; (vii) new additions to the public information center; and (viii) contact information.
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This background note, prepared for the inaugural meeting of the Planning Community of Practice (PCoP), describes Malaysia’s experience with national development planning at the federal level.
... See More + Malaysia’s planning system can be considered as being relatively sophisticated among countries in its income group worldwide. The country has had sixty years of experience with national development planning and is now implementing its eleventh five-year development plan (the 11th Malaysia Plan, 2016-2020).These medium-term operational plans are developed within the framework of a longer-term perspective or vision covering ten to twenty (or even more) years. They are linked to the budget cycle, ensuring that the policies, strategies, programs and projects contained in the medium-term plans receive annual budgetary allocations to fund their implementation.Across the developing world, national development planning has been a feature of the development paradigm since the end of World War II and gained currency during the “independence era.”Historically, the existence of a planning document (“the Plan”) served several purposes. First, it was considered a prerequisite for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) and accessing foreign aid and loans.Second, the planning process served a political purpose by establishing priorities and injecting realism and rationality into political discourse, exerting a certain degree of discipline over both government and opposition. Third, from a public administration standpoint, the existence of a Plan can impart a strong sense of collective purpose and establish clear priorities among government ministries and agencies.In the above context, this note focuses on the nuts and bolts of Malaysia’s approach to national development planning. The remainder of this note is divided into four sections. The following section, Section two provides a brief history of Malaysia’s planning system. It relates when national development planning was introduced, the modalities employed, and the early goals and objectives. Section three describes how the planning function works in practice, the institutions and stakeholders involved, the long-, medium-, and short-term planning, the connection between planning and budgeting, as well as the monitoring of the national development plan implementation. The section also describes the central role of the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) in planning, coordination and the preparation of the development budget. Section four traces how the planning machinery has evolved in terms of new approaches, tools and structures introduced to keep up with the changing local and global scenario. The final section describes some of the challenges and lessons learnt.
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Afghanistan's biggest economic challenge is finding sustainable sources of growth. To date, the World Bank has committed more than $3.73 billion for development projects.
... See More + The Bank-administered Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund has raised more than 10 billion dollars.
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