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Sparked by examples from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Indonesia, and other developing countries, hundreds of microenterprise programs have been started in the United States. Will these US efforts be successful? This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that microenterprise development is much more difficult in the United States than in the developing world. The paper suggests some ways to address the challenges of US microenterprise development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper aims to provide a perspective on old age poverty. It reviews the available evidence on the incidence of old age poverty emerging from survey data analysis and from qualitative participatory studies, which indicate that old age poverty is a significant issue in developing countries. It also consideres other components of poverty in later life: access to markets, basic services, and social networks. The paper argues that understanding poverty in later life, and developing appropriate policy, requires acknowledging the contribution of older people to their households, communities, and the development process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyzes the long-term effects of a liberalized regime of development banking on the growth and investment trajectory of a newly industrializing country using Puerto Rico as a case study. The paper analyzes conflicts between domestic business and the state over the form of state involvement in development during the critical juncture of the 1940s; the leading role of domestic business in the push to liberalize the developmental state project; and the effects this liberalization had on development banking, and on Puerto Rico’s long-term growth trajectory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Women were substantially more likely than men to stop working in the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. • For those who remained employed, changes in sector and employment type were generally similar between demographic groups. • Between April and August of 2020, employment rose in the 10 countries with available data but was below pre-crisis levels. • Phone surveys, while biased, provide accurate group disparities in employment rates following the onset of the crisis. This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the employment of different groups of workers across 40 mostly low and middle-income countries. Employment outcomes during the crisis are tracked through high-frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank and national statistics offices. Our results show that larger shares of female, young, less educated, and urban workers stopped working at the beginning of the pandemic. Gender gaps in work stoppage stemmed mainly from gender differences within sectors rather than differential employment patterns of men and women across sectors. Differences in work stoppage between urban and rural workers were markedly smaller than those across gender, age, and education groups. Preliminary results from 10 countries suggest that following the initial shock at the start of the pandemic, employment rates partially recovered between April and August 2020, with greater gains for those groups that had borne the brunt of the early jobs losses. Although the high-frequency phone surveys over-represent household heads and therefore overestimate employment rates, a validation exercise for five countries suggests that they provide a reasonably accurate measure of disparities in employment levels by gender, education, and urban/rural location following the onset of the crisis, although they perform less well in capturing disparities between age groups. These results shed new light on the distributional labor market consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in developing countries, and suggest that real-time phone surveys, despite their lack of representativeness, are a valuable source of information to measure differential employment impacts across groups during an unfolding crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper tests a new framework for explaining social transfers through analysis of eight sub-Saharan African countries. • The paper examines the 'institutionalization' of social transfers, and offers a new index for assessing this. • Social transfer institutionalization results from political survival strategies and transnational policy coalitions. • Either policy coalitions steer governments towards adoption, before competitive elections drive institutionalisation. • Or elites respond to perceived distributional crises, augmented by external support. The new phase of social protection expansion in the global south remains poorly understood. Current interpretations of the spread of social transfers in sub-Saharan Africa tend to emphasize the influence of elections and donor pressure, often by drawing correlations from statistical data, and focusing on the moment of programme adoption. This study adopts a different approach that traces the actual process through which countries have not just adopted but institutionalized social transfers. We test a new theoretical framework through within and cross-case analysis of the degree to which social protection programmes have become institutionalized in eight African countries. Two main pathways emerge: the first confirms the sense that both donors and elections matter, but goes further in showing the particular ways in which these drivers combine. In particular, transnational policy coalitions tend to play a leading role in adoption, whereas governments pursue the further institutionalization of social transfers as a top-down response to competitive elections. However, we also identify an alternative pathway that involves electorally uncompetitive countries; here, the primary motivation is not elections but elite perceptions of vulnerability in the face of distributional crises, augmented by ideas and resources from transnational policy coalitions. Consequently, the latest phase of social transfer development results from the interplay of political survival strategies and transnational policy coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper examines the implications of productivity improvements in agriculture, industry, and services for global poverty. We find that, in poor countries, increases in agricultural productivity generally have a larger poverty-reduction effect than increases in industry or services. This differential declines as average incomes rise, partly because agriculture becomes smaller as a share of the economy, and partly because agricultural productivity growth becomes less effective in reducing poverty. The source of the poverty-reduction benefits from agricultural productivity growth changes as innovations are more widely adopted—moving from increases in producer returns to reductions in consumer prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly accepted that women can be more vulnerable than men to the adverse environmental effects of climate change. This paper evaluates whether the unequal distribution of costs women bear as a result of climate change are reflected across broader macro-social institutions to the detriment of gender equality and women's rights. It argues that gender disparities in climate change vulnerability not only reflect preexisting gender inequalities, they also reinforce them. Inequalities in the ownership and control of household assets and rising familial burdens due to male out-migration, declining food and water access, and increased disaster exposure can undermine women's ability to achieve economic independence, enhance human capital, and maintain health and wellbeing. Consequences for gender equality include reductions in intra-household bargaining power, as women become less capable of generating independent revenue. Outside the home, norms of gender discrimination and gender imbalances in socio-economic status should increase as women are less able to participate in formal labor markets, join civil society organizations, or collectively mobilize for political change. The outcome of these processes can reduce a society's level of gender equality by increasing constraints on the advancement of laws and norms that promote co-equal status. I empirically test this relationship across a sample of developing states between 1981 and 2010. The findings suggest that climate shocks and climatic disasters exert a broadly negative impact on gender equality, as deviations from long-term mean temperatures and increasing incidence of climatological and hydro-meteorological disasters are associated with declines in women's economic and social rights. These effects appear to be most salient in states that are relatively less-democratic, with greater dependence on agriculture, and lower levels of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates (1) the evolution of urban concentration from 1985 to 2010 in 68 countries around the world and (2) the extent to which the degree of urban concentration affects national economic growth. It aims to overcome the limitations of existing empirical literature by building a new urban population dataset that allows the construction of a set of Herfindahl-Hirschman-Indices which capture a country’s urban structure in a more nuanced way than the indicators used hitherto. We find that, contrary to the general perception, urban concentration levels have on average decreased or remained stable (depending on indicator). However, these averages camouflage diverging trends across countries. The results of the econometric analysis suggest that there is no uniform relationship between urban concentration and economic growth. Urban concentration is beneficial for economic growth in high-income countries, while this effect does not hold for developing countries. The results differ from previous analyses that generally underscore the benefits of urban concentration at low levels of economic development. The results are robust to accounting for reverse causality through IV analysis, using exogenous geographic factors as instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current approaches to the development of water services such as water supply, sanitation, and hygiene in the Global South are driven by the aim to secure people's rights to access such services. In this literature-based paper, we illustrate how such an interpretation of access limits the ability of development efforts in the sector to (i) address power inequities mediating access to water services, and; (ii) acknowledge and strengthen wellbeing factors implicated with water services beyond basic health. We argue that maintaining the current interpretation of access limits the ability of development initiatives in the water sector to address pressing issues mediating people's ability to benefit from water services. To address these limitations, we propose a reinterpretation of the goal of securing access in international development frameworks grounded in Ribot and Peluso's (2003) theory of access and Amartya Sen’s (1999, 2008, 2013) Capability Approach to human development. Such a reinterpretation strengthens the capacity of global efforts to improve water services to not only foster good health, but also address inequity and other dimensions of human wellbeing such as livelihoods and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a paper which looks at lesser developed countries in an attempt to examine the components of financial liberalization, portfolio capital flows and stock market development in those countries. What was considered in the paper; Factors which the paper concentrated on; Aid which stock market development has received.

• Processes of inclusive innovation are not yet well understood. • This paper develops a model of inclusive innovation processes in complex systems. • The model identifies features and causal patterns of inclusive innovation processes. • Key intermediate results, causal mechanisms, and causal patterns are identified. • This model can guide more focused research, evaluation, and adaptive management. Inclusive innovation as a strategy for inclusive development has received increased attention from development policymakers, practitioners, and scholars in recent years. What these processes entail in practical terms, however, remains contested and under-theorized. This paper addresses the scarcity of mid-level analysis and models of inclusive innovation processes within complex systems, which are needed to enable a coherent empirical research agenda and to inform program theory-building, implementation, and evaluation. Looking to smallholder-oriented agricultural systems in the Global South, where the majority of inclusive innovation implementation and research has been located, this paper proposes that it is possible to identify the essential features and causal logic of these processes to create an empirically-derived, middle-range model with cross-context applicability. Drawing on methods from realist evaluation and social inquiry, I conducted a theory-driven, cross-case synthesis of three studies of inclusive innovation processes in agricultural systems, with one case each from South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. I find that despite significant diversity in project designs, facilitation approaches, and local contexts, the three inclusive innovation processes unfolded in strikingly similar ways, and that this modus operandi can be modeled as a middle-range theory of change. In each case, I find that a consistent set of activities and processes changed the local context for the inclusive innovation initiative. These altered contextual factors interacted with ongoing programmatic activities in consistent ways to trigger processes of social learning, social capital strengthening, collective cognition, and consensus formation, which acted as causal mechanisms responsible for producing the intermediate outcomes that led to technical, organizational, and institutional system innovation. The middle-range model enables cross-context insights into how inclusive innovation processes work and what capacities are needed to facilitate them. It can also guide the adaptive management and assessment of these processes, while offering testable hypotheses to guide future empirical work and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary There is little empirical evidence concerning the effect of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protecting pharmaceutical products and processes on pharmaceutical domestic innovation. Indeed, existing literature does not provide a punctual estimate of this effect for developing countries. This paper fills this gap, by exploiting a self-constructed dataset which provides, for a 22-year period, information concerning IPR reforms involving pharmaceuticals for 74 developed and developing countries. The identification strategy exploits the different timing across these countries of two sets of IPR reforms. Domestic innovation is measured as citation-weighted domestic patent applications filed at the European Patent Office (EPO): the highly skewed distribution of the dependent variable, and the high number of zero observations, are taken into account using count data models. In particular, a Zero Inflated Negative Binomial model is adopted, to overcome previous literature assumption that all innovations are patented in the main markets of reference, and to take into consideration the choice not to patent at the EPO. Results show that innovation is sensitive to IPR protection, but not to its degree. Moreover, the effect is not long lasting. My study also finds that developing countries profit significantly less than developed ones from the protection, benefiting from an effect that is roughly half of that for developed countries. Consequent policy implications are examined, and include the conclusions that a “one size fits all” approach can be inappropriate, and that gradual reforms should be preferred to rare reforms that greatly alter the level of IPR protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Risk preferences are important drivers of many relevant economic decisions of farm households. High risk aversion is a well-known trigger of “poverty traps” for farm households in developing countries. This paper analyzes the effect of market experience on risk aversion for a relatively large sample of landed farm households characterized by historically low mobility in Ethiopia. We measure risk aversion using lab-in-field experimental data, and relate it to actual market experience of household heads. We use an instrumental variable approach to address the issue of endogeneity due to possible self-selection into trade. We find that market experience attenuates risk aversion––farm households with greater market experience are more risk tolerant. Results are robust to using several alternative specifications, controlling for internal mobility, out-migration and other potential unobservables, and for violations to rational choice. Overall, this study provides strong empirical evidence that risk preferences endogenously change as a result of market experience, and can help design policies aiming to increase the productivity and efficiency of farm households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Non-state actors are important providers of social welfare. In parts of the Middle East, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other regions, religious charities and parties and NGOs have taken on this role, with some preceding independent statehood and others building parallel or alternative welfare infrastructure alongside the modern state. How well do these groups provide welfare goods? Do some exhibit a “welfare advantage,” or a demonstrated superiority in the quality and efficiency of providing social services? In this paper, we explore whether distinct organizational types are associated with different levels of the quality of care. Based on a study in Greater Beirut, Lebanon, where diverse types of providers operate health centers, we propose and test some hypotheses about why certain organizations might deliver better services. The data indicate that secular NGOs, rather than religious, political or public sector providers, the other main types of providers in the charitable sector, exhibit superior measures of health care quality, particularly with respect to objective provider competence and subjective measures of patient satisfaction. In Lebanon, where religious and sectarian actors dominate politics and the welfare regime and command the most extensive resources, this appears to be a counterintuitive finding. Our preliminary explanation for this outcome emphasizes the ways in which the socio-political context shapes the choices of more qualified or professional doctors to select into secular providers, in part because of their organizational missions, and why citizens might perceive these providers to be better, irrespective of the actual quality of services delivered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In the developing world, collective land titling has become an important tool for recognizing the historical presence of ethnic communities and safeguarding their rights to occupy and manage their territories. However, little is known about the average impact of these titling processes on the well-being of these communities. In this paper we attempt to estimate the impact of collective land titling in territories inhabited by Afro-descendent communities in Colombia. We compare rural districts in titled areas with rural districts in untitled areas that are similar in all the relevant observable characteristics. We find that the collective titling process in the Chocó region has caused an increase in average household per capita income, a decrease in extreme poverty, larger investments in housing, higher attendance rates among children in primary education, and a decrease in housing overcrowding. Our results suggest that collective land titling creates a more secure natural resource base and a longer time horizon for households in collective territories, which leads to investment in their private physical and human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the gender earnings gap that has been amply studied, the gender wealth gap has only recently begun to receive attention. Studies of the gender wealth gap have been concentrated on developed countries and have been limited by the use of household-level data. Using individual-level and sex-disaggregated wealth data for Ecuador, this paper examines the pattern of wealth inequality across genders, at different points of the wealth distribution, for sole and then partnered household heads. We use a new Oaxaca-Blinder-type decomposition method based on unconditional quantile regression to investigate the sources of the gap at different quantiles. Our results show that among sole heads the gap favors men across the distribution and is largest at the lower tail. Among partnered heads, the gap is much less pronounced throughout the distribution, actually reverting at the lower tail. For both sole and partnered heads, at the lower tail of the distribution, the gender gap is primarily associated with differing returns to covariates. At the median and upper quantiles, gender differences in endowments (ownership of savings accounts, education, and age) drive the gap. Gender bias in inheritance plays a significant role only at lower and median wealth levels. Overall, our results show stark contrasts with results for developed countries and important differences between sole versus partnered heads. Our study also adds evidence to the long-standing debate over whether female household heads are poorer than male heads and calls for the pursuit of wealth-differentiated policies and social programs to increase women’s participation in the formal economy, as well as the returns to their participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper presents the first in-depth analysis of the changing composition of the global income rich and the rising representation of developing countries at the top of the global distribution. We construct global distributions of income during 1988–2012 based on both household surveys and the new top incomes data derived from tax records, which better capture the rich who are typically excluded from household surveys. We find that the representation of developing countries in the global top 1% declined until about 2002, but that since 2005 it has risen significantly. This coincides with a decline in global inequality since 2005, according to a range of measures. We compare our estimates of the country-composition and income levels of the global rich with a number of other sources—including Credit Suisse’s estimates of global wealth, the Forbes World Billionaires List, attendees of the World Economic Forum, and estimates of top executives’ salaries. To varying degrees, all show a rise in the representation of the developing world in the ranks of the global elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Many households in developing countries allocate their productive assets among various income generating activities in order to develop a portfolio of income from occupations with different degrees of risk, expected returns and seasonal and liquidity constraints. The push and pull factors influencing diversification decisions of households are widely discussed in the literature; however, no study to date has taken into account spatial interdependence of household decisions in spite of various channels of neighborhood effects such as information flow, learning from others, social networks and agglomeration economies. This paper fills in the gap by incorporating spatial dependence in the choice model of diversification using a spatial auto-regressive probit model and an advanced Bayesian strategy to its estimation. Empirical analysis is run taking advantage of the Nigerian General Household Survey Panel, 2010–11 providing GIS coordinates for the surveyed households. The results imply endogeneity of the neighbors’ decisions to allocate their productive assets among various occupations and signal the importance of social learning and agglomeration effects favoring the spillover of diversification activities through neighbors’ networks and local markets. The households’ decisions respond to local environment factors such as weather shocks or infrastructural constraints. As shown by the regional differences, taking into account spatial interdependence is particularly important in the event of a wide divide of the data available into different zones, as for example in case of the Nigerian northern region where the states are larger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Understanding the sources of domestic food price volatility in developing countries and the extent to which it is transmitted from international to domestic markets is critical to help design better global, regional, and domestic policies to cope with excessive food price volatility and to protect the most vulnerable groups. This paper examines short-term price and volatility transmission from major grain commodities to 41 domestic food products across 27 countries in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. We follow a multivariate GARCH approach to model the dynamics of monthly price return volatility in international and domestic markets. The period of analysis is 2000 through 2013. In terms of price transmission, we only observe significant interactions from international to domestic markets in few cases. To calculate volatility spillovers, we simulate a shock equivalent to a 1% increase in the conditional volatility of price returns in the international market and evaluate its effect on the conditional volatility of price returns in the domestic market. The transmission of volatility is statistically significant in just one-quarter of the maize markets tested, more than half of rice markets tested, and all wheat markets tested. Volatility transmission seems to be more common when trade (imports or exports) are large relatively to domestic requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Substantial resources have been devoted to mitigating the asset gender gap in developing country agriculture. Efforts have been taken to understand the role of women in decision making and in farm operations. Recommendations for best practices in eliciting information on women’s roles have emphasized the importance of sex-disaggregated data collection and analysis. Collection of sex-disaggregated data is not straightforward and careful attention to context is needed. In Ecuador’s highlands, chemical use in agriculture is widespread, and outreach and training programs to reduce this use are essential. These programs should target the appropriate decision makers. This paper presents results from a field experiment conducted in the Ecuador highlands where responding farm households are randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: (i) a male respondent, (ii) a female respondent, and (iii) both adult male and female respondents (interviewed separately, but with knowledge that the other would also be interviewed). We assess whether treatment assignment affects responses to questions about decision making and responsibility for agricultural activities. Perceptions about household decision making and who is responsible for agricultural activities vary substantially by type of respondent. Men are more likely to claim sole responsibility; women are more likely to claim responsibility or that decisions are jointly made. In households where both man and woman were interviewed (separately) we found stark differences in responses about responsibilities, with men claiming sole responsibility at higher rates. Interviewing both members led to less divergence in responses, but large differences in perceptions about responsibilities remain when both are interviewed. Best interviewing practices depend on the type of information needed: for precise quantification of gender roles, complex methods may be necessary, but where qualitative information is sufficient, single-member interviews may be sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In 1988, Peru entered a severe economic crisis as a corollary of unfavorable external economic conditions, high levels of debt, and heterodox policies (the so-called debt crisis of 1980s). This paper investigates the short-term health shock experienced by infants during the crisis and its long-term impact on human capital accumulation. Because no longitudinal data are available, the estimation of causal effects is performed using multiple cross-section surveys that are representative of the same population over time. The short-term and the long-term effects are estimated exploiting the heterogeneous impact of the crisis across and within birth cohorts. Results indicate that the Peruvian crisis significantly affected the health of infants, particularly that of children born to low-educated mothers. From 1988 to 1990 vaccination declined 12 percentage points and infant mortality increased 2.3 percentage points among children born to low-educated mothers. In the long run, the children who suffered the most severe health shocks during the economic downturn of the 1980s performed worse in school. They had 0.12 fewer years of formal education and their probability of completing primary education by age 15 was three percentage points lower in relation to similar children born after the crisis. The results have strong policy implications. Children in developing countries should be safeguarded against health shocks during economic crises to avoid a decline in the accumulation of human capital in the long-run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Studies of the relationship between FDI and domestic investment reach contradictory findings. We argue that some of the conflicting evidence may be explained by the use of poor proxies for the theoretical concepts and questionable methodological choices. We review the paper of Morrissey and Udomkerdmonkol published in this journal in 2012. Improvements in the construction of the proxies and refinements in the estimation methodology reverse the finding of Morrissey and Udomkerdmonkol that FDI inflows crowd out domestic investment. Furthermore, there is no strong evidence that “good governance” actually encourages domestic investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Waste to Energy Recovery Assessment (WERA) framework stochastically analyzes waste-to-energy (WtE) systems feasibility. • Hybrid WtE can be feasible in Karachi (Pakistan) and in Delhi (India) with higher feed-in tariffs and waste collection fees. • Municipal waste (with recyclable paper and plastics removed) can generate up to 290 GWh in Karachi and 60 GWh in Delhi. • WtE social costs and benefits should be considered from the environment, public health, and waste management policy nexus. Waste collection, treatment, and safe disposal systems are rare in developing countries as these processes and systems have been mostly viewed from a cost-centric perspective in conjunction with weak or non-existent environmental policies. Consequently, solid waste generation has turned into a problem of significant proportions in many countries with severe degradation of land, air, and water quality and adverse effects on environment and public health. New waste-to-energy (WtE) systems using municipal solid waste (MSW) to produce energy (based on emerging technologies beyond traditional incineration), can serve as a useful bridge towards sustainable waste management. In this paper, a quantitative Waste to Energy Recovery Assessment (WERA) framework is used to stochastically analyze the feasibility of WtE in selected cities in Asia. Future policy measures of feed-in tariffs, payments for avoided pollution, and higher waste collection fees are assessed to evaluate if WtE systems can be made self-sustaining investments. The results show that WtE systems can generate up to 290 GWh of electricity in Karachi, and up to 60 GWh in Delhi from municipal waste feedstock from which recyclables (such as paper and plastics) have been removed. Net Present Value (NPV) estimation shows that hybrid WtE technology systems can be feasible in Karachi and Delhi with policy support, however Jakarta's case is challenging due to higher costs. Future investments for waste systems should use holistic evaluations that incorporate key social benefits and costs – not only of energy generation but also of emissions reductions and impacts on public health – and identify necessary policy support for ensuring viable and sustainable solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The concept of financial well-being serves as a useful indicator for monitoring progress towards SDGs 1, 3, 10, and 16. • Representative data on 11 emerging and developed countries is used to measure financial well-being and analyze predictors. • The average sample respondent is deficient in over three out of ten metrics considered vital for financial well-being. • Sizeable heterogeneity is found in structural and institutional features of financial sectors at country subregion levels. • These features are highly predictive of financial well-being, even controlling for individual and subregional covariates. This paper draws on nationally representative survey data from 11 emerging and developed economies to measure consumer financial well-being and provide a systematic analysis of its predictors. Whereas the extant literature has been dominated by studies emphasizing the role of individuals' levels of financial literacy and formal financial inclusion, the paper shifts focus towards contextual-level predictors by exploiting subregional variation in structural and institutional features of financial sectors, both within and across countries. It develops a conceptual framework that categorizes such features into 1) those that enhance or inhibit decision-making when selecting or using formal products and 2) those that provide viable substitutes or complements to formal products. It then provides empirical evidence on several examples. Specifically, it highlights the relative importance of having greater prevalence of independent information resources concerning financial products and services, additional provider choice, and some forms of semi-formal and informal finance. The main policy implications are that current efforts to improve broader welfare outcomes through financial literacy and inclusion interventions may still be too narrowly framed. Structural and institutional features related to financial sectors may hinder or enhance financial well-being, even if individuals have adequate financial literacy or be included in formal financial markets. The financial well-being concept may also serve as a useful indicator for monitoring progress towards SDGs 1, 3, 10, and 16. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The world is not on track to achieve many human-development related Sustainable Development Goals. • Some targets are especially challenging: access to safe sanitation, upper secondary school completion, and underweight children. • Twenty-eight most vulnerable countries (MVCs) are projected to not achieve any of the selected human development SDG targets explored here. • Population in MVCs is projected to grow from 751 million in 2015 to 1721 million by 2050. • Globally, nearly 1 in 4 youths are projected to live in an MVC by 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call upon all countries to achieve 17 broad development goals by 2030. The SDGs are a central component of many national development plans and foreign aid strategies. While the SDGs have become a central aspect of development planning, how achievable are they under present conditions? This paper explores a dynamic "middle-of-the-road" baseline global development scenario (Shared Socio-economic Pathway 2) using an integrated assessment model (International Futures) to evaluate progress toward target values on nine indicators related to six human development SDGs. We find that, between 2015 and 30, the world will make only limited progress towards achieving those SDGs with our current set of policy priorities. Our study finds that across the variables explored here (nine indicators for 186 countries = 1674 country-indicators), 43 percent had already reached target values by 2015. By 2030, target values are projected to be achieved for 53 percent of country-variables. This paper highlights special difficulty in achieving targets on some SDG indicators (access to safe sanitation, upper secondary school completion, and underweight children) representing persistent development issues that will not be solved without a significant shift in domestic and international aid policies and prioritization. In addition, we highlight 28 particularly vulnerable countries that are not projected to achieve any of the nine human development related target values in a middle-of-the-road scenario. These most vulnerable countries (MVCs) must be the focus of international assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Using panel data covering 112 countries and 45 years, we study developing countries' incentive to enforce IPR. • We show that IPR enforcement is U-shaped in a country's market size and inverse-U-shaped in the aggregated market size of its trade partners. • The effect is entirely driven by the trade partners that strongly enforce IPR. • We next study the impact of strengthening IPR protection on innovation in developing countries. • We find that a stronger protection of IPR negatively impacts patents and export discoveries in developing countries The paper proposes an empirical analysis of the determinants of the adoption of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and their impact on innovation in manufacturing. The analysis is conducted with panel data covering 112 countries. First we show that IPR protection is U-shaped with respect to a country's market size and inverse-U-shaped with respect to the aggregated market size of its trade partners. Second, reinforcing IPR protection reduces on-the-frontier and inside-the-frontier innovation in developing countries, without necessarily increasing innovation at the global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In this paper, we provide further evidence on the relationship between decentralization and foreign aid effectiveness. Our previous work has shown that decentralization decreases aid effectiveness, i.e., the impact of aid on economic growth is negative in decentralized countries. However, our previous work has not taken different types of aid and different types of decentralization into account, which is at the heart of our current analysis. We consider different measures of decentralization, in particular measures of fiscal decentralization derived from government finance statistics and measures of political decentralization that are constructed based on countries’ constitutional rules. In addition, we take different types of aid into account: grants, loans, technical assistance, total net ODA; and we distinguish between multi-lateral and bi-lateral aid in order to consider differences in the donor structure. Our empirical analysis is based on panel data of up to 53 developing countries. In our growth regressions, we combine all types of decentralization with the different types of aid. We find important differences between different types of decentralization: (i) fiscal decentralization negatively affects aid effectiveness (in line with our previous work), (ii) employment decentralization may increase aid effectiveness, and (iii) political decentralization does not hamper aid effectiveness or may even have positive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Identifying and selecting poor households with efficient targeting methods is essential for effective poverty alleviation programs. This paper assesses the ex-post performance of two popular targeting mechanisms, Proxy Means Testing (PMT) and Community-Based Targeting (CBT), in a pilot cash transfer program in Cameroon. Several indicators and metrics to measure each method’s performance in terms of inclusion of poor households and exclusion of non-poor households are employed. Results consistently show that CBT performs poorly in terms of selecting households with low per capita consumption when compared to PMT. CBT appears to select households with low physical and human capital, regardless of actual consumption level. However, CBT also shows more variability in the selection decision than PMT even when alternative poverty definitions are used as robustness tests. The PMT method used in the pilot slightly outperforms other targeting methods (hybrid, alternative PMT, and universal targeting with equal budget), but errors remain high when selecting 35% of the population for program participation. The results suggest caution is needed in employing CBT methods to select households with low per capita consumption in an environment where poverty levels are high and administrative capacities are limited. CBT performance may be improved through more uniform and consistent guidance on program selection criteria and process, including explicit criteria that enable CBT monitoring, as well as a better integration between PMT and CBT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Developing and transition countries have increasingly engaged in the signing of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in order to attract FDI, based on the widely shared view that FDI can contribute significantly to economic development and poverty reduction. However, the degree to which foreign investments can be expected to generate employment, offer access to international technology and know-how, and ultimately create growth, varies considerably depending on the type of investment. It is therefore important to determine what type of FDI is attracted by BITs. By providing a legal commitment to the fair and equitable treatment of foreign investors, BITs aim to decrease investment risk and to attract foreign investors. We argue that BITs can be expected to be most effective in those sectors of the economy with a larger risk of expropriation, i.e., sectors characterized by large sunk costs, relatively low levels of firm-specific know-how, and in sectors that are politically sensitive to foreign ownership. This paper represents the first attempt to empirically study the heterogeneous effect that BITs may have across different sectors of investments. We analyze investments made in 13 countries in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, disaggregated over seven sectors. We indeed find the effect of BITs to differ considerably across sectors of investment. Using capital intensity as a proxy, we confirm that FDI in those sectors with higher sunk costs responds more strongly to the signing of BITs. Given the considerable differences in the development impact that can be expected from FDI in different sectors, it remains to be shown whether BITs are an effective tool to attract those types of investments that are most beneficial for the development of the host economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Ownership of assets is important for poverty reduction, and women’s control of assets is associated with positive development outcomes at the household and individual levels. This research was undertaken to provide guidance for agricultural development programs on how to incorporate gender and assets in the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions. This paper synthesizes the findings of eight mixed-method evaluations of the impacts of agricultural development projects on individual and household assets in seven countries in Africa and South Asia. The results show that assets both affect and are affected by projects, indicating that it is both feasible and important to consider assets in the design, implementation, and evaluation of projects. All projects were associated with increases in asset levels and other benefits at the household level; however, only four projects documented significant, positive impacts on women’s ownership or control of some types of assets relative to a control group, and of those only one project provided evidence of a reduction in the gender asset gap. The quantitative and qualitative findings suggest ways that greater attention to gender and assets by researchers and development implementers could improve outcomes for women in future projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The spread of mobile phones in developing countries is a technological success story. Mobile phones’ independence of landline telecommunication networks qualifies them for information exchange even in remote rural areas. Whereas technology spillovers via international trade and foreign direct investment have been widely explored by the literature, international migration and rural–urban migration have hardly been explored as vehicles for technology diffusion. Motivated by the current extent of national and international migration, this paper addresses this lacuna. It draws upon data from rural households in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and uses households’ mobile phone ownership as an indicator for rural technology diffusion. Migration is modeled via an endogenous treatment regression approach. In a number of robustness checks, the variables, the sample, and the estimation technique are varied. The results provide empirical evidence for rural technology diffusion. In the survey areas, poverty-driven rural–urban migration and related technology diffusion play a more important role than technology spillovers via international migration. The results show that total emigration as well as immigration can support technology diffusion, i.e., the dispersion of mobile phones, beyond monetary remittances. When controlling for education and household age (in a squared fashion) in the main regressions and in several robustness checks, emigration as well as immigration, however, exhibit a negative effect on households’ mobile phone ownership (“technology drain” or “technology impair” effect). For development policy, the results suggest investments in education and the creation of financial opportunities to support rural technology diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In Nigeria, the most populated African country, rural electrification is a critical issue because of the low household electrification rate and the poor quality of the grid. This energy poverty has harmful economic and social consequences in rural areas, such as low productivity, lack of income-generating opportunities and poor housing conditions. In this paper, we consider electrification as a technical shock that may affect household time allocation. Using the 2010–11 General Household Survey, we investigate how electrification affects female and male labor supply decisions within rural households in Nigeria. Focusing on husband–wife data, we consider potential dependence in spouses’ labor supply decisions and address the challenge of zero hours of work using a recent copula-based bivariate hurdle model (Deb et al. , 2013). In addition, an instrumental variable strategy helps identify the causal effect of electrification. Our results underline that this dependence in spouses’ labor supply decisions is critical to consider when assessing the impact of electrification on these outcomes. Electrification increases the working time of both spouses in the separate assessments, but the joint analysis emphasizes only a positive effect of electrification on husbands’ working time. In line with the household labor supply approach, our findings highlight that, within the household, the labor supply decisions of one spouse significantly affect those of the other spouse. Thus, if we neglect the effect of electrification on the spouse of the individual examined, we may fail to assess how this individual has been actually affected by this common shock on both spouses. Our results suggest that these within–household relationships promote husbands’ working time at the expense of wives’ working time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper makes an empirical and ethnographic contribution to the literature on Chinese migrants in Africa by using five case studies to explore their role in the agri-food sector in Ethiopia and Ghana. We find that the realities of Chinese migrants in this sector matches neither popular media stereotypes of empire building and land grabbing, nor Chinese government narratives of South–South cooperation, technology transfer, and agricultural development. Far from being a “silent army” promoting larger Chinese state objectives, they operate independently and serve no agenda other than their own. Many migrants have little if any contact with the Chinese Embassy or other official Chinese presence in Africa. While none of our informants have received support from the Chinese government, they are nonetheless affected by government regulatory frameworks in African countries and their activities are shaped accordingly. The regulatory policy environment is very different in the two countries, and this has implications for the livelihood strategies of Chinese migrants. While the impacts of their presence on local development are modest overall, these impacts do appear to be positive in the sense that they are creating economic opportunities, both for themselves and for local people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper discusses South–South cooperation by examining ProSAVANA, a flagship agricultural development program seeking to apply Brazilian experience to Mozambique. ProSAVANA is a joint Japan–Brazil–Mozambique initiative in the savannah zone of Mozambique’s Nacala Corridor region that was initially inspired by the Japan–Brazil PRODECER program in Brazil’s Cerrado region. ProSAVANA subsequently became the focus of fears about land-grabbing in the Nacala Corridor, attracting strong civil society contestation. We show how distinct imaginaries of agricultural development in Mozambique and Brazil were used to mobilize for and against ProSAVANA, thus revealing the contentious nature of the similarity claims underpinning South–South cooperation. In particular, we focus on the role of landscape imaginaries associated with the savannah and the Cerrado. We examine the use in the promotion and contestation of ProSAVANA of visual representations that draw on these imaginaries, including GIS maps of Mozambique’s savannah region made by Brazilian agribusiness consultants and an advocacy video of Brazil’s Cerrado region filmed by Mozambican land rights activists. Noting that the latest ProSAVANA planning documents differ significantly from those expressing its initial vision, we argue that the contestation of ProSAVANA has had a series of productive effects even before the program has moved to full implementation. These productive effects are visible not only in the program itself but also in the wider context of state-society relations shaping debates on South–South cooperation in Mozambique, Brazil, and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary There is growing concern with the weaknesses of economic statistics relating to developing countries, and the risks that poor data have generated misleading research findings and poor policy advice. Cross-country tax data offer a striking example, with existing datasets frequently highly incomplete, analytically imprecise, plagued by errors, and sharply lacking in transparency. This paper introduces the new Government Revenue Dataset from the International Centre for Tax and Development, which provides a more reliable, transparent, and comprehensive basis for cross-national research. This new dataset has initially been used to re-examine major questions about the relationships between tax and aid, elections, economic growth, and democratization. The results deepen some previous conclusions and call others seriously into question—notably the assertion that aid dependence consistently undermines domestic revenue efforts. Above all, the research demonstrates the value of the new dataset, the broader sensitivity of many results to changes in data quality and coverage, and the consequent importance of expanded attention to, and investments in, data quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper explains the processes behind the framing of drip irrigation as a promising technology to address current poverty and environmental challenges in the developing world. I draw from critical development and science and technology studies and highlight that this imagery has been actively performed. Insiders elaborated a compelling narrative calling upon a will to improve through technology and the moral legitimacy of social entrepreneurship in development; they worked hard to establish a supportive coalition in an ever wider network. This story hinges on several assumptions, which upon closer scrutiny appear to be problematic: the unicity of smallholder farming, the attribution of inherent technical characteristics to a specific object—the “drip kit”—regardless of the context in which it is used, and the framing of social entrepreneurship and market-based approaches as alternative models even though these rather constitute a re-working of existing arrangements within the international development community. Nonetheless, the pro-poor and environmentally friendly smallholder drip irrigation narrative still continues to be successful in harnessing the support of the international development community, despite the little capacity drip irrigation has had to transform smallholder farming, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Unpacking the origins, actors, and building blocks of the discursive success of smallholder drip irrigation provides fresh perspectives on the practices of development in the sector and is the first step toward more meaningful engagement with smallholder farmers in the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The adoption of the Internet has been widespread across countries, making much more information available and thus facilitating knowledge diffusion among businesses to boost their innovation performance. However, differences in firms’ capabilities to use this newly available knowledge could create a new “digital divide” instead. Using 50,013 firm observations covering 117 developing and emerging countries over the 2006–11 period, this paper tests for knowledge spillover effects from industries’ adoption of the Internet on firms’ productivity and innovation performance. We test for heterogeneous spillover impacts on groups of firms that are commonly less engaged in innovation and on firms with different productivity levels. Our specification regresses firm productivity and innovation performance – i.e., their investment in equipment and ownership of quality certificates and patents – on industries’ use of the Internet. Spillover effects are identified by controlling for firms’ own investment in Internet technology, industry and country-year fixed effects as well as extensive firm-level controls. Our results show that industries’ use of the Internet positively affects the average firm’s productivity and its investment in equipment. We also identify modest impacts of industries’ use of the Internet on the likelihood that firms obtain quality certificates and patents. On average, we find that the returns to productivity are larger for firms that commonly engage less in innovation, including single-plant establishments, non-exporters, and firms located in small agglomerations. However, results from quantile regressions show that only the most productive firms reap productivity gains from Internet-enabled knowledge access. Firms with productivity levels below the 50 th percentile do not benefit much. The spillover effects from industries’ adoption of the Internet identified in our work justify public policies aimed at fostering industries’ use of the Internet. However, since we show that only firms with adequate absorptive capabilities benefit from the widespread Internet adoption, policy support should also focus on facilitating firms’ access to networks and strengthening their capacities to use them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper analyzes the impact of both the long-term presence and additional influxes of refugees on the local population in Uganda. Uganda has a unique legal framework of local integration which makes it an interesting case study. Refugees are allowed to work and move freely. The political aim is to integrate them economically and socially into the host communities. The impact of this approach on Ugandan households’ objective and subjective welfare as well as their access to public services is the focus of this study. Two different household surveys covering the years 2002–10 are used in order to employ a difference-in-differences approach. In doing so, the natural experiment of two sudden inflows is exploited, while simultaneously controlling for the long-term trends in refugee numbers. The findings presented here suggest that the Ugandan population living near refugee settlements benefits both in terms of consumption and public service provisions. However, their negative perceptions regarding their own economic situation and their alienation from their national state in favor of their ethnic identity contradict this objective improvement of livelihoods. This is the first study to empirically analyze the effect of a long-term presence of displaced populations on local communities. With refugee situations becoming increasingly protracted, the findings offer important policy insights and point toward an interesting new field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Many rural poor in developing countries live in areas far away from markets and isolation is a key limiting factor to their livelihood. In this paper, we use four waves of a primary panel household survey conducted in 17 remote natural villages in China to study how road access shapes farmers’ production patterns, input use, and rural poverty. We adopt a difference-in-difference approach by comparing the outcomes of the households in villages with and without road access, before and after the introduction of each road. Our results show that access to roads facilitates specialization in agricultural production. In natural villages with better road access, farmers plant fewer numbers of crops, purchase more fertilizer, and hire more labor. Consequently, road connections improve household agricultural income and reduce poverty. In addition, road access significantly increases local nonfarm income for the relatively poor households, but not the rich. Overall, our research provides empirical justification on the importance of rural road on agricultural specialization and poverty reduction, especially in isolated and impoverished regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper explores monthly, firm-level customs records from Laos in the period 2005–10. We analyze the role of two important and related determinants of export survival, experience, and networks, which are particularly relevant for developing countries. We go beyond previous studies by disaggregating contract terminations to consider the possibility of upgrades to superior products. Having prior experience with the export product and destination and strong networks of similar firms has a strong positive impact on chances of simple export survival. The likelihood of upgrading is boosted by destination experience but lowered by familiarity with the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Conditional on individual and household characteristics, women are 7 percentage points more likely to be in vulnerable employment than men. • Across developing countries, the gender gap is smaller in richer countries, with lower fertility rates, and more gender-egalitarian laws. • At the micro-level, the experiences of marriage and parenthood are important drivers of the gender gap. • Current levels of the gender gap in vulnerable employment are almost entirely unexplained by standard labour supply factors. This paper investigates gender inequality in vulnerable employment: forms of employment typically featuring high precariousness, inadequate earnings, and lack of decent working conditions. Using a large collection of harmonized household surveys from developing countries, we measure long-term trends, describe geographical patterns, and estimate correlates of gender inequalities in vulnerable employment. Conditional on individual and household characteristics, women are 7 percentage points more likely to be in vulnerable employment than men. The experiences of marriage and parenthood are important drivers of this gender gap. Across countries, the gender gap is smaller in richer countries, with lower fertility rates, and more gender-egalitarian laws, particularly those laws regulating marriage, parenthood, access to assets, and access to entrepreneurship. Since the 1990s, rising levels of female education and rapidly falling fertility have pulled women away from vulnerable employment at a faster rate than men. However, that process is largely exhausted, with current levels of the gender gap in vulnerable employment being almost entirely unexplained by standard labour supply factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms are positive deviants: “solution- and leader-driven change” (SLDC) and “problem-driven iterative adaptation” (PDIA). The theories are used to analyze data emerging from a case survey involving thirty cases from Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Society (ISS) program. The bulk of evidence from this study supports a PDIA explanation, but there is reason to believe that SLDC hypotheses also have value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skewed distributions of benefits from natural resources can fuel social exclusion and conflict, threatening sustainability. This paper analyzes how user-group property rights to harvest forest products affect the distribution of benefits from those products within user groups. We argue that groups with recognized harvesting rights share benefits more equally among group members than groups without such rights. We test this argument with data from 350 forest user groups in 14 developing countries. Our results suggest that securing harvesting rights for local user groups can contribute to more equal benefit sharing, especially in ethnically homogenous groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a new index of the quality of the business environment for microfinance institutions (the Global Microscope on the Microfinance Business Environment). Regressions are used to validate the index by linking it and its sub-components to microfinance outcomes. The main findings are that the components of the index related to the supporting institutional framework are strongly linked to measures of microfinance penetration (such as microfinance borrowers as a share of total population). Components related to the framework for regulation and supervision are more strongly linked to outcomes at the MFI level, including loan portfolio quality, financial self-sufficiency, average loan size, and the share of lending to women. Many, but not all, of these relationships are robust to using instrumental variables estimation in which a country’s general stringency with respect to financial regulation is used as an instrument for the index and its components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the dynamics between monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and government performance in developing countries, where M&E systems are expanding rapidly. Findings in Bolivia suggest that approaches to M&E can lower staff morale, create burdensome paperwork, blind managers to operational problems and emerging innovations, and reinforce self-censorship, contributing to the very problem M&E is intended to solve. Crafted appropriately, M&E can instead become a tool to build practical judgment, increase staff motivation, and improve implementation incrementally. Ultimately, these findings contribute to efforts to design M&E that can support staff working under complex working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, social security has been one of the most popular instruments for promoting human development worldwide. Nearly all countries of the world have implemented some kind of social security legislation. While the emergence of social security in the OECD-world has been extensively analyzed, we know very little about the origins of social security beyond the OECD-world. By analyzing 91 Spanish, French, and British colonies, and former colonies from 1820 until the present time, this paper demonstrates that the colonial heritage is a crucial factor in explaining the adoption and form of social security programs in countries outside OECD-world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Developed countries have relied heavily on aid budgets to fulfill their pledges to boost funding for addressing climate change in developing countries. However, little is known about how interaction between aid and other ministries has shaped contributors’ diverse approaches to climate finance. This paper investigates intra-governmental dynamics in decision-making on climate finance in seven contributor countries (Australia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the UK, and the US). While aid agencies retained considerable control over implementation, environment and finance ministries have played an influential and often contrasting role on key policy issues, including distribution between mitigation and adaptation and among geographical regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper investigates how three major political conditions—political constraint (imposed by veto players), government partisanship, and elections—have influenced the government responses to financial crises in 98 developing countries over the period 1976–2004. We find that governments experiencing financial crises generally tightened their monetary and fiscal policies, but the extent of the tightening was considerably moderated by the presence of large political constraint (large and strong veto players), strong leftist partisan power in government, and upcoming legislative or presidential elections. We also find that fiscal policies are more considerably constrained by political conditions than monetary policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper investigates costs and benefits of calling back expatriates of a developing country. I employ a life cycle model with a rich and poor country with endogenous migration and return migration. Cost of bringing back a worker is the compensation that is paid to him while the benefit is the increased output because of his higher skill level and positive externalities, which are empirically estimated, from him resulting in higher skill levels for local workers. Results show that welfare gains are maximized when workers with skill levels 1.28 standard deviations above the domestic mean skill level are called back. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In this paper we analyze the impact of private food standards on the export performance of asparagus export firms in Peru. We use 18-year panel data from 87 firms and apply fixed effects and GMM models. We do not find any evidence that certification to private standards in general and to specific individual private standards, has an effect on firms’ export performance, neither at the extensive margin nor at the intensive margin, and neither on export volumes nor on export values. Our case-study results imply that private standards do not act as a catalyst to trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]