Showing papers by "World Bank published in 1970"

Brain drain or overflow

Abstract: drain" in recent years, no firm consensus has emerged as to whether or not one exists. Today we know much more about the international migration of professional manpower than we did five, four or even three years ago. But the "more" we know is mainly facts, and not all that many; men still have difficulty saying what the facts mean and deciding whether or not the brain drain constitutes a problem of "disturbing dimen sions"?as the Pearson Commission called it. Instead of mass movements of relatively unskilled and un tutored peoples into the world's empty spaces, international migration has increasingly become the movement of people with education seeking opportunities in more developed coun tries to use skills that education has given them. The dramatic increases in foreign study since World War II, the explosion of international communications and the decline in the cost of travel have combined to internationalize the market for edu cated manpower to a degree previously unknown. This widening of the market, combined with full employment in the West, has greatly increased competition for professional manpower, espe cially the competition for exceptional talent. For some em? ployers, this international competition has brought trouble; for many individuals it has brought opportunity. There can be no quarrel with the statement in the United Na tions Report1 that "highly trained personnel from many devel oping countries are emigrating to a few major developed coun tries, that the size of this flow is large and that it is increasing at a rapid rate." But there is great question whether this migration is seriously hurting the countries that are the net exporters of trained manpower. The surprising fact is that in most develop? ing countries the number of professionally trained people who are becoming available for home employment is rising, not fall ing, and in country after country the numbers are rising faster than their economies can absorb them. One certainly cannot make this statement about all countries, or even all underdevel

Brain drain or overflow

Abstract: drain" in recent years, no firm consensus has emerged as to whether or not one exists. Today we know much more about the international migration of professional manpower than we did five, four or even three years ago. But the "more" we know is mainly facts, and not all that many; men still have difficulty saying what the facts mean and deciding whether or not the brain drain constitutes a problem of "disturbing dimen sions"?as the Pearson Commission called it. Instead of mass movements of relatively unskilled and un tutored peoples into the world's empty spaces, international migration has increasingly become the movement of people with education seeking opportunities in more developed coun tries to use skills that education has given them. The dramatic increases in foreign study since World War II, the explosion of international communications and the decline in the cost of travel have combined to internationalize the market for edu cated manpower to a degree previously unknown. This widening of the market, combined with full employment in the West, has greatly increased competition for professional manpower, espe cially the competition for exceptional talent. For some em? ployers, this international competition has brought trouble; for many individuals it has brought opportunity. There can be no quarrel with the statement in the United Na tions Report1 that "highly trained personnel from many devel oping countries are emigrating to a few major developed coun tries, that the size of this flow is large and that it is increasing at a rapid rate." But there is great question whether this migration is seriously hurting the countries that are the net exporters of trained manpower. The surprising fact is that in most develop? ing countries the number of professionally trained people who are becoming available for home employment is rising, not fall ing, and in country after country the numbers are rising faster than their economies can absorb them. One certainly cannot make this statement about all countries, or even all underdevel

Power, pork and patronage: Decentralisation and the politicisation of the development budget in Papua New Guinea

Abstract: This paper examines a number of recent empirical studies of local-level decision-making in relation to development planning and, especially, the allocation of state development funds in Papua New Guinea. The discussion is framed by the extensive theoretical and Papua New Guinea literature on patronage politics and political culture, by the recent history of decentralisation reforms, and by the frequently articulated, but largely anecdotal, observations about the functioning of district and local-level governance processes.In contrast to the anecdotal vision of widespread and chronic dysfunctionality, the studies considered here paint a picture of considerable spatial and regional variation. We offer some tentative hypotheses to explain this variation, while flagging the need for more empirical work. We outline how these preliminary findings have informed a program of research that is currently being undertaken at the district and local government levels with a view to gaining a better understanding of the extent and nature of spatial variation in the local-level governance of state development funds in Papua New Guinea.

Observations on the breeding of the pink‐backed pelican pelecanus rufescens

Abstract: Summary This paper summarises observations on the breeding behaviour of the Pink-backed Pelican Pelecanus rufescens at Rakewa, Nyanza Province, Kenya, where the species has bred for at least 200 years. Observations covered most of one breeding season, November 1962 to April 1963. Of at least 250 nests, 35 were closely observed. The community consisted of about 815 pelicans of which about 540 were adults. The death rate is estimated at 13% per annum and the mean life-span at about seven and a half years. The breeding site, in trees above a small swamp, is 15 miles from the favoured feeding ground. The colony is protected by local Luo people. The pelicans feed and roost mainly at the Miriu Delta, 15 miles away, travelling between the two places so high up as to be unseen. They fish in the early morning, visiting the colony to feed young mainly between 09.00 and 13.00 hrs. Once the young are large both parents roost away from the colony at the Delta. The breeding season takes place from August, towards the end of the rains, to March, at the end of the dry season. The birds breed in synchronised groups, the breeding cycle for any group occupying five months. Nuptial display is performed on the nest trees, by single pairs or small groups. Two main displays are described, “pointing” and “bill-clapping”. Mating occurs on the nest, with little preliminary display. Nests are slight stick structures, repaired from year to year, and used by other pelicans if abandoned. The clutch is normally two eggs, occasionally three. Both sexes incubate, with infrequent change-overs, for 33–35 days. The chick is first brick-red, becoming covered with white down. Feathers break through at about 12 days and have covered much of the body by 30 days. At 40 days chicks can recognise their own parent. They fly at 70–75 days. Parents feed chicks by regurgitation, sometimes into the nest. They brood them closely at first, but after 10–12 days leave them much alone. Large chicks thrust the head far into the parental gullet, and injuries result from such feeding struggles. Feeding usually occurs before mid-day, each parent normally delivering two feeds with a rest between. Curious convulsive movements of the young are probably begging displays. Forty-two young hatched in 35 nests, an average of 0.6 chicks/egg laid. The heaviest mortality among young occurred between 10–30 days when 31% of all chicks died. Young which flew were produced at the rate of 0.47/egg hatched, 0.28/egg laid, and 0.57/pair.

Enrolment and Grade Attainment following the Introduction of Free Primary Education in Tanzania

Abstract: The elimination of all primary school fees in January 2002 in Tanzania marked the start of the ambitious Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP). This programme aimed to enhance not only access to primary education but also the quality of teaching. This paper examines the effects of the introduction of free primary education on school enrolment and grade achievement. Data from the 2001 Household Budget Survey (HBS), collected just before the reform, and the 2007 HBS, collected 5 years into the programme, are employed to examine these effects. This is done by running a difference-in-difference comparison using a before-and-after comparison for age cohorts that did and did not benefit from the reform. School fee elimination is found to have enhanced enrolment rates significantly with girls, children from poorer families benefiting most. The impact of the reform on grade achievement, however, is found to have been negative, particularly for those living in rural areas and children from poor households. PEDP, thus, created a dilemma as increased opportunities for one set of deserving children went at the expense of opportunities for other, equally deserving children

Economic growth and import requirements

Abstract: Summary This article points out that our knowledge of the specific form and analytical reasons underlying the interrelationship known to exist between international trade and economic growth is limited and that this situation is largely due to the lack of an adequate theoretical framework Comparative cost theory is not very helpful in this respect be cause the explanation of the rise of trade it provides does not lead to useful and unambiguous inferences about the role of trade in economic growth nor about the characteristics of trade flows during growth The difficulty may in part be attributed to the circumstance that comparative cost doctrine provides theoretical support for an ideal system of trading which nations have consistently refused to follow The article suggests that this situation of fact results because the primary objective that nations pursue in trading is not to exploit (at a given level of employment and capacity use) whatever comparative cost differences may exist, but to ‘develop’ th

How Can We Learn Whether Firm Policies Are Working in Africa? Challenges (and Solutions?) For Experiments and Structural Models

Abstract: Firm productivity is low in African countries, prompting governments to try a number of active policies to improve it. Yet despite the millions of dollars spent on these policies, we are far from a situation where we know whether many of them are yielding the desired payoffs. This article establishes some basic facts about the number and heterogeneity of firms in different Sub-Saharan African countries and discusses their implications for experimental and structural approaches towards trying to estimate firm policy impacts. It shows that the typical firm programme such as a matching grant scheme or business training programme involves only 100 to 300 firms, which are often very heterogeneous in terms of employment and sales levels. As a result, standard experimental designs will lack any power to detect reasonably sized treatment impacts, while structural models which assume common production technologies and few missing markets will be ill-suited to capture the key constraints firms face. Nevertheless, I suggest a way forward which involves focusing on a more homogeneous sub-sample of firms and collecting a lot more data on them than is typically collected.

Real Overvaluation, Terms of Trade Shocks and the Cost to Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of the Sudan

Abstract: Starting from the premise that agriculture should play a pivotal role in the process of structural transformation and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa; and taking the case of the Sudan, an African country with a sizeable agricultural economy, this paper addresses two inter-related issues in this regard. The first is the extent to which policy induced distortions influence the structure of incentives for agriculture where direct distortions induced by policies deployed directly on agriculture are distinguished from indirect ones caused by policies directed at the macro economic management of the economy. Second, the consequences for the growth of agriculture of these distortions given other growth fundamentals. Our analysis strongly supportsthe predictions of the endogenous growth model a la Easterly (1990), which calls foreconomic distortions to have deleterious effects on growth.

Co-Location, Socioeconomic Status and Perceptions of Environmental Change in the Indian Sundarbans

Abstract: Research on the determinants of collective action in the commons generally focuses on interest-group heterogeneity, implicitly assuming that groups perceive the same problems but have different priorities. This paper changes the focus to the role played by perceptions themselves. Within localities, collective action may be easier if elite and non-elite households have similar perceptions of environmental problems. Regionally, collective action may be aided by common perceptions among local elites who communicate across village lines. This paper uses regression analysis to explore variations in environmental perceptions across classes and localities, using new survey data from the Indian Sundarbans. The paper finds that perceptions vary significantly across localities. Within localities, perceptions among elite households vary significantly more than perceptions among non-elite households. The results therefore favor locally-oriented collective action in the region, along with local governance that promotes non-elite participation.