Restrictions on economic activity in area C of the West Bank have been particularly detrimental to the Palestinian economy. Area C constitutes about 61 percent of the West Bank territory.
... Vea más + Area C is richly endowed with natural resources and it is contiguous, whereas areas A and B are smaller territorial islands. Mobilizing the area C potential will help a faltering Palestinian economy. Since area C is where the majority of the West Bank's natural resources laid, the impact of these restrictions on the Palestinian economy has been considerable. Thus, the key to Palestinian prosperity continues to lie in the removal of these restrictions with due regard for Israel's security. This report shows that rolling back the restrictions will bring substantial benefits to the Palestinian economy and can usher in a new period of increasing Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) and substantially improve prospects for sustained growth. This report examines the economic benefits of lifting the restrictions on movement and access as well as other administrative obstacles to Palestinian investment and economic activity in area C. It focuses on the economic potential of area C and does not prejudge the status of any territory which may be subject to negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. The authors examine potential direct, sector-specific benefits, but also indirect benefits related to improvements in physical and institutional infrastructure, as well as spillover effects to other sectors of the Palestinian economy. Realizing the full potential of such investments requires other changes as well - first, the rolling back of the movement and access restrictions in force outside area C, which prevent the easy export of Palestinian products and inhibit tourists and investors from accessing area C; and second, further reforms by the Palestinian authority to better enable potential investors to register businesses, enforce contracts, and acquire finance.
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Publicación 89370 JUL 02, 2014
Niksic, Orhan; Eddin, Nur Nasser; Cali Massimiliano
Climate change is a major source of concern in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and migration is often understood as one of several strategies used by households to respond to changes in climate and environmental conditions, including extreme weather events.
... Vea más + This study focuses on the link between climate change and migration. Most micro-level studies measure climate change either by the incidences of extreme weather events or by variation in temperature or rainfall. A few studies have found that formal and informal institutions as well as policies also affect migration. Institutions that make government more responsive to households (for example through public spending) discourage both international and domestic migration in the aftermath of extreme weather events. Migration is often an option of last resort after vulnerable rural populations attempting to cope with new and challenging circumstances have exhausted other options such as eating less, selling assets, or removing children from school. This study is based in large part on new data collected in 2011 in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and the Republic of Yemen. The surveys were administered by in-country partners to a randomly selected set of 800 households per country. It is also important to emphasize that neither the household survey results nor the findings from the qualitative focus groups are meant to be representative of the five countries in which the work was carried, since only a few areas were surveyed in each country. This report is organized as follows: section one gives synthesis. Section two discusses household perceptions about climate change and extreme weather events. Section three focuses on migration as a coping mechanisms and income diversification strategy. Section four examines other coping and adaptation strategies. Section five discusses perceptions about government and community programs.
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This paper proposes diagnostics to assess the accuracy of survey-to-survey imputation methods and applies them to examine why imputing from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey into the Labor Force Survey fails to accurately project poverty trends in Sri Lanka between 2006 and 2009.
... Vea más + Survey-to-survey imputation methods rely on two key assumptions: (i) that the questions in the two surveys are asked in a consistent way and (ii) that common variables of the two surveys explain a large share of the intertemporal change in household expenditure and poverty. In addition, differences in sampling design can lead validation tests to underestimate the accuracy of survey-to-survey predictions. In Sri Lanka, the causes of failure differ across sectors. In the urban sector, the primary culprit is differences between the two surveys in the design of the questionnaire. In the rural and estate sectors, the set of common variables in the prediction model does not adequately capture changes in poverty. The paper concludes that in Sri Lanka, survey-to-survey imputation between the Household Income and Expenditure Survey and the Labor Force Survey cannot produce accurate poverty estimates unless the Labor Force Survey adds additional questions on assets and is redesigned to use a questionnaire that is compatible with the Household Income and Expenditure Survey. Alternatively, a new welfare-tracking survey that satisfies these conditions could be established.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6961 JUL 01, 2014
Newhouse, D.; Shivakumaran, S.; Takamatsu, S.; Yoshida, N.
This paper proposes a method for estimating distribution functions that are associated with the nested errors in linear mixed models. The estimator incorporates Empirical Bayes prediction while making minimal assumptions about the shape of the error distributions.
... Vea más + The application presented in this paper is the small area estimation of poverty and inequality, although this denotes by no means the only application. Monte-Carlo simulations show that estimates of poverty and inequality can be severely biased when the non-normality of the errors is ignored. The bias can be as high as 2 to 3 percent on a poverty rate of 20 to 30 percent. Most of this bias is resolved when using the proposed estimator. The approach is applicable to both survey-to-census and survey-to-survey prediction.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6962 JUL 01, 2014
This paper shows how Dutch disease effects may arise solely from a shift in demand following a natural resource discovery. The natural resource wealth increases the demand for non-tradable luxury services due to non-homothetic preferences.
... Vea más + Labor that could be used to develop other non-resource tradable sectors is pulled into these service sectors. As a result, manufactures and other tradable goods are more likely to be imported, and learning and productivity improvements accrue to the foreign exporters. However, once the natural resources diminish, there is less income to purchase the services and non-resource tradable goods. Thus, the temporary gain in purchasing power translates into long-term stagnation. As opposed to conventional models where income distribution has no effect on economic outcomes, an unequal distribution of the rents from resource wealth further intensifies the Dutch disease dynamics within this framework.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6966 JUL 01, 2014
This paper studies the impact of the rapid expansion of the Brazilian road network, which occurred from the 1960s to the 2000s, on the growth and spatial allocation of population and economic activity across the country's municipalities.
... Vea más + It addresses the problem of endogeneity in infrastructure location by using an original empirical strategy, based on the "historical natural experiment" constituted by the creation of the new federal capital city Brasília in 1960. The results reveal a dual pattern, with improved transport connections increasing concentration of economic activity and population around the main centers in the South of the country, while spurring the emergence of secondary economic centers in the less developed North, in line with predictions in terms of agglomeration economies. Over the period, roads are shown to account for half of pcGDP growth and to spur a significant decrease in spatial inequality.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6964 JUL 01, 2014
As Brazil and China have become two of the largest global economies, they have also become increasingly connected. Three decades of fast-paced growth and structural change have turned China into the worlds second-largest economy and have transformed it into an upper-middle income country.
... Vea más + Brazil, which had experienced its own episode of high growth between 1965 and 1974, has also become one of the largest economies. Over the last decade, Brazil and China have developed increasingly close linkages, which has come as no surprise given the scale of their economies, the complementary structure of resource endowments as well as the differences between the two countries in the structure of production and demand. This report examines how structural change in China is expected to present new opportunities and challenges for Brazil to enhance its global position and energize growth. Building on recent work (World Bank and Development Research Center, 2013), this report identifies three potential longer-term transformations of the Chinese economy structurally slower growth, a rebalancing on the demand and supply side, and a move up the value chain and examines their implications for Brazil. The report shows how the slowdown and rebalancing of China may also present new opportunities for Brazil, even if Chinas progression up the value chain is likely to present also new challenges. It lays out how Brazil could generate greater benefits from its interactions with China and how the changes in China would offer a new window of opportunity for Brazil to press ahead with its structural reform agenda. Overall, Brazil could gain tremendously from the anticipated structural changes in China, even though realizing these gains will require a proactive policy stance to enhance external ties and address internal growth and productivity constraints.
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As Brazil and China have become two of the largest global economies, they have also become increasingly connected. Three decades of fast-paced growth and structural change have turned China into the worlds second-largest economy and have transformed it into an upper-middle income country.
... Vea más + Brazil, which had experienced its own episode of high growth between 1965 and 1974, has also become one of the largest economies. Over the last decade, Brazil and China have developed increasingly close linkages, which has come as no surprise given the scale of their economies, the complementary structure of resource endowments as well as the differences between the two countries in the structure of production and demand. This report examines how structural change in China is expected to present new opportunities and challenges for Brazil to enhance its global position and energize growth. Building on recent work (World Bank and Development Research Center, 2013), this report identifies three potential longer-term transformations of the Chinese economy structurally slower growth, a rebalancing on the demand and supply side, and a move up the value chain and examines their implications for Brazil. The report shows how the slowdown and rebalancing of China may also present new opportunities for Brazil, even if Chinas progression up the value chain is likely to present also new challenges. It lays out how Brazil could generate greater benefits from its interactions with China and how the changes in China would offer a new window of opportunity for Brazil to press ahead with its structural reform agenda. Overall, Brazil could gain tremendously from the anticipated structural changes in China, even though realizing these gains will require a proactive policy stance to enhance external ties and address internal growth and productivity constraints.
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Global growth is projected to pick up to 3.4 percent in 2015 and 3.5 percent in 2016, propelled by highincome countries. Developing country growth will benefit from these tailwinds, with growth projected to increase from 4.8 percent in 2014 to 5.5 percent in 2016broadly in line with potential.
... Vea más + Global growth projections for 2014, however, have been marked down from 3.2 percent to 2.8 percent on account of the bumpy start this year, buffeted by poor weather in the United States, financial market turbulence and the conflict in Ukraine. The outlook for the East Asia and the Pacific region continues to reflect several counterbalancing factors, including domestic policy adjustment, volatile financing conditions, political crisis in Thailand, and sustained recovery in global demand for exports. Regional GDP growth is expected to slow down slightly to 7.0 percent by 2016, about 2 percentage points slower than the pre-crisis boom years but broadly in line with potential. Regional risks include volatility and eventual tightening of global financing conditions, possible setbacks in Chinas restructuring and a weaker contribution from net exports than assumed in the baseline. Potential escalation of regional political tensions presents additional risk to the outlook.
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Ponzis are among the most ubiquitous and least understood phenomena of economic life. They acquired a certain salience with the global financial crisis of 2008 and the crash of Bernie Madoffs celebrated Ponzi scheme.
... Vea más + This paper explains the structure of Ponzi schemes and goes on to argue that what makes this such a troubling phenomenon is its ability to be camouflaged amidst legitimate practices. It is shown, for instance, that the common practice of giving stock options to employees could be a potential Ponzi that allows corporations to flourish for a while by borrowing from its own future. The paper goes on to discuss the need for intelligent regulation to incise harmful Ponzis (not all Ponzis are harmful) while taking care not to damage other legitimate activities that surround them.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6967 JUL 01, 2014
Power sector subsidies in Sub-Saharan Africa are substantial and highly regressive. While subsidies can be quick, easy, and politically expedient to implement, they are equally quick to take root and challenging to remove.
... Vea más + Optimal policies that are technically sound and welfare-enhancing over the long run have nevertheless been found difficult to launch and even more challenging to sustain. Of the barriers to reform, those associated with political economy are among the most powerful, yet their analysis is often lacking due consideration in the reform design process. This paper reviews the literature on power subsidies and their reform with emphasis on the political economy of such reform. It examines pricing principles in the power sector and different types of subsides; drivers for subsidies, benefits and costs of subsidy reform, and their distribution; and approaches to political economy analysis, tools available, and methodological issues. The paper draws examples from Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, and presents case studies from the literature.
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In countries with limited access to finance, firms accumulate retained earnings to finance indivisible investment projects. McKinnon (1973) illustrates that when cash is used as a primary store of value, inflation may discourage investment as it increases the cost of accumulating retained earnings.
... Vea más + This paper formalizes this argument in a dynamic framework and provides a simple calibration of the model that suggests sizable effects of inflation on investment. The mechanism is particularly relevant for small firms, as firms with lower cash flows must accumulate retained earnings for longer periods of time to meet the price of indivisible investment goods. Consistent with the model, empirical evidence suggests that inflation disproportionately reduces investment in small firms.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6972 JUL 01, 2014
Several high-level reports have raised the concern that low-income countries, especially in Africa, are experiencing premature de-industrialization.
... Vea más + The concern is that they are growing without transforming. Have the latecomers to development missed the boat? Although these concerns are well placed, Africa's growth seems to be benefitting from a structural transformation of a different kind. The manufacturing sector as a share of gross domestic product has shrunk, but countries have benefitted from the third industrial revolution with globalization of services being at the forefront of this technological revolution. As services produced and traded across the world expand with globalization, the possibilities for low-income countries to develop based on their comparative advantage expand. That comparative advantage can just as easily be in services as in manufacturing. Comparative advantage need not be a one-trick pony.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6971 JUL 01, 2014