Search

Introduction: Public health promotion efforts aimed at overweight and obesity prevention often proceed from the premise that the first step should be losing weight. Appropriate perceptions of body image may be important for improving weight loss awareness. Therefore, we aimed to examine the relationship between body mass index and body image perception in Fiji, where increasing obesity is currently the most important health-related issue. Methods: Using the resident register based on the governmental census, one household member, aged between 18 and 69 years, was randomly selected from each household in two areas. There were 1,014 participants in the study. The questionnaire items were related to body image, dietary behaviors, physical activity, smoking habits, and alcohol consumption habits. Moreover, information regarding height, weight, blood pressure, and hemoglobin A1c were measured, and questions about social status (age, ethnicity, education, marital status, and employment), and subjective living status were asked. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and body image perception. Results: Data from 391 men and 537 women were analyzed. Men within higher BMI quartiles smoked less (p = 0.0004) and drank less alcohol (p = 0.042). Women in higher BMI quartiles engaged in less physical activity (p = 0.022). Among the assessed data, both men and women in the higher BMI quartiles underestimated their body image compared with their actual physique (p < 0.0001). The higher BMI was associated with underestimated body image (men: odds ratio [OR] = 3.22, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.94–5.35; p < 0.0001; women: OR = 18.11, 95% CI, 10.10–32.47; p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Higher BMI is strongly associated with underestimated body image among Fiji residents. Health-related counseling should be included within programs that aim to increase recognition of one’s actual physical size.

The authors use different data sets to investigate the dependence of transport costs on geography and infrastructure. Infrastructure is an important determinant of transport costs, especially for landlocked countries. Analysis of bilateral trade data confirms the importance of infrastructure and gives an estimate of the elasticity of trade flows with respect to the trade cost factor of around-3. A deterioration of infrastructure from the median to the 75th percentile raises transport costs by 12 percentage points and reduces trade volumes by 28 percent. Analysis of African trade flows indicates that their relatively low level is largely due to poor infrastructure.

This paper examines the role of changes in sectoral productivity gaps over time in accounting for growth realized by countries over the past few decades. To quantify the productivity impact of the sectoral gaps, a simple model of resource allocation is developed in which the gaps arise due to distortions in the form of asymmetrical taxes across sectors. The paper finds a limited role of changes in distortions over time in accounting for actual growth. Implied growth from changes in distortions accounts for less than 2.5 percent of actual growth for the median country. To check if the lower contribution of changes in distortions is because of unrealized gains suggested by high levels of present distortions, productivity gains are estimated when distortions across countries are reduced to the US levels. Barring a couple of cases, the gains in aggregate productivity are modest across the sample of countries.

Global economic losses from natural disasters continue to increase. Yet, investments in disaster risk management are not universal, as they are traditionally seen as in competition with other development and economic priorities. The multitude of benefits from disaster risk management investments are not traditionally accounted for in cost-benefit analyses. This paper contributes to this discussion by highlighting the multiple benefits from disaster risk management investments, focusing on the avoided losses when a disaster occurs, but also on the impacts on economic development even before a disaster strikes. The paper's main message is that disaster risk management investments can provide two dividends: reduced losses when a disaster strikes, and a shift of investment strategies and perhaps even an increase in investment value that would benefit the economy even before a disaster strikes. Providing evidence to policy makers and investors about the existence of both types of dividends can provide a narrative reconciling short-term and long-term objectives, thereby improving the acceptability and feasibility of disaster risk management investments.

Iraq was plunged into two simultaneous crises in the second half of 2014, one driven by a sharp decline in oil prices, the other, by the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The severity and recurrent nature of these crises demand a fast understanding and quantification of their welfare impact, which is critical for policy makers. This paper employs an innovative extension of the micro-simulation methodology to provide an ex ante estimate and analysis of the complex and dynamic poverty and distributional impact of the twin crises. The results show an almost complete erosion of the welfare gains of the past, with poverty falling back to 2007 levels and a 20 percent increase in the number of the poor. While the incidence of poverty is higher among internally displaced persons than the rest of the population (except in the Islamic State–affected governorates, where poverty is higher), internally displaced persons make up only a small proportion of Iraq's eight million poor in 2014. The rest comprise of households who already lived below the poverty line, or those who have fallen below the poverty line in the face of the massive economic disruptions the country is facing. The welfare impact of the crises varies widely across space, with the largest increases in poverty headcount rates in Kurdistan and the Islamic State–affected governorates. Yet, the poorest regions in the 2014 crisis scenario are the same as in 2012, the currently Islamic State–affected, and the South, with poverty rates of 40 and 30 percent, respectively. Although the simulated results are not strictly comparable to ex post micro data estimates, because of survey coverage constraints, overall the results are very much in line, particularly in Kurdistan and the South.

Once concentrated among a few large economies, global flows of goods, services, and capital now reach an ever-larger number of countries worldwide. Global trade in goods and in services both increased 10 times between 1980 and 2011, while foreign direct investment (FDI) flows increased almost 30-fold. A value chain is global when some of these stages are carried out in more than one country, most notably when discrete tasks within a production process are fragmented and dispersed across a number of countries. Southern African Customs Union (SACU) - region global value chains (GVCs) are both a new reality and significant opportunity for expanding non-commodity exports to support growth, diversification, and job creation in the region. The task-based nature of GVCs creates opportunities for developing countries to establish very quickly a position in global trade within a sector in which they may have had no previous experience. For South Africa, GVCs are seen as a route to higher manufacturing exports and greater value addition. For other SACU countries, GVCs are seen as a route to diversification and global integration, and to leverage the possibility of greater investment from South Africa itself. The main objectives of the study are as follows: (i) to understand trends of GVC participation and competitiveness of South Africa and the wider SACU region, the outcomes from this participation (exports, jobs, and productivity), and the factors that determine competitiveness; (ii) to map the extent of value chain integration across the region and identify barriers to deeper integration; and (iii) to identify policies and actions that will be required to develop a globally competitive, high value-adding factory Southern Africa.

The authors use the night lights (satellite imagery from outer space) approach to estimate subnational 2013 GDP growth and levels for 47 counties in Kenya and 30 districts in Rwanda. Estimating subnational GDP is consequential for three reasons: First, there is strong policy interest in seeing how growth can occur in different parts of countries, so that communities can share in national prosperity and not get left behind. Second, sub-nationals themselves want to understand how they stack up against their neighbors and competitors, and how much they contribute to national GDP. Third, such information could help private investors to better assess where to undertake investments. Using night lights has the advantage of seeing a new (and more accurate) estimation of informal activity, and being independent of official data. However it may underestimate economic activity in sectors that are largely unlit (notably agriculture). Indeed, we find that the association between nightlights and GDP is stronger where unlit agriculture accounts for a smaller part of overall economic activity. With these caveats in mind, our analysis yields some interesting results. For Kenya, our results affirm that Nairobi County is the largest contributor to national GDP. However, at 13 percent, this contribution is lower (of 60 percent) as commonly thought. For Rwanda, the three Districts of Kigali account for 40 percent of national GDP, underscoring the lower scale of economic activity in the rest of the country. To get a composite picture of subnational economic activity, especially in the context of rapidly improving official statistics in Kenya and Rwanda, the authors note the importance of estimating subnational GDP using standard approaches (production, expenditure, income).

International supply chains require the coordination of numerous activities across multiple countries and firms. This paper develops a theoretical model of supply chains in which the measure of tasks completed within a firm is determined by parameters that define transaction costs and the cost of coordinating more activities within the firm. The structural parameters that govern these costs explain variation in supply chain length as well as cross-country variation in gross-output-to-value-added ratios. The structural parameters are linked to comparative advantage along and across supply chains. The paper provides an analytical treatment of trade and welfare responses to trade cost change in a simple two-country model. To explore the models implications in a richer setting, the model is calibrated to match key observables in East Asia, and the calibrated model is used to evaluate implications of changes in model parameters for trade, welfare, the length of supply chains, and countries relative position within them.

This paper uses the night lights (satellite imagery from outer space) approach to estimate growth in and levels of subnational 2013 gross domestic product for 47 counties in Kenya and 30 districts in Rwanda. Estimating subnational gross domestic product is consequential for three reasons. First, there is strong policy interest in how growth can occur in different parts of countries, so that communities can share in national prosperity and not get left behind. Second, subnational entities want to understand how they stack up against their neighbors and competitors, and how much they contribute to national gross domestic product. Third, such information could help private investors to assess where to undertake investments. Using night lights has the advantage of seeing a new and more accurate estimation of informal activity, and being independent of official data. However, the approach may underestimate economic activity in sectors that are largely unlit notably agriculture. For Kenya, the results of the analysis affirm that Nairobi County is the largest contributor to national gross domestic product. However, at 13 percent, this contribution is lower than commonly thought. For Rwanda, the three districts of Kigali account for 40 percent of national gross domestic product, underscoring the lower scale of economic activity in the rest of the country. To get a composite picture of subnational economic activity, especially in the context of rapidly improving official statistics in Kenya and Rwanda, it is important to estimate subnational gross domestic product using standard approaches (production, expenditure, income).

This paper provides new empirical insights on the joint distribution of consumption, income, and wealth in three of the poorest countries in the world — Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda — all located in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The first finding is that while income inequality is similar to that of the United States (US), wealth inequality is barely one-third that of the US. Similarly, while the top of the income distribution (1 and 10 percent) earns a similar share of total income in SSA as in the US, the share of total wealth accumulated by the income-rich in SSA is one-fifth of its US counterpart. The main contributions of the paper are to document: (i) this dwarfed transmission from income to wealth, which suggests that SSA households face a larger inability to save and accumulate wealth compared with US households; and (ii) a lower transmission from income to consumption inequality, which suggests the presence of powerful institutions that favor consumption insurance to the detriment of saving. These features are more relevant for rural areas, which represent roughly four-fifths of the total population. The paper identifies the few successful pockets of the SSA population that are able to accumulate wealth by exploring sources of inequality such as age, education, migration, borrowing ability, and societal systems.

Transport infrastructure is deemed to be central to development and consumes a large fraction of the development assistance envelope. Yet there is debate about the economic impact of road projects. This paper proposes an approach to assess the differential development impacts of alternative road construction and prioritize various proposals, using Nigeria as a case study. Recognizing that there is no perfect measure of economic well-being, a variety of outcome metrics are used, including crop revenue, livestock revenue, non-agricultural income, the probability of being multi-dimensionally poor, and local gross domestic product for Nigeria. Although the measure of transport is the most accurate possible, it is still endogenous because of the nonrandom placement of road infrastructure. This endogeneity is addressed using a seemingly novel instrumental variable termed the natural path: the time it would take to walk along the most logical route connecting two points without taking into account other, bias-causing economic benefits. Further, the analysis considers the potential endogeneity from nonrandom placement of households and markets through carefully chosen control variables. It finds that reducing transportation costs in Nigeria will increase crop revenue, non-agricultural income, the wealth index, and local gross domestic product. Livestock sales increase as well, although this finding is less robust. The probability of being multi-dimensionally poor will decrease. The results also cast light on income diversification and structural changes that may arise. These findings are robust to relaxing the exclusion restriction. The paper also demonstrates how to prioritize alternative road programs by comparing the expected development impacts of alternative New Partnership for Africas Development projects.

The World Bank Group (WBG) has adopted a new strategy which sets two ambitious goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. To operationalize the twin goals, the WBG is developing a more evidence-based and selective country engagement model, the Country Partnership Framework (CPF). The Bank Group s activities in any country will be at the intersection of what the Systematic Country Diagnostic reveals, the government s own development priorities and the WBG s comparative advantage (OPCS). While the CPF is sharpening the WBG s focus on strategic selectivity in its country programs, the issue is longstanding. This paper is a first attempt at piecing together the various strands of evidence in order to understand the role and the practice of selectivity in the WBG s country strategies, and explores the link between selectivity and country program outcomes. It reviews selectivity in 105 CASs, including Country Partnership Strategies, during FY09-13. It also provides a synthesis analysis on selectivity issues of 22 CAEs, including Country Partnership Evaluations (CPEs), conducted by IEG during FY05-14. The findings demonstrate that selectivity matters for the overall development outcome of CASs while controlling for other variables such as country ownership, results framework, and GDP per capita. Moreover, the estimations indicate that selectivity is more important in countries with high levels of extreme poverty. Finally, the paper concludes with the key lessons and issues for further research.

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods within village communities. Using a theoretical model, this paper shows that an elected official, whose aim is to maximize re-election chances, exerts higher effort in providing public goods when private citizens undertake collective action and coordinate their voluntary contributions towards the same goods. This effect occurs although government and private contributions are assumed to be substitutes in the technology of providing public goods. Using first-hand data on SHGs in India, the paper tests the prediction of the model and shows that, in response to collective action by SHGs, local authorities tackle a larger variety of public issues, and are more likely to tackle issues of interest to SHGs. The findings highlight how the social behavior of SHGs can influence the governance of rural Indian communities.

Although average Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tariffs on imports from the least developed countries are very low; tariffs above 15 percent have a disproportional effect on their exports. Products subject to tariff peaks tend to be heavily concentrated in agriculture and food products and labor intensive sectors, such as apparel and footwear. Although the least developed countries benefit from preferential access, preferences tend to be smallest for tariff peak products. A major exception is the European Union, so that the recent European initiative to grant full duty free and quota free access for the least developed countries will result in only a small increase in their exports of tariff peak items. However, as preferences are less significant in other major OECD countries, a more general emulation of the European Union initiative would increase the least developed countries total exports of peak products by US dollar 2.5 billion. Although almost half of this increase is at the expense of other developing country exports, this represents less than 0.05 percent of their total exports. This trade diversion can be avoided by reducing tariff peaks to a uniform 5 percent applied on a nondiscriminatory basis. However, such a reform would imply no gains for the least developed countries, suggesting that the globally welfare superior policy of nondiscriminatory elimination of tariff peaks should be complemented by greater direct assistance to poor countries.

With global food crises and food price volatility in recent years, agricultural subsidies have once again gained prominence as a policy instrument in many developing countries. In Mongolia too, subsidies to the agriculture sector mainly through government budgetary transfers, have increased over time. These gained prominence in 2008 when a global, regional (the drought in Russia, and Kazakhstan, the two main suppliers to Mongolia), and the national food production shortfall sent domestic wheat prices soaring to record levels. Wheat production had reached an all-time low during the years 2005 to 2007. Consequently, subsidies to crop, livestock, and agroprocessing sectors have increased since 2008, and now represent a complex set of programs, sometimes with conflicting and overlapping goals and intended beneficiaries.

The global financial roller coaster, with the Euro zone as its lead car, has hit economic prospects across the globe. The South African economy, with its close links to the world economy, has suffered, too, resulting in weakened growth prospects, lower fiscal revenues, lower and more volatile valuation of the rand, and dampened external financing. This further compounds the policy challenges facing the authorities, on top of their preoccupation with unyielding unemployment, which requires higher and more inclusive economic growth. Policymaking is also conditioned by a growing recognition that future growth needs to be less carbon-intensive. As elsewhere, opportunities in green economies are viewed with keen interest, as a way of simultaneously targeting a cleaner environment and stimulating innovation, growth, and job creation. While green policies can have large synergies and co-benefits with the growth and employment agenda, they are not a substitute for it. Indeed, such synergies are likely to be mutually enhancing and larger when the growth and environment objectives are being pursued by multiple, well-targeted and coordinated policies.

The Thai economy runs on a single engine: external demand. The economic roller coaster since the onset of the global financial crisis can be overwhelmingly attributed to fluctuations in the output of three sectors most sensitive to external demand: manufacturing, logistics (transportation and storage), and tourism (hotels and restaurants). As global trade contracted between the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, Thailand's real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 6.3 percent, before rebounding 6.9 percent through the end of 2009 on a revival in actual and expected external demand. At the end of 2009, real GDP was back to pre-crisis levels, as measured in seasonally adjusted terms. For 2009 as a whole, however, real GDP fell 2.2 percent. The dominance of sectors linked to external demand over Thailand's growth dynamics is not new. Both sets of sectors grew at about the same pace prior to the 1997 financial crisis. However, a structural break took place in the aftermath of the crisis, when sectors linked to external demand grew an average of 6.1 percent between 2001 and 2007 compared to a 4.3 percent growth rate of other sectors. While the sectors linked to external demand are expected to grow below the historical average in the near term due to lower growth in demand from advanced economies, a reversal of the structural change observed since 1998 is unlikely. This will require an acceleration of the growth of the sectors linked to domestic demand. But the constraints that limited the growth of these sectors in the past not only remain but have been compounded in the near term by the escalation of the political conflict. This will ensure that growth rates in sectors linked to domestic demand will also remain below their (already low) historical averages and the dominance of external demand on the economy will continue to increase.

This report on Sudan's Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) provides a baseline assessment of challenges to productivity, diversification and inclusion. Chapter 1 describes some of the questions underlying the three issues of competitiveness, diversification and broad-based growth. Chapter 2 analyzes firm performance and competitiveness. Chapter 3 discusses markets and trust. Chapter 4 describes the role of the financial sector. Chapter 5 analyses the informal sector. Chapter 6 discusses the conflict-affected private sector development. Chapter 7 discusses regional inclusion, and Chapter 8 makes some preliminary conclusions and recommendations.

A solid financial armor could not protect Thailand against the impact of the global financial crisis on its real economy. Despite a sound banking system and low external vulnerabilities, the Thai economy contracted 5.7 percent between October 2008 and March 2009, as the magnitude and speed of the contraction in foreign demand, and resulting shock to the real economy, has been greater than anticipated. There continues to be little impact of the global financial crisis on Thailand's banks: liquidity remained adequate as financial institutions did not face solvency concerns given their adequate capitalization and lack of exposure to 'toxic' assets or risky derivative contracts. The combination of a sound financial sector, low external roll-over and balance-of-payment financing requirements, and, more recently, large current account surpluses, has led to capital inflows, build-up in reserves and an appreciation of the Baht relative to other currencies in the region. However, the impact of the global crisis on the real sector was far more severe than expected. Export volumes contracted by 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to the World Bank's forecast in December of a 3.0 percent expansion. Exports contracted a further 16 percent in the first quarter of 2009. The aggravation of Thailand's political crisis, which had been dampening investor and consumer confidence since 2006, compounded the shock to the real economy. As a result, real gross domestic product (GDP) contracted in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009 after 38 quarters of growth, and is expected to contract for 2009 as a whole, the first annual contraction since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998.

Many analysts consider that lack of security is a major obstacle to growth in Colombia. This paper identifies a structural downturn in economic growth-of nearly two percentage points per year-as a result of the increase in illicit crops and crime rates after 1980. A decline in total factor productivity has been the key channel linking crime and economic growth. Political upheavals and high levels of inequality and poverty motivated the adoption of a new constitution in 1991. The constitution mandated additional fiscal expenditures to curb social tensions. Major progress has been made in terms of public safety and, to a lesser extent, in the provision of health and education. However, long?run growth will continue to be constrained by inadequate transport infrastructure and low international trade volumes.

Rapid growth since 1980 has transformed India from the world's 50th ranked economy in nominal U.S. dollars to the 10th largest in 2005. The growth of per capita income has helped reduce poverty. At the same time, evidence suggests that income inequality is rising and that the gap in average per capita income between the rich and poor states is growing. This paper reviews India's long term growth experience with a view to understanding the determinants of growth and the underlying political economy. The paper looks specifically at the political economy of India's growth transformation from a low-growth environment (pre-1980s) to a rapid-growth environment (post 1980s) and asks how sustainable is this transformation in view of concerns about regional disparity and income inequality. The paper concludes that the pledge that India's post-independence leadership had undertaken to abolish mass poverty remains only partially redeemed. Half the battle still lies ahead. Many more would like the fruits of the economic boom to come to them. The greatest challenge for India's policy makers today is to balance the growth momentum with inclusionary policies.

This article presents estimates of the impact of China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). China is estimated to be the biggest beneficiary (US$31 billion a year from trade reforms in preparation for accession and additional gains of $10 billion a year from reforms after accession), followed by its major trading partners that also undertake liberalization, including the economies in North America, Western Europe, and Taiwan (China). Accession will boost manufacturing sectors in China, especially textiles and apparel, which will benefit directly from the removal of export quotas. Developing economies competing with China in third markets may suffer small losses. Accession will have important distributional consequences for China, with the wages of skilled and unskilled nonfarm workers rising in real terms and relative to those of farm workers. Possible policy changes, including reductions in barriers to labor mobility and improvements in rural education, could more than offset these negative impacts and facilitate the development of China's economy.