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.

Courting social justice : judicial enforcement of social and economic rights in the developing world

Abstract: 1. Introduction: the elements of legalization, and the triangular shape of social and economic rights Varun Gauri and Daniel M. Brinks 2. Litigating for social justice in post-apartheid South Africa: a focus on health and education Jonathan Berger 3. Accountability for social and economic rights in Brazil Florian F. Hoffmann and Fernando R. N. M. Bentes 4. Courts and socio-economic rights in India Shylashri Shankar and Pratap Bhanu Mehta 5. The impact of economic and social rights in Nigeria: an assessment of the legal framework for implementing education and health as human rights Chidi Anselm Odinkalu 6. The implementation of the rights to health care and education in Indonesia Bivitri Susanti 7. A new policy landscape: legalizing social and economic rights in the developing world Helen Hershkoff 8. Transforming legal theory in the light of practice: the judicial application of social and economic rights to private orderings Daniel M. Brinks and Varun Gauri.

The knowledge economy, the KAM methodology and World Bank operations

Abstract: This paper highlights the importance of knowledge for long-term economic growth. It presents the concept of the knowledge economy, an economy where knowledge is the main engine of economic growth. The paper also introduces the knowledge economy framework, which asserts that sustained investments in education, innovation, information and communication technologies, and a conducive economic and institutional environment will lead to increases in the use and creation of knowledge in economic production, and consequently result in sustained economic growth. In order to facilitate countries trying to make the transition to the knowledge economy, the Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) was developed. It is designed to provide a basic assessment of countries' readiness for the knowledge economy, and identifies sectors or specific areas where policymakers may need to focus more attention or future investments. The KAM is currently being widely used both internally and externally to the World Bank, and frequently facilitates engagements and policy discussions with government officials from client countries.

Macroeconomic fluctuations in developing countries : some stylized facts

Abstract: This paper documents the main stylized features of macroeconomic fluctuations and business cycle regularities for a group of 12 developing countries. Cross-correlations between domestic industrial output and a large group of macroeconomic time series (including government revenue and expenditure, wages, inflation, money, velocity, private sector credit, international trade, and exchange rates) are presented. The effects of industrial country economic conditions on output fluctuations in these countries are also analyzed. The robustness of the results is examined using three detrending procedures: a modified Hodrick-Prescott filter, the Baxter-King band-pass filter, and a nonparametric technique. Overall, the results show some similarities between macroeconomic fluctuations in developing and industrial countries (e.g., procyclical real wages and counter cyclical variation in government expenditure), but also some important differences in business cycle characteristics (e.g., countercyclical variation in the velocity of monetary aggregates).

Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India

Abstract: Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as a key to improving their efficiency. In India, the current government flagship program on universal primary education organizes both locally elected leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools into committees and gives these groups powers over resource allocation, and monitoring and management of school performance. However, in a baseline survey we found that people were not aware of the existence of these committees and their potential for improving education. This paper evaluates three different interventions to encourage beneficiaries' participation through these committees: providing information, training community members in a new testing tool, and training and organizing volunteers to hold remedial reading camps for illiterate children. We find that these interventions had no impact on community involvement in public schools, and no impact on teacher effort or learning outcomes in those schools. However, we do find that the intervention that trained volunteers to teach children to read had a large impact on activity outside public schools—local youths volunteered to be trained to teach, and children who attended these camps substantially improved their reading skills. These results suggest that citizens face substantial constraints in participating to improve the public education system, even when they care about education and are willing to do something to improve it.