Survey data from 120 developing countries are used to examine the relation between establishment size and age in the formal sector. Existing research suggests that manufacturing establishments in developing countries do not grow over time, most likely because of market imperfections and regulations.
... See More + To the contrary, this paper finds that the average plant in developing countries that is more than 40 years old employs almost five times as many workers as the average plant that is five years old or younger. The analysis finds consistent evidence when it looks within a large country, India, based on detailed manufacturing census data over 23 years. It also finds that differences in financial development across Indian states, while substantial, have a minor effect on firm growth, consistent with inefficiency of state-owned financial systems. These results hold controlling for differences in labor regulations across states, capital intensity, labor regulations, and firms born before and after the major reforms.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6718 DEC 01, 2013
The Resilience in Education Settings (RES)-Research training module, designed by the Education Resilience Approaches (ERA) Program, builds on the capacities of academics and education practitioners in fragile, conflict and violence affected contexts to undertake locally relevant and rigorous education resilience research.
... See More + Following a pilot in Central America, another 9 month-long training is being delivered in South Asia. In November 2013, the first of two face-to-face workshops took place in Delhi, India, with participants from across the South Asian region.
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This overview of the research sector in the Western Balkans is a companion piece to the Western Balkans regional research and development (R and D) strategy for innovation.
... See More + The strategy aims to strengthen the region's research capacity, enhance intraregional cooperation, promote collaboration with business sectors, explore possibilities for financing R and D from European Union (EU) funding schemes and other external sources, and help integrate the region into the European research area (ERA) and innovation union. This overview provides the background and analysis that informed the development of the strategy. The background work includes four studies on the different components of the research sector, a policy questionnaire, and seven country studies reviewing key policies, institutions, and performance of the national research sectors. This overview outlines the performance of the research and innovation sector, and describes the major drivers of this performance. It starts by presenting a framework of the different components of research and innovation in the Western Balkans. This leads into section two discussing the performance of the research sector, which has been improving, but still lags international benchmarks. This reflects a number of challenges facing the sector, including the effects of a substantial brain drain, insufficient funding and a mismatch between research facilities, and economic needs. Section three discusses the technology transfer system and its important role in the performance of the research and innovation sector as a whole. The contribution of technology transfer in the region is limited, as reflected for example, in the limited interaction between the research and enterprise sectors. The enterprise sector is discussed in section four. Section five describes the policy and institutional framework, pointing out a number of areas where this can be strengthened. This includes improving the career path for researchers, providing more funding through competitive processes as opposed to block grants, and continuing to strengthen policy co-ordination. The final section concludes.
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Working Paper 82010 OCT 21, 2013
Correa, Paulo; Zuniga, Pluvia; De Rosa, Donato; Vujovic, Dusan; Qasim, Qursum; Myburgh, Andrew; Lundkvist, Petter; Subhash, Hari
A coordinated effort to develop a regional research and development (R and D) strategy for innovation was launched by the Joint Statement of Sarajevo, signed on April 24, 2009, by the ministers from the Western Balkans (WB) responsible for science and research; the European Union (EU) commissioner for science and research; and the Czech Republic Presidency of the Council of the European Union, under the auspices of the regional cooperation council secretary general.
... See More + In June 2011, the World Bank signed an agreement with the European Commission (EC) to provide technical assistance for the development of the WB regional R and D strategy for innovation technical assistance (RIS-TA). The strategy aims to strengthen the region's research capacity, enhance intraregional cooperation, promote collaboration with business sectors, explore possibilities for financing R and D from EU funding schemes and other external sources, and help integrate the region into the European research area (ERA) and innovation union. This report is organized as follows: section one gives introduction; section two gives strategic context; section three describes reform program; section four presents action plan for regional cooperation; and section five presents proposed programs.
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Can project evaluation methods be used to evaluate programs: complex interventions involving multiple activities? A program evaluation cannot be based simply on separate evaluations of its components if interactions between the activities are important.
... See More + In this paper a measure is proposed, the total program effect (TPE), which is an extension of the average treatment effect on the treated (ATET). It explicitly takes into account that in the real world (with heterogeneous treatment effects) individual treatment effects and program assignment are often correlated. The TPE can also deal with the common situation in which such a correlation is the result of decisions on (intended) program participation not being taken centrally. In this context RCTs are less suitable even for the simplest interventions. The TPE can be estimated by applying regression techniques to observational data from a representative sample from the targeted population. The approach is illustrated with an evaluation of a health insurance program in Vietnam.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6587 SEP 01, 2013
Livestock are an important component of rural livelihoods in developing countries, but data about this source of income and wealth are difficult to collect because of the nomadic and semi-nomadic nature of many pastoralist populations.
... See More + Most household surveys exclude those without permanent dwellings, leading to undercoverage. This study explores the use of a random geographic cluster sample as an alternative to the household-based sample. In this design, points are randomly selected and all eligible respondents found inside circles drawn around the selected points are interviewed. This approach should eliminate undercoverage of mobile populations. The results of a random geographic cluster sample survey are presented with a total sample size of 784 households to measure livestock ownership in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 2012. The paper explores the data quality of the random geographic cluster sample relative to a recent household survey and discusses the implementation challenges.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6589 SEP 01, 2013
This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled One-time transfers of cash or capital have long-lasting effects on microenterprises in Sri Lanka, conducted during the time period between 2005 to 2007 in Sri Lanka.
... See More + The study observed that found long lasting impacts from one-time grants given in a randomized experiment to subsistence firms. Two main patterns emerged from this follow up study: the male treated group always had higher profits than the control group, and the gap did not shrink over time; and females in the control have similar profits to females in the treatment group. For females, much of the treatment gets diverted from the business to the household. Also, women are more likely to work in industries with low economies of scale. Funding for the study derived from Gender Action Plan, NSF Grant.
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Brief 81396 AUG 14, 2013
Mel, Suresh De; McKenzie, David; Woodruff, Christopher
This brief summarizes the when is capital enough to get female enterprises growing? Evidence from a randomized experiment in Ghana. The treatment was staggered from May 2009-February 2010.
... See More + Standard models of investment predict that credit constrained firms should grow rapidly when given additional capital, and that how this capital is provided should not affect decisions to invest in the business or consume the capital. The authors randomly gave cash and in-kind grants to male- and female-owned microenterprises in urban Ghana. Their findings cast doubt on the ability of capital alone to stimulate the growth of female microenterprises. First, while the average treatment effects of the in-kind grants are large and positive for both males and females, the gain in profits is almost zero for women with initial profits below the median, suggesting that capital alone is not enough to grow subsistence enterprises owned by women. Second, for women they strongly reject equality of the cash and in-kind grants; only in-kind grants lead to growth in business profits. The results for men also suggest a lower impact of cash, but differences between cash and in kind grants are less robust. The difference in the effects of cash and in-kind grants is associated more with a lack of self-control than with external pressure. As a result, the manner in which funding is provided affects microenterprise growth.
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Brief 81522 AUG 14, 2013
Fafchamps, Marcel; McKenzie, David; Quinn, Simon; Woodruff, Christopher
The magnitude and persistence of growth in gross domestic product are topics of intense scrutiny by economists. Although the existing techniques provide a range of tools to study the nature of growth and volatility time series, these usually come with shortcomings, including the need to arbitrarily define acceleration spells, and focus on a particular frequency at a time.
... See More + This paper explores the application of "wavelet-based" techniques to study the time-varying nature of growth and volatility. These techniques lend themselves to a more robust analysis of short-term and long-term determinants of growth and volatility than the traditional decomposition techniques, as demonstrated on a small sample of countries. In addition to having desirable technical advantages, such as localization in time and frequency and the ability to work with non-stationary series, these techniques also make it possible to accurately decompose the association between growth trajectories of different countries over different time horizons. Such "co-movement" analysis can provide policy makers with important insights on regional integration, growth poles, and how short and long term developments in other countries affect their domestic economy.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6578 AUG 01, 2013
This paper applies meta-analysis techniques to a sample of 37 studies published during 2004-2011. These papers assess the impact of direct subsidies on business research and development.
... See More + The results show that the effect of public investment on research and development is predominantly positive and significant. Furthermore, public funds do not crowd out but incentivize firms to revert funds into research and development. The coefficient of additionality impacts on research and development ranges from 0.166 to 0.252, with reasonable confidence intervals at the 95 percent level. The results are highly sensitive to the method used. The high heterogeneity of precision is explained by the wide variety of methodologies used to estimate the impacts and paper characteristics.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6532 JUL 01, 2013
Correa, Paulo; Andres, Luis; Borja-Vega, Christian
This report presents the findings, conclusions and recommendations of a study exploring the resilience of the education community in Urrao, Anitoquia in Colombia.
... See More + It uses the Conflict and Education Resilience Assessment tool (Valoración del Conflicto y la Resiliencia Educativa, CREA).
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This report presents the findings, conclusions and recommendations of a study exploring the resilience of the education community in Urrao, Anitoquia in Colombia.
... See More + It uses the Conflict and Education Resilience Assessment tool (Valoración del Conflicto y la Resiliencia Educativa, CREA).
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This paper introduces a computationally efficient method for estimating structural parameters of dynamic discrete choice models with large choice sets.
... See More + The method is based on Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) regression, which is widely used in the international trade and migration literature to estimate the gravity equation. Unlike most of the existing methods in the literature, it does not require strong parametric assumptions on agents' expectations, thus it can accommodate macroeconomic and policy shocks. The regression requires count data as opposed to choice probabilities; therefore it can handle sparse decision transition matrices caused by small sample sizes. As an example application, the paper estimates sectoral worker mobility in the United States.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6480 JUN 01, 2013
Estimates of the extent of corruption rely largely on self-reports of individuals, business managers, and government officials. Yet it is well known that survey respondents are reticent to tell the truth about activities to which social and legal stigma are attached, implying a downward bias in survey-based estimates of corruption.
... See More + This paper develops a method to estimate the prevalence of reticent behavior, in order to isolate rates of corruption that fully reflect respondent reticence in answering sensitive questions. The method is based on a statistical model of how respondents behave when answering a combination of conventional and random-response survey questions. The responses to these different types of questions reflect three probabilities -- that the respondent has done the sensitive act in question, that the respondent exhibits reticence in answering sensitive questions, and that a reticent respondent is not candid in answering any specific sensitive question. These probabilities can be estimated using a method-of-moments estimator. Evidence from the 2010 World Bank Enterprise survey in Peru suggests reticence-adjusted estimates of corruption that are roughly twice as large as indicated by responses to standard questions. Reticence-adjusted estimates of corruption are also substantially higher in a set of ten Asian countries covered in the Gallup World Poll.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6488 JUN 01, 2013
Land area is a fundamental component of agricultural statistics, and of analyses undertaken by agricultural economists. While household surveys in developing countries have traditionally relied on farmers' own, potentially error-prone, land area assessments, the availability of affordable and reliable Global Positioning System (GPS) units has made GPS-based area measurement a practical alternative.
... See More + Nonetheless, in an attempt to reduce costs, keep interview durations within reasonable limits, and avoid the difficulty of asking respondents to accompany interviewers to distant plots, survey implementing agencies typically require interviewers to record GPS-based area measurements only for plots within a given radius of dwelling locations. It is, therefore, common for as much as a third of the sample plots not to be measured, and research has not shed light on the possible selection bias in analyses relying on partial data due to gaps in GPS-based area measures. This paper explores the patterns of missingness in GPS-based plot areas, and investigates their implications for land productivity estimates and the inverse scale-land productivity relationship. Using Multiple Imputation (MI) to predict missing GPS-based plot areas in nationally-representative survey data from Uganda and Tanzania, the paper highlights the potential of MI in reliably simulating the missing data, and confirms the existence of an inverse scale-land productivity relationship, which is strengthened by using the complete, multiply-imputed dataset. The study demonstrates the usefulness of judiciously reconstructed GPS-based areas in alleviating concerns over potential measurement error in farmer-reported areas, and with regards to systematic bias in plot selection for GPS-based area measurement.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6490 JUN 01, 2013
The international community is paying increased attention to the 25 percent of the world's population that lives in fragile and conflict affected settings, acknowledging that these settings represent daunting development challenges.
... See More + To deliver better results on the ground, it is necessary to improve the understanding of the impacts and effectiveness of development interventions operating in contexts of conflict and fragility. This paper argues that it is both possible and important to carry out impact evaluations even in settings of violent conflict, and it presents some examples from a collection of impact evaluations of conflict prevention and peacebuilding interventions. The paper examines the practices of impact evaluators in the peacebuilding sector to see how they address evaluation design, data collection, and conflict analysis. Finally, it argues that such evaluations are crucial for testing assumptions about how development interventions affect change -- the so-called "theory of change" -- which is important for understanding the results on the ground.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6496 JUN 01, 2013
This manual presents the objectives and procedures for application of a research framework using a mixed-methods approach from the Education Resilience Approaches (ERA) Program to help collect evidence on the opportunities, support, and process that help children and youth succeed in school in spite of overwhelmingly difficult contexts.
... See More + The Resilience in Education Systems Research (RES-Research) manual provides guidance across the research process, positioning and conceptualizing, designing, data collection and analysis for resilience-focused studies. It emphasizes a mixed-methods approach to sampling, data collection and analysis to tap into the benefits of integrating diverse research approaches. The RES-Research guide supports studies to inform discussion across education actors, such as policy makers, ministry officials, other service providers, and education institutions, on how schools, universities, and education systems can collaborate to understand adversity, recognize the assets and opportunities for personal, group and social transformations, and inform policy makers, program designers, and service providers on context- and situation-relevant approaches to foster resilience as well as mitigate the sources of adversity.
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