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.

Who Must Pay Bribes and How Much? Evidence from a Cross Section of Firms

Abstract: This paper uses a unique data set on corruption containing quantitative information on bribe payments of Ugandan firms. The data has two striking features: not all firms report that they need to pa ...

Explaining International and Intertemporal Variations in Income Inequality

Abstract: This paper explores the propositions that, income inequality is relatively stable within countries; and that it varies significantly among countries. A new and expanded data set provides broad support for both propositions. Drawing on a political economy and capital market imperfection arguments to explain the intertemporal and international variation in inequality, the empirical analysis shows that the predicted variables associated with the first argument (a measure of civil liberties and the initial level of secondary schooling) and the second argument (a measure of financial depth and the initial distribution of land) are indeed important determinants of inequality. This paper explores two propositions regarding income inequality. They are: first, income inequality is relatively stable within countries; and second, it varies significantly across countries.' To illustrate, note that the Gini coefficient in India remained almost constant for forty years (1951-92) with mean 32.6 and standard deviation 2.0.2 In contrast, the variation in Gini coefficients across countries is large: 61.9 in Honduras in 1968 compared with 17.8 in Bulgaria in 1976. If substantiated, these propositions have potentially significant implications for poverty. The significance of the first is obvious - barring any fundamental socio-political change, poverty reduction will depend crucially on the rate of economic growth. Given this, the significance of the second is that in inegalitarian economies the poor will enjoy a smaller share of any national increment in income than in more egalitarian ones. Drawing on a new and expanded data set on inequality (Deininger and Squire, 1996a), the first of the paper's three sections conducts standard statistical tests of the two propositions. The sample comprises 573 observations on the most common measure of inequality - the Gini coefficient - for 49 developed and developing countries covering the period 1947-94. The results broadly confirm our two propositions. Specifically, analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that about 90% of the total variance in the Gini coefficients

Local Capture: Evidence from a Central Government Transfer Program in Uganda

Abstract: According to official statistics, 20 percent of Uganda's total public expenditure was spent on education in the mid-1990s, most of it on primary education. One of the large public programs was a capitation grant to cover schools' nonwage expenditures. Using panel data from a unique survey of primary schools, we assess the extent to which the grant actually reached the intended end-user (schools). The survey data reveal that during 1991–1995, the schools, on average, received only 13 percent of the grants. Most schools received nothing. The bulk of the school grant was captured by local officials (and politicians). The data also reveal considerable variation in grants received across schools, suggesting that rather than being passive recipients of flows from the government, schools use their bargaining power to secure greater shares of funding. We find that schools in better-off communities managed to claim a higher share of their entitlements. As a result, actual education spending, in contrast to budget allocations, is regressive. Similar surveys in other African countries confirm that Uganda is not a special case.

Catastrophe and impoverishment in paying for health care: with applications to Vietnam 1993–1998

Abstract: This paper presents and compares two threshold approaches to measuring the fairness of health care payments, one requiring that payments do not exceed a pre-specified proportion of pre-payment income, the other that they do not drive households into poverty. We develop indices for 'catastrophe' that capture the intensity of catastrophe as well as its incidence and also allow the analyst to capture the degree to which catastrophic payments occur disproportionately among poor households. Measures of poverty impact capturing both intensity and incidence are also developed. The arguments and methods are empirically illustrated with data on out-of-pocket payments from Vietnam in 1993 and 1998. This is not an uninteresting application given that 80% of health spending in that country was paid out-of-pocket in 1998. We find that the incidence and intensity of 'catastrophic' payments - both in terms of pre-payment income as well as ability to pay - were reduced between 1993 and 1998, and that both incidence and intensity of 'catastrophe' became less concentrated among the poor. We also find that the incidence and intensity of the poverty impact of out-of-pocket payments diminished over the period in question. Finally, we find that the poverty impact of out-of-pocket payments is primarily due to poor people becoming even poorer rather than the non-poor being made poor, and that it was not expenses associated with inpatient care that increased poverty but rather non-hospital expenditures.