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.

China's Health System and Its Reform : A Review of Recent Studies

Abstract: This paper provides a survey of the recent empirical research on China's 'old' health system (i.e. prior to the spate of reforms beginning in 2003). It argues that this research has enhanced our understanding of the system prior to 2003, in some cases reinforcing conclusions (e.g. the demand-inducement associated with perverse incentives) while in other cases suggesting a slightly less clear storyline (e.g. the link between insurance and out-of-pocket spending). It also concludes that the research to date points to the importance of careful evaluation of the current reforms, and its potential to modify policies as the rollout proceeds. Finally, it argues that the research on the pre-2003 system suggests that while the recently announced further reforms are a step in the right direction, the hoped-for improvements in China's health system will far more likely occur if the reforms become less timid in certain key areas, namely provider payments and intergovernmental fiscal relations.

On Multidimensional Indices of Poverty

Abstract: The contribution of recent “multidimensional indices of poverty” may not be as obvious as one thinks. There are two issues in assessing that contribution: whether one believes that a single index can ever be a sufficient statistic of poverty, and whether one aggregates in the space of “attainments,” using prices when appropriate, or “deprivations,” using weights set by the analyst. The paper argues that we should aim for a credible set of multiple indices rather than a single multidimensional index. Partial aggregation will still be necessary, but ideally the weights should be consistent with well-informed choices by poor people.

Health-care facility choice and the phenomenon of bypassing

Abstract: Health policy-makers in developing countries are often disturbed and to a degree surprised by the phenomenon of the ill travelling past a free or subsidized local public clinic (or other public facility) to get to an alternative source of care at which they often pay a considerable amount for health care. That a person bypasses a facility is almost certainly indicative either of significant problems with the quality of care at the bypassed facility or of significantly better care at the alternative source of care chosen. When it is a poor person choosing to bypass a free public facility and pay for care further away, such action is especially bothersome to public policy-makers. This paper uses a unique data set, with a health facility survey in which all health facilities are identified, surveyed, and located geographically; and a household survey in which a sample of households from the same health district is also both surveyed and located geographically. The data are analyzed to examine patterns of health care choice related to the characteristics and locations of both the facilities and actual and potential clients. Rather than using the distance travelled or some other general choice of type of care variable as the dependent variable, we are able actually to analyze which specific facilities are bypassed and which chosen. The findings are instructive. That bypassing behaviour is not very different across income groups is certainly noteworthy, as is the fact that the more severely ill tend to bypass and to travel further for care than do the less severely ill. In multivariate analysis almost all characteristics of both providers and facilities are found to have the a priori expected relationships to facility choice. Prices tend to deter use, and improved quality of services to increase the likelihood of a facility being chosen. The answer to the bypassing dilemma seems to be for providers to provide as good quality care relative to the money charged (if any), as other, often further away, providers.

Agglomeration Economies and Productivity in Indian Industry

Abstract: The benefits to Indian manufacturing firms of locating in dense urban areas do not appear to offset the associated costs. Improving the quality and availability of transport infrastructure linking smaller urban areas to the rest of the interregional network would improve manufacturing plants' access to markets and would give standardized manufacturing activities a chance to move out of large, costly urban centers to lower cost secondary centers. "New" economic geography theory and the development of innovative methods of analysis have renewed interest in the location and spatial concentration of economic activities. Lall, Shalizi, and Deichmann examine the extent to which agglomeration economies contribute to economic productivity. They distinguish three sources of agglomeration economies: • At the firm level, from improved access to market centers. • At the industry level, from enhanced intra-industry linkages. • At the regional level, from inter-industry urbanization economies. The input demand framework they use in analysis permits the production function to be estimated jointly with a set of cost shares and makes allowances for nonconstant returns to scale and for agglomeration economies to be factor-augmenting. They use firm-level data for standardized manufacturing in India, together with spatially detailed physio-geographic information that considers the availability and quality of transport networks linking urban centers - thereby accounting for heterogeneity in the density of transport networks between different parts of the country. The sources and magnitudes of agglomeration vary considerably between industrial sectors. Their results indicate that access to markets through improvements in interregional infrastructure is an important determinant of firm-level productivity, whereas the benefits of locating in dense urban areas do not appear to offset the associated costs. Improving the quality and availability of transport infrastructure linking smaller urban areas to the rest of the interregional network would improve market access for manufacturing plants. It would also give standardized manufacturing activities a chance to move out of large, costly urban centers to lower cost secondary centers. This paper - a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the role of economic geography and urbanization in the development process. The authors may be contacted at slall1@worldbank.org, zshalizi @worldbank.org, or udeichmann@worldbank.org.

The Fishery Performance Indicators: A Management Tool for Triple Bottom Line Outcomes

Abstract: Pursuit of the triple bottom line of economic, community and ecological sustainability has increased the complexity of fishery management; fisheries assessments require new types of data and analysis to guide science-based policy in addition to traditional biological information and modeling. The authors introduce the Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs), a broadly applicable and flexible tool for assessing performance in individual fisheries, and for establishing cross-sectional links between enabling conditions, management strategies and triple bottom line outcomes. Conceptually separating measures of performance, the FPIs use 68 individual outcome metrics, coded on a 1 to 5 scale based on expert assessment to facilitate application to data poor fisheries and sectors that can be partitioned into sector based or triple-bottom-line sustainability-based interpretative indicators. Variation among outcomes is explained with 54 similarly structured metrics of inputs, management approaches and enabling conditions. Using 61 initial fishery case studies drawn from industrial and developing countries around the world, the authors demonstrate the inferential importance of tracking economic and community outcomes, in addition to resource status.