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22. How Can the World Bank Group Improve Its Private Sector Projects in African Fragile States?
- Author:
- Vijaya Ramachandran, Benjamin Leo, and Ross Thuotte
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- In recent years, the World Bank Group has made increasingly strong and explicit commitments to fragile and conflict-affected states, putting them at the top of the development policy agenda. These commitments are promising, but give rise to significant operational challenges for the various arms of the World Bank Group, including the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). The bank also faces steady pressure from shareholders to scale up involvement in fragile states while also improving absorptive capacity and project effectiveness.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Markets, Foreign Aid, and World Bank
- Political Geography:
- Africa
23. Hoping to Win, Expected to Lose: Theory and Lessons on Microenterprise Development
- Author:
- Dean Karlan, Ryan Knight, and Christopher Udry
- Publication Date:
- 11-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- We show how financial and managerial constraints impede experimentation and thus limit learning about the profitability of investments. Imperfect information about one's own type, but willingness to experiment to learn one's type, leads to short-run negative expected returns to investments, with some outliers succeeding. We find in an experiment that entrepreneurs invest randomized grants of cash and adopt advice from randomized grants of consulting services, but both lead to lower profits on average. In the long run, they revert back to their prior scale of operations. In a meta-analysis, results from 19 other experiments find mixed support for this theory.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Markets, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
- Political Geography:
- Africa
24. What's Wrong with Dodd-Frank 1502? Conflict Minerals, Civilian Livelihoods, and the Unintended Consequences of Western Advocacy
- Author:
- Laura E. Seay
- Publication Date:
- 01-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Although its provisions have yet to be implemented, section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is already having a profound effect on the Congolese mining sector. Nicknamed “Obama's Law” by the Congolese, section 1502 has created a de facto ban on Congolese mineral exports, put anywhere from tens of thousands up to 2 million Congolese miners out of work in the eastern Congo, and, despite ending most of the trade in Congolese conflict minerals, done little to improve the security situation or the daily lives of most Congolese. In this report, Laura Seay traces the development of section 1502 with respect to the pursuit of a conflict minerals-based strategy by U.S. advocates, examines the effects of the legislation, and recommends new courses of action to move forward in a way that both promotes accountability and transparency and allows Congolese artisanal miners to earn a living.
- Topic:
- Security, Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Poverty, Natural Resources, and Financial Crisis
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, and Democratic Republic of the Congo
25. The Negative Consequences of Overambitious Curricula in Developing Countries
- Author:
- Lant Pritchett and Amanda Beatty
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. We argue shallow learning profiles are in part the result of curricular paces moving much faster than the pace of learning. To demonstrate the consequences of a gap between the curriculum and student mastery, we construct a simple, formal model, which portrays learning as the result of a match between student skill and instructional levels, rather than the standard (if implicit) assumption that all children learn the same from the same instruction. A simulation shows that two countries with exactly the same potential learning could have massively divergent learning outcomes, just because of a gap between curricular and actual pace—and the country which goes faster has much lower cumulative learning. We also show that our simple simulation model of curricular gaps can replicate existing experimental findings, many of which are otherwise puzzling. Paradoxically, learning could go faster if curricula and teachers were to slow down.
- Topic:
- Development, Education, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa and South Asia
26. Energizing Rio+20: How the United States Can Promote Sustainable Energy for All at the 2012 Earth Summit
- Author:
- Nigel Purvis and Abigail Jones
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Worldwide, about 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity (one in five people), while unreliable electricity networks serve another 1 billion people. Roughly 2.7 billion—about 40 percent of the global population—lack access to clean cooking fuels. Instead, dirty, sometimes scarce and expensive fuels such as kerosene, candles, wood, animal waste, and crop residues power the lives of the energy poor, who pay disproportionately high costs and receive very poor quality in return. More than 95 percent of the energy poor are either in sub-Saharan Africa or developing Asia, while 84 percent are in rural areas—the same regions that are the most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Development, Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, and Asia
27. Supporting Private Business Growth in African Fragile States: A Guiding Framework for the World Bank Group in South Sudan and Other Nations
- Author:
- Vijaya Ramachandran, Benjamin Leo, and Ross Thuotte
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The World Bank Group faces significant operational changes over the near to medium term. More than half of poor countries are projected to graduate from the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA) concessional assistance over the next 15 years. As a result, IDA's country client base is projected to become dominated by African fragile states. To its credit, the World Bank Group recognizes these coming changes and the unique needs and constraints present in fragile environments. It has publicly expressed a plan to develop an organization-wide strategy tailored specifically for fragile and conflict-affected situations.
- Topic:
- Development, Foreign Aid, Fragile/Failed State, and World Bank
- Political Geography:
- Africa and South Sudan
28. No Longer Poor: Ghana's New Income Status and Implications of Graduation from IDA
- Author:
- Todd Moss and Stephanie Majerowicz
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Ghana's largest and most important creditor for the past three decades has been the International Development Association (IDA), the soft loan window of the World Bank. That will soon come to an end. The combination of Ghana's rapid economic growth and the recent GDP rebasing exercise means that Ghana suddenly finds itself above the income limit for IDA eligibility. Formal graduation is imminent and comes with significant implications for access to concessional finance, debt, and relations with other creditors. This paper considers the specific questions related to Ghana's relationship with the World Bank, as well as the broader questions about the country's new middle-income status.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Poverty, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
- Political Geography:
- Africa
29. Oil for Uganda – or Ugandans? Can Cash Transfers Prevent the Resource Curse?
- Author:
- Alan Gelb and Stephanie Majerowicz
- Publication Date:
- 07-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- In 2009, commercially exploitable reserves of oil were found in the Albertine Lakes Basin in Uganda. Along with a number of new oil exporters, Uganda now faces the challenge of using the new resources to advance its development agenda, while avoiding the corrosive effects oil often has on governance. This paper considers the tradeoffs and potential impact of alternative uses of the oil rent. It argues that alternative approaches towards absorbing rents should be judged from two perspectives – the direct impact on growth and living standards, and the indirect effect on governance. The Ugandan authorities favor using the oil revenues to build much-needed infrastructure; while this could have very large benefits, evidence of Uganda's already deteriorating governance and mounting corruption raise questions about its capacity to wisely invest the oil revenues. This paper considers an alternative—distributing oil rents to the population through cash transfers—as a potential tool to mitigate some of the governance risks associated with oil revenues by giving Ugandan citizens a stake in their own resource wealth, and considers the strengths and limitations of such an approach.
- Topic:
- Oil, Natural Resources, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Uganda and Africa
30. Constraints to Domestic Enterprise Financing in Post-Conflict Liberia
- Author:
- John Gorlorwulu
- Publication Date:
- 07-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Countries emerging from protracted and devastating conflicts are often seen as needing significant external intervention in their financial markets to rebuild their private sector and promote quick and effective economic recovery. Despite enormous challenges, the provision of credit or the implementation of various lending schemes often dominate efforts to promote domestic private-sector recovery in the immediate aftermath of conflict. This approach raises a number of questions: First, how effective are loan programs in the development of domestic enterprises in the immediate aftermath of conflicts? Second, can loan programs work without significant improvements in the business climate? How sensitive is the design of lending programs to the success of domestic enterprise development projects following devastating conflicts? This paper explores the experience of the Liberian Enterprise Development Finance Company, which was established in 2007 to provide medium-and long-term credit to small and medium domestic enterprises. In addition to shedding light on the challenges such an enterprise faces in a post conflict environment, the paper explores whether the strategies employed are effective and if there are opportunities for effecting remedial changes that could improve the outcomes of such a program in post-conflict environments generally.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Civil War, Development, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Liberia