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Using a unique panel survey of enterprises, we examine the relationship between four categories of formalization and firm productivity. We carry out one- and two-step productivity estimations whose robustness we check with matching and doubly robust estimators. The only formalization category that appears to be significantly associated with productivity is tax formalization, i.e. a firm's decision to pay taxes. This positive association only holds for firms that were already more productive and bigger before formalizing than other informal firms. The reason for the insignificance of the remaining three categories is likely to be the insignificant association between formalization and potential benefits of formalization, such as more access to credit, employees, and investments. High taxes and fees linked to formalization seem to outweigh the few to non-existent intermediate benefits of formalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Mozambique experienced sustained economic growth and poverty reduction until 2015. • During 2015–20 many shocks hit, leading to devaluation of the national currency. • This brought about a general increase in prices, especially food prices. • Household welfare and poverty were negatively affected by the food price rise. • Policy makers likely underestimated the link devaluation-inflation-poverty. From the early 1990s, Mozambique experienced sustained economic growth and both consumption and multidimensional poverty reduced until 2014/15. Starting in the second half of 2015, a deep economic crisis hit. Economic growth plummeted and the national currency devalued significantly, leading to a general increase in prices, especially food prices. Since food products account for more than half of the consumption of poor families, and a high percentage of households are net food buyers, we argue that the food price rise is likely a major factor behind the significant upsurge in the poverty rate observed in 2019/20. Using various analytical approaches and robustness checks, we analyse and link the price trends and the shocks experienced between 2014/15 and 2019/20, in an attempt to examine and uncover how they influenced poverty. While being clearly relevant for policy makers and development partners in Mozambique, who may not have fully appraised the consequences of recent shocks on household welfare, our study is relevant to other developing countries. This is especially so for those that depend on imported food, and characterised by a high percentage of net food buyer households, who spend a large part of their income on food, and experiencing contemporary shocks involving price surges, regional disparities and weak governance. This seems even more important now after the surge in global inflation that followed the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Danidas første chef, Mogens Boserup, spurgte i 1967, Hjælper vi? Og fokuserede i bogen af samme navn på hvorfor, hvor meget og hvordan? Vi fremhæver på denne baggrund, at dansk udviklingsbistand har ændret sig fundamentalt gennem de seneste årtier. Det nye er ikke, at udviklingsbistanden er påvirket af sikkerhedspolitikken. Det nye er de sikkerhedspolitiske udfordringer, og især hvor tæt udviklingsbistanden indlejres i de sikkerhedspolitiske bestræbelser. Andre udviklingslinjer og tendenser afkodes, herunder at bistanden ikke afspejler den geografiske dynamik i fattigdommen. Vi konkluderer, at det ikke står så godt til med gavmildheden og partnerskaberne i disse år, og der lægges op til nytænkning og nye prioriteringer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking advantage of the 2019/2020 Mozambican household budget survey, in the field both before and during the first phases of the Covid-19 pandemic, we assess the impact of Covid-19 on welfare in 2020, aiming to disentangle this impact from the effect of other shocks. Comparing a number of welfare metrics, and applying propensity score matching and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment approaches, we find that consumption levels are significantly lower and poverty rates substantially higher during the first phases of Covid-19 than in the pre-Covid-19 period. Moreover, the impact was greater in urban areas and accordingly in the more urbanised southern region. Non-food expenditures suffered relatively more than food expenditures, likely a coping strategy, while the impact on consumption levels was greater for people working in the secondary and tertiary sectors than for workers in the primary sector, mainly agriculture. Stunting among under-5 children also suffered. Only a limited number of countries have actual, collected in-person, survey data that span across the initial phases of the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, the present analysis adds value to our understanding of the welfare consequences of Covid-19 in a low-income context, where automatic social safety nets were not in place during the early phases of the pandemic. More specifically, it helps in assessing the results of previous welfare impact simulations, compared to real data. Even though our main findings are broadly in line with existing estimates based on simulations or phone surveys, important differences between the predictions and the actual results emerge. We conclude that it is critically important for Mozambique and its development partners to develop stronger and more targeted policies and tools to respond to temporary shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examine whether self-exposure to gender documents can reduce gender bias of men in Vietnam. • Commenting on gender-related laws does not reduce men's bias against women. • Writing stories on gender has a strong effect on reducing existing prejudice against women. • Writing stories also has a small and positive effect on doing housework. • Changing men's behaviour in practice requires stronger, more sustained interventions. In this study, we use a randomized control trial to examine whether asking Vietnamese men to reflect on gender equality can reduce their gender bias. We randomly selected two groups of married men in four rural provinces and asked the first group to make comments on gender-related laws and the second group to write stories about gender equality. We find that commenting on gender-related laws does not reduce men's bias against women, while writing stories has a strong effect on reducing prejudice against women. Writing stories increases the index of gender attitudes of men in the second group by 0.29 standard deviations. The assignment also has a small effect on their contribution to housework. Changing men's behaviour in practice requires stronger and more sustained interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mozambique experienced important reductions in the poverty rate until recently, before two major natural disasters hit, an armed insurgency stroke in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, and the country started suffering from a hidden debt crisis with associated economic slowdown. As the last available national household expenditure survey is from 2014/15, just before these crises started unfolding, there is need for a poverty assessment based on alternative data sources. We study the evolution of multidimensional poverty in Mozambique using survey data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Using both the standard Alkire–Foster multidimensional poverty index and the first-order dominance (FOD) method, we find that the multidimensional poverty reduction trend observed between 2009–11 and 2015 halted between 2015 and 2018. Meanwhile, the number of poor people increased, mainly in rural areas and in the central provinces. Importantly, the poorest provinces did not improve their rankings over time, and between 2015 and 2018, no progress took place for most areas and provinces, as measured by the FOD approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality is a major international development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key socioeconomic and political outcomes. Still, informed debate requires clear evidence. This article contributes by taking stock and providing an up-to-date overview of the current knowledge on the impact of income inequality, specifically on three important outcomes: (1) economic growth; (2) human development, with a focus on health and education as two of its dimensions; and (3) governance, with emphasis on democracy. With particular attention to work in economics, which is especially developed on these topics, this article reveals that the existing evidence is somewhat mixed and argues for further in-depth empirical work across disciplines. It also points to explanations for the lack of consensus embedded in data quality and availability, measurement issues, and shortcomings of the different methods employed. Finally, we suggest promising future research avenues relying on experimental work for microlevel analysis and reiterate the need for more region- and country-specific studies and improvements in the availability and reliability of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a survey of enterprises in Myanmar, we examine demand for formal credit and the extent to which firms are self-constrained by not applying for credit or if they apply and are constrained by bank's rejections. We have information about firm managers' managerial capacity and risk attitude. We use this to test if the allocation of loanable funds is systematically associated with the attributes. We find that these attributes are positively associated with firm performance and the probability of both having credit demand and applying for credit. On the supply side we find no discernible links to the traits once we control for self-constraint in applying for credit. Thus, the traits improve credit access through a higher likelihood of applying for credit not a higher probability of being granted credit when applying. We suggest to improve the allocation of credit by incentivizing banks to utilize information about managers' business capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We provide new empirical evidence on the way in which the import of inputs impacts on firm-level productivity. • We find a positive association between imports into a sector and firm productivity and a productivity premium for firms using imported inputs. • There are also productivity gains downstream for firms using domestically-produced inputs from more import-intensive sectors. • We find suggestive evidence that import competition leads to product differentiation and better quality domestically-produced inputs. • Ignoring gains from trade through the supply chain may underestimate the impact of trade on the productivity of domestic firms. This paper explores how competition-induced productivity gains from imports in intermediate producing sectors transmit through the supply chain. Based on firm-level panel data from Vietnam, we show that in addition to the productivity premium associated with importing intermediate inputs, firms that use domestically-produced inputs from more import-intensive sectors also have higher productivity. We find evidence that import competition leads to product differentiation, in particular higher quality output in sectors where there is greater scope for quality variation, leading to better quality domestically-produced inputs. We also find evidence that non-importing firms that experience productivity gains due to greater import intensity in upstream sectors change their input mix and become more capital intensive. We conclude that ignoring the gains from trade through this mechanism may significantly underestimate the impact of trade on productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00419-8 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between business practices and enterprise productivity using panel data with matched employer and employee information from Myanmar. The data show that micro, small, and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Myanmar typically adopt only a few modern business practices, and the persistence in the use is extremely low. Even so, we find a positive and economically important association between business practices and productivity. Specifically, the empirical results show that a one standard deviation difference in applied business practices (equivalent to applying an additional 4 to 5 of the 20 business practices in focus) is associated with an 8–10 per cent difference in labour productivity. Utilising the employer–employee information to estimate Mincer-type wage regressions, we find that workers receive about half to two-thirds of the productivity gain in higher wages. Overall, our findings support the notion of business practices as a production technology, and we find that workers and managers split the productivity gains evenly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examine the potential impacts of international coffee price fluctuations on the nutritional status of children in the 0–5 age category. • We show that an upward international coffee price fluctuation is associated with improvement in childhood nutritional status in rural Tanzania. • The effect is higher for coffee growers relative to non-growers, though it is not always statistically significant implying spillover effect. • Our result underlines the importance of enhancing farmers' coping abilities to manage the adverse impacts of fluctuations in commodity prices. In this paper, we empirically examine the potential impact of commodity price fluctuations on the nutritional status of children in the 0–5 age category. This is important as adverse shocks that children experience at the time of birth will have an irreversible long-term impact that can adversely affect subsequent human capital formation. Unlike the bulk of the literature in the area that focuses on the impacts of drought-induced income shocks, we focus on changes in income caused by fluctuations in international coffee prices. We thus aim to estimate the potential impacts of international commodity price fluctuations on the nutritional status of children in commodity-export-dependent developing countries. To this end, we use the three waves of the Tanzanian National Panel Survey (NPS), together with data on international coffee prices. Our results show that an upward coffee price fluctuation is associated with an improvement in childhood nutritional status in rural Tanzania. This result is robust to the inclusion of household (sibling) fixed effects and data choices. The main result of our paper underlines the importance of international commodity price fluctuations for the wellbeing of communities in commodity-export-dependent countries. In the case of Tanzania, for example, the coffee sector creates direct income for about 400,000 smallholder farmers who produce 90 percent of Tanzania's coffee, which is mainly produced for export. Thus, if not well-managed, international commodity price fluctuations put a strain on the poverty reduction endeavors of developing countries that depend on exports of one or a few non-oil commodities. The results of the paper also have implications for Goal number 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aims to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]