The research projects described here are directed by World Bank staff and funded by the Bank's central Research Support Budget (RSB). For information about the research projects described here, contact the researchers at the Bank's main address.
School-based, mass treatment of intestinal helminth (parasitic worm) infections and schistosomiasis is considered more cost-effective than individual screening and treatment in developing countries. But widespread adoption of school-based programs may require evidence on their effect on education outcomes.
This study will examine the effects on education, health, and nutrition outcomes of programs providing both anthelmintics and health education in 75 primary schools in Busia District, a rural district in Kenya. Education outcomes will include cognitive skills as well as attendance, repetition, and dropout rates. The two-year study will also assess the potential for school-based programs to become sustainable through cost sharing with parents. The order in which schools will receive treatment will be random, allowing unbiased estimation of the effect of deworming treatment.
RSB support: $449,168
Staff weeks: 116
In recent years the World Bank and other development agencies have promoted farmer field schools (FFS) as an efficient and cost-effective way of disseminating science-based knowledge and practice to farmers. The approach relies on participatory training methods to convey knowledge to field school participants in order to turn them into pest experts and effective trainers of other farmers.
This study will try to determine whether FFS are a cost-effective public investment and whether the approach is a viable model for a national agricultural extension service. It will examine the net economic benefits, at the household and national levels, of the FFS approach in Indonesia and the Philippines, where it has long been used, and in Peru, where the effort is just beginning.
RSB support: $254,000
Staff weeks: 75
All rural land in Ethiopia belongs to the state, but village authorities periodically reallocate use rights among farmers. Policymakers are weighing the merits of moving to a system in which the government would grant long-term land leases. Such leases would provide more ownership security and thus improve incentives to invest in land conservation, but they would also freeze the current distribution of land.
Using plot-level data from Ethiopia, this study will investigate the extent to which land rental markets support allocative efficiency and provide adequate incentives for good farm management and investment in land improvements. It will also examine whether different types of land rental contracts-sharecropping, fixed rent contracts, and temporary transfers of land use rights-have different effects on work incentives and input use.
RSB support: $34,479
Staff weeks: 14
Increasing social efficiency and improving access to land by the rural poor are key objectives of land reform. Does eliminating land use laws and allowing the market to allocate land help achieve these goals?
This study will investigate how recent reforms in agrarian property rights and land markets in Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua have affected agricultural productivity and the well-being of the rural poor. It will create and analyze household-level panel data sets to try to determine whether the reforms have increased income, access to land, and the potential for wealth accumulation for the poor. It will also look at the effect of agrarian reforms on the bargaining power and economic position of women within poor households. The results will directly inform the design of postreform policies intended to make markets work better for the rural poor.
RSB support: $140,200
Staff weeks: 69
Women are less likely than men to be covered by social security or other pension programs, and those who are covered receive less in benefits than men do. Little empirical work has been done to quantify these gender differences, however, or to understand their causes.
Using Chile and Argentina as case studies, this study will use data from household surveys and other sources to investigate how and why the financial positions of older men and women differ. It will also examine the effects of different features of social security programs on men and women and recommend ways of creating social security policies that are not gender biased.
RSB support: $40,000
Staff weeks: 6
Education indicators in developing countries lag far behind those in industrial countries. Can technology be used to prevent developing countries from falling further and further behind?
This study will conduct five case studies of exemplary uses of technology to try to determine how and when technology can be effectively deployed to provide quality education in developing countries. It will model and analyze the cost structures of various deployment options and examine cost-saving strategies available to governments and institutions. Through a comprehensive literature review, interviews, and site visits, the study will gather and synthesize much-needed data about the costs of alternative models for the production of education services.
RSB support: $40,000
The first phase of this research showed that downsizing often entails adverse selection that significantly reduces the efficiency gains from voluntary layoffs. It also demonstrated that severance packages generally do a poor job of offsetting losses from displacement and that vast resources are wasted in redeployment programs that are not valued by displaced workers.
This study will investigate a host of issues left unresolved by the first phase of the research program. In particular, it will try to determine whether self-selection mechanisms can be implemented that circumvent the adverse selection problem, whether compensation packages can be appropriately tailored so that workers are neither overcompensated nor undercompensated for severance, and whether state-owned enterprises should be downsized before they are privatized. The study will also try to determine the cost of early retirement programs and establish when downsizing is necessary.
RSB support: $199,500
Staff weeks: 52
Interest in income inequality has been growing for the past decade. Until recently, however, it was not possible to derive a world income distribution because detailed household income or expenditure data were not available for much of the world's population. This has changed during the past decade as data on transition economies have become more readily available and household surveys have been developed in many African countries.
This study will use recently collected national survey data on 90 percent of the world's population to generate a world income distribution. The results will reveal the level of inequality in the world and the changes in inequality that took place between 1988 and 1993, the two years examined. The choice of years is determined by the availability of purchasing power parity data from the two most recent rounds of the Inter-national Comparison Programme. The study will allow the decomposition of world inequality into intracountry and intercountry differences in mean income, and simulation of changes in world inequality under different income and population growth scenarios.
RSB support: $35,000
Staff weeks: 8
Issues relating to corporate governance in developing countries have assumed special significance since the East Asian financial and economic crisis. Little has been written about corporate governance in the developing world, however.
This study will analyze corporate governance, corporate finance, and economic performance in India, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, and Thailand. It will compare intertemporal and intercountry debt-equity ratios in developing and industrial countries and use multivariate analysis to investigate the determinants of debt-equity ratios in the four Asian markets studied. The research will be based on two databases, the corporate database of the International Finance Corporation and a more comprehensive set of corporate data that incorporates a broader and more detailed set of financial statements for the four countries in the study.
RSB support: $38,000
Staff weeks: 6
The Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey, conducted by the Office of Population Studies at the University of San Carlos, in Cebu, Philippines, is probably the richest source of data in the world on the link between early childhood nutrition and subsequent school performance and employment outcomes. The data set includes 15 years of data on a random sample of about 3,000 children born in the metropolitan Cebu area in 1983 and 1984.
This study will extend the data set by interviewing the boys included in the study who are now 15 and 16 years old. The survey results will provide valuable data that can be used to analyze the impact of early childhood nutrition on school attainment and child labor.
RSB support: $40,000
Staff weeks: 5
Since 1991 Colombia has awarded vouchers to 100,000 poor students, mostly by lottery, to attend private secondary school. Students who win vouchers may renew them each year as long as they are promoted to the next grade.
An earlier study found that students who won vouchers in the lottery repeated grades less often-and thus completed more years of schooling-than students who did not. There are several possible explanations: Voucher winners may have greater incentive to advance in school. They may choose better schools. And schools may promote voucher winners more readily to ensure that voucher funds continue to come.
This project will test these explanations through surveys of teachers, principals, and students at schools with voucher applicants, and through achievement tests of voucher applicants, including some no longer in school.
RSB support: $40,000
Staff weeks: 6
RSB support: $10,000