World Bank

About: World Bank is a other organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poverty. The organization has 7813 authors who have published 21594 publications receiving 1198361 citations. The organization is also known as: World Bank, WB & The World Bank.

The effect of India's total sanitation campaign on defecation behaviors and child health in rural Madhya Pradesh: a cluster randomized controlled trial.

Abstract: Poor sanitation is thought to be a major cause of enteric infections among young children. However, there are no previously published randomized trials to measure the health impacts of large-scale sanitation programs. India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) is one such program that seeks to end the practice of open defecation by changing social norms and behaviors, and providing technical support and financial subsidies. The objective of this study was to measure the effect of the TSC implemented with capacity building support from the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program in Madhya Pradesh on availability of individual household latrines (IHLs), defecation behaviors, and child health (diarrhea, highly credible gastrointestinal illness [HCGI], parasitic infections, anemia, growth). The authors conducted a cluster-randomized, controlled trial in 80 rural villages. The study enrolled a random sample of 5,209 children less than 5 years old from 3,039 households that had at least one child less than 24 months at the beginning of the study. A random subsample of 1,150 children less than 24 months at enrollment were tested for soil transmitted helminth and protozoan infections in stool. The randomization successfully balanced intervention and control groups, and the authors estimated differences between groups in an intention to treat analysis. The intervention led to modest increases in availability of IHLs and even more modest reductions in open defecation. These improvements were insufficient to improve child health outcomes (diarrhea, HCGI, parasite infection, anemia, growth). The results underscore the difficulty of achieving adequately large improvements in sanitation levels to deliver expected health benefits within large-scale rural sanitation programs.

Does Grease Money Speed Up the Wheels of Commerce

Abstract: In a general equilibrium in which bribe-extracting bureaucrats can endogenously choose regulatory burden and delay, the effective (not just nominal) red tape and bribery can be positively correlated across firms. Using data from three worldwide firm surveys, this paper finds evidence consistent with this hypothesis. Firms that pay more in bribes are also likely to spend more, not less, management time with bureaucrats in negotiating regulations. They also face a higher, not lower, cost of capital.

Regional Trade Agreements

Abstract: This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on regionalism. The formation of regional trade agreements has been, by far, the most popular form of reciprocal trade liberalization in the past 15 years. The discriminatory character of these agreements has raised three main concerns: that trade diversion would be rampant, because special interest groups would induce governments to form the most distortionary agreements; that broader external trade liberalization would stall or reverse; and that multilateralism could be undermined. Theoretically, all of these concerns are legitimate, although there are also several theoretical arguments that oppose them. Empirically, neither widespread trade diversion nor stalled external liberalization has materialized, while the undermining of multilateralism has not been properly tested. There are also several aspects of regionalism that have received too little attention from researchers, but which are central to understanding its causes and consequences.

Understanding the Behavior of Bank Spreads in Latin America

Abstract: Over the last decade, many countries in Latin America have eliminated interest rate ceilings, reduced reserve requirements, and stopped direct credit controls. These market-oriented reforms have encouraged financial deepening, thereby producing considerable economic benefits to the countries. Nevertheless, the persistence of high interest rate spreads has been a disquieting outcome of the reforms. This paper explores the determinants of bank spreads in a systematic way for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay during the mid-1990s. The analysis shows that high operating costs raise spreads as do high levels of non-performing loans, although the size of these effects differs across the countries. In addition, reserve requirements in a number of countries still act as a tax on banks that gets translated into a higher spread. Beyond bank specific variables, uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment facing banks appears to increase interest spreads. The combination of these microeconomic and macroeconomic factors is a cause for concern in Latin America. As spreads widen, the cost of using the financial system becomes prohibitive to some potential borrowers. In addition, the results suggest that bank capital requirements may not prevent excessive risk taking by banks when bank spreads are high.