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.

Are Women More Credit Constrained? Experimental Evidence on Gender and Microenterprise Returns

Abstract: This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Are women more credit constrained? Experimental evidence on gender and microenterprise returns, conducted during the time period 2005-2007 in Sri Lanka. The study observed that the grants generated large profit increases for male owners but not for female owners. The gender gap does not simply mask differences in ability, risk aversion, entrepreneurial attitudes, or differences in reporting behavior, but there is some evidence that the gender gap is larger in female-dominated industries. Treated males work an additional 1.8 hours a week while females work an additional .3 hours. For both treatments, males experience a large positive increase in profits (i.e. 8 percent per month for smaller treatment) while females do not experience any increase in profit. For the smaller treatment, males invested 138 percent of the capital shock while females invested approximately nothing. For the larger capital shock, males invested 60 percent while females invested 85 percent of the treatment. Women do not divert their capital to household or family consumption. Funding for the study derived from the gender action plan.

Why Do Firms in Developing Countries Have Low Productivity

Abstract: The productivity of firms in developing countries appears to be extremely low. Table 1 reports GDP per capita and average firm-level sales per employee in manufacturing—commonly known as labor revenue productivity—across a sample of countries from a new international firm database (ORBIS). While there are some data comparability issues, the broad message seems clear: developing-country firms have lower levels of labor productivity. Prior work, such as that summarized in James Tybout (2000) and World Bank (2004), has highlighted a set of issues around infrastructure, informality, regulations, trade policies, and human capital that reduce the productivity of firms in developing countries. In this short article we want to focus instead on three other areas which recent research has emphasized: management practices, financial constraints, and the delegation of decision making. To summarize: we find evidence that firms in developing countries are often badly managed, which substantially reduces their productivity. This appears particularly important in larger firms (100+ employees), which are operationally complex so that effective coordination and motivation require formalized management practices. We also find that financial constraints are a binding factor for growth, notably in smaller firms. In larger firms, which often appear to have already overcome financing constraints, another growth constraint arises in the inability of firms to successfully decentralize decision making. In developing countries owners tend to make almost all major management Why Do Firms in Developing Countries Have Low Productivity?

How Important Are Financing Constraints? The Role of Finance in the Business Environment

Abstract: What role does the business environment play in promoting and restraining firm growth? Recent literature points to a number of factors as obstacles to growth. Inefficient functioning of financial markets, inadequate security and enforcement of property rights, poor provision of infrastructure, inefficient regulation and taxation, and broader governance features such as corruption and macroeconomic stability are all discussed without any comparative evidence on their ordering. In this paper, we use firm level survey data to present evidence on the relative importance of different features of the business environment. We find that although firms report many obstacles to growth, not all the obstacles are equally constraining. Some affect firm growth only indirectly through their influence on other obstacles, or not at all. Using Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) methodology as well as regressions, we find that only obstacles related to Finance, Crime and Policy Instability directly affect the growth rate of firms. Robustness tests further show that the Finance result is the most robust of the three. These results have important policy implications for the priority of reform efforts. Our results show that maintaining policy stability, keeping crime under control, and undertaking financial sector reforms to relax financing constraints are likely to be the most effective routes to promote firm growth.

Saving in developing countries : an overview

Abstract: This article reviews the current state of knowledge on the determinants of saving rates, presenting the main findings and contributions of the recently completed World Bank research project, ‘saving across the world.’ The article discusses the basic design of the research project and its core database, the World Saving Database. It then summarizes the main project results and places them in the context of the literature on saving, identifying the key policy and non-policy determinants of private saving rates. Special attention is paid to the relationship between growth and saving and the impact of specific policies on saving rates. The article concludes by introducing the studies included in this special issue.