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.

Do Crises Induce Reform? Simple Empirical Tests of Conventional Wisdom

Abstract: We find evidence for the crisis-induces-reform hypothesis at extreme values of the inflation rate and the black market premium. Episodes of extremely high inflation or black market premiums are followed by periods of better performance than episodes of moderately high inflation or black market premiums. We fail to find similar evidence of the crisis hypothesis when crisis is measured as a high current account deficit, a high budget deficit, or a negative per capita growth rate. The pattern of foreign aid disbursements may help explain the results. Foreign aid is reduced at extreme values of inflation or the black market premium, while it is actually increased for more extreme values of the current account deficit and the budget deficit.

Rural poverty and agricultural performance in India

Abstract: Time-series evidence on rural poverty over the past two decades in India is examined. In general, the time series shows a pattern of fluctuation, with the incidence of poverty falling during periods of good agricultural performance and rising during periods of bad performance. The incidence of poverty in all of India is inversely related to agricultural performance measured in terms of agricultural NDP per rural person. This correlation between poverty and agricultural performance suggests that faster agricultural growth might have led to reduced poverty rates. The state level analysis demonstrates a similar significant inverse relationship in at least seven states, accounting for 75 percent of the rural poor. On the other hand, state level analysis also shows that there may be a process at work in the rural economies that tends to increase poverty over time. The existence of an underlying force within the rural economy is extremely important. The nature of these forces, their variation across states, and technique to mitigate their effects require further analysis. Statistical data are included. 20 references.

Who are Russia's Entrepreneurs?

Abstract: Social scientists studying entrepreneurship have emphasized three distinct sets of variables: the institutional environment, sociological variables, and personal and psychological characteristics. We are conducting surveys in five large developing and transition economies to better understand entrepreneurship. In this short paper, using over 2,000 interviews from a pilot study in Russia, we find evidence that the three sets of variables matter: perceptions of the local institutional environment, social network effects, and individual characteristics are all important in determining entrepreneurial behavior. (JEL: M13, O12, P12)

Valuing Open Space and Land-Use Patterns in Urban Watersheds

Abstract: This article presents the results of a hedonic property value analysis for an urban watershed in New Haven County, Connecticut. We use spatially referenced housing and land-use data to capture the effect of environmental variables around the house location. We calculate and incorporate data on open space, land-use diversity, and other environmental variables to capture spatial variation in environmental quality around each house location. We are ultimately interested in determining whether variables that are reflective of spatial diversity do a better job of describing human preferences for housing choice than broad categories of rural versus urban areas. Using a rich data set of over 4,000 houses, we study these effects within a watershed that includes areas of high environmental quality and low environmental quality as well as varying patterns of socioeconomic conditions. Our results suggest that, in addition to structural characteristics, variables describing neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics and variables describing land use and environmental quality are influential in determining human values. We also find that the scale at which we measure these spatially defined environmental variables is important.