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.

Global electric power reform, privatization and liberalization of the electric power industry in developing countries

Abstract: In many developing countries, and in particular those in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, reform of the power sector starts from a market structure that is dominated by a state-owned national power utility with a legally endowed monopoly and a vertically integrated supply chain encompassing power generation, transmission, distribution, and customer services. The rationale for this structure is minimization of the costs of coordination between these functions and of financing the development of power systems. The pre-reform structure in other countries, notably in South America, places distribution and customer services with local companies, separate from national companies that provide power generation and transmission. Power reforms are designed to introduce competition where feasible, which is in the upstream production and downstream supply functions of the industry structure, and to use economic regulation of the wholesale and retail power markets to promote competition and protect consumer interests. Regulation of the power market is essential, as shown by the experience of New Zealand, which tried an approach without the amount of regulation used elsewhere. Their approach was based on mandatory separation of generation, transmission, and distribution, using general competition laws to deal with both the terms of interconnection and conduct generally in unbundled power networks.

Data and Dogma: The Great Indian Poverty Debate

Abstract: What happened to poverty in India in the 1990s has been fiercely debated, politically and statistically. The Indian debate has run parallel to, and is itself a large part of, the wider debate about globalization and poverty in the 1990s. The economic reforms of the early 1990s were followed by rates of economic growth that were high by Indian historical standards. The effects on poverty remain controversial, and the official numbers published by the Government of India, showing a reduction of poverty from 36 percent of the population in 1993-94 to 26 percent of the population in 1999-00, have been challenged both for showing too little and too much poverty reduction. The various claims have often been frankly political, but there are also many important statistical issues, and the Indian debate, of which this paper is a review, provides an excellent example of how politics and statistics interact in an important, largely domestic debate. Although there is no full consensus on what happened to Indian poverty in the 1990s, there is good evidence that the official estimates of poverty reduction are too optimistic, particularly for rural India. This overoptimism was amplified by statistical uncertainty that created space for some commentators to argue that poverty had been virtually eliminated in India in the wake of the economic reforms. Although this paper is concerned with the measurement of poverty in India, all of the issues - discrepancies between surveys and national accounts, the effects of questionnaire design, reporting periods, survey non-response, repairing imperfect data, the choice of poverty lines, and the interplay between statistics and politics - have wide resonance elsewhere.

The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of recent work on quality measurement of medical care and its correlates in four low and middle-income countries-India, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Paraguay. The authors describe two methods-testing doctors and watching doctors-that are relatively easy to implement and yield important insights about the nature of medical care in these countries. The paper discusses the properties of these measures, their correlates, and how they may be used to evaluate policy changes. Finally, the authors outline an agenda for further research and measurement.

Productive uses of energy for rural development

Abstract: ▪ Abstract This review utilizes the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) working definition of “productive uses of energy,” which states “in the context of providing modern energy services in rural areas, a productive use of energy is one that involves the application of energy derived mainly from renewable resources to create goods and/or services either directly or indirectly for the production of income or value.” The definition reflects the shift toward the aspirations of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Traditionally, the productive uses of energy have been rather narrowly defined. The focus has been on the direct impact of energy use on gross domestic product (GDP) and the importance of motive power for agriculture. This conventional view has some utility in understanding the nature of development at the national and regional level; however, in order to respond to international development goals while maintaining pace with an ever-evolving underst...