Access to Financial Services: Measurement, Impact, and Policies

In many developing countries less than half the population hasaccess to formal financial services, and in most of Africa lessthan one in five households has access. Lack of access to financeis often the critical mechanism for generating persistent incomeinequality, as well as slower economic growth. Hence expandingaccess remains an important challenge across the world, leavingmuch for governments to do. However, not all government actionsare equally effective and some policies can even be counterproductive.This paper sets out principles for effective government policyon broadening access, drawing on the available evidence andillustrating with examples. The paper concludes with directionsfor future research. JEL Codes: D31, G20, G21, O12, O16     

Rural Poverty: Old Challenges in New Contexts

Poverty is still a predominantly rural phenomenon. However,the context of rural poverty has been changing across the world,with high growth in some economies and stagnation in others.Furthermore, increased openness in many economies has affectedthe specific role of agricultural growth for rural poverty reduction.This paper revisits an ‘old’ question: how doesgrowth and poverty reduction come about if most of the poorlive in rural areas and are dependent on agriculture? What isthe role of agricultural and rural development in this respect?Focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, and using economic theory andthe available evidence, the author comes to the conclusion thatchanging contexts has meant that agricultural growth is onlycrucial as an engine for growth in particular settings, morespecifically in landlocked, resource-poor countries, which areoften also characterized by relatively low potential for agriculture.However, extensive market failures in key factor markets andlikely spatial effects give a remaining crucial role for ruraldevelopment policies, including focusing on agriculture, toassist the inclusion of the rural poor in growth and development.How to overcome these market failures remains a key issue forfurther research. JEL codes: O41, Q10, O55     

Financial Access and Economic Growth: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

This study empirically analyzes the effects of financial access on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. By estimating panel data on thirty-seven countries from Sub-Saharan Africa between 2004 and 2012, we examine whether improved access to financial services has contributed to economic growth in this region. The empirical results clearly indicate that financial access has a statistically significant and robust effect on increasing economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.     

How Have the World's Poorest Fared since the Early 1980s?

A new assessment is made of the developing world's progressagainst poverty. By the frugal $1 a day standard there were1.1 billion poor people in 2001—almost 400 million fewerthan 20 years earlier. During that period the number of poorpeople declined by more than 400 million in China, though halfthe decline was in the early 1980s and the number outside Chinarose slightly. At the same time the number of people in theworld living on less than $2 a day rose, so that there has beena marked bunching up of people living between $1 and $2 a day.Sub-Saharan Africa has become the region with the highest incidenceof extreme poverty and the greatest depth of poverty. If thesetrends continue, the 1990 aggregate $1 a day poverty rate willbe halved by 2015, meeting the Millennium Development Goal,though only East and South Asia will reach this goal.      

AIDS and African Development

Because AIDS affects primarily the most productive age groupand is fatal and widespread, it will have a larger impact onAfrican development than other more common diseases. Infectionrates are higher in urban than in rural areas, and studies suggestthat they are highest among urban high-income, skilled men andtheir partners. Macroeconomic models show that the greater theinfection rate among educated workers and the greater the propensityto finance medical care out of savings, the more detrimentalis the impact of AIDS on the growth of per capita income. Regardlessof the macroeconomic effect, most households and businessesdirectly affected by AIDS will be economically worse off, atleast in the short run. It is not clear, however, what effectAIDS will have on poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa or on incomeinequality. Governments need to assess the potential economicimpact of AIDS, implement cost-effective programs to mitigatethe impact, and target prevention programs to the economic sectorsmost sensitive to HIV infection.      

Financial Development: Maturing and Emerging Policy Issues

In recent decades, financial development policies in emergingmarket economies have been shaped by a fundamental shift towardmarket-based financial systems and the lessons from financialcrises. Today, there is consensus that financial developmentdepends on financial stability and convergence toward internationalstandards. While the debate on some issues has matured, policythinking in other areas is changing, fueled by recent experiences.This article analyzes the evolution of policy thinking on financialdevelopment and discusses three areas that are important toachieving deeper financial systems: stock market development,small- and medium-size enterprise financing, and defined-contributionpension systems. The main emerging issues in these areas areillustrated using recent experiences in Latin America. The articleconcludes that there is a need to take a fresh look at the evidence,improve diagnoses, and revisit expectations. JEL codes: F36, G15, G18, G20     

Evaluating Recipes for Development Success

This article offers a provocative critique of the ability ofresearch on the impact of institutions on growth to offer immediateand practical recommendations for reforming and redesigninginstitutions in developing countries and transition economies.The literature traces the sources of growth to unalterable historicaland geographic features. It contains equally plausible recommendationsfor opposite courses of action. It is sometimes driven by fadsor recommends imitation of the latest success story. Some recommendationsare too vague or too general to constitute practical advice.The article suggests a Bayesian diagnostic procedure to identifythe causes of economic failure in an individual country as afirst step toward remedying the failure. JEL codes: O43, O17, O20, P30, P48     

Domestic Bond Market Development: The Arirang Bond Experience in Korea

This study contrasts the development of the Republic of Korea'smarket for won-denominated foreign bonds (Arirang) with similarmarkets in the Asia-Pacific region. It discusses the problems,concerns, and key issues related to the development of thismarket within the broader context of domestic, regional, andglobal bond market development. Korea's experience providesvaluable lessons for other emerging market economies also seekingto build bond markets for local and foreign issuers. The sophisticationof the local bond market is not enough to make it appealingto foreign borrowers. Market development demands ensuring anenabling infrastructure and a background of macroeconomic stability,nurturing local and international demand, deregulating capitalflows, and minimizing exchange restrictions. JEL codes: F34, G18     

LAND RIGHTS SYSTEMS AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Links between land rights and agricultural development providea conceptual framework to analyze land rights systems in Sub-SaharanAfrica. The discussion demonstrates that land rights in Sub-SaharanAfrica evolved in response to changing political, social, andeconomic conditions, often the results of governmental interventionsthat may not have been conducive to efficiency or equity. The evidence dispels some popular misconceptions about landrights systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is increasing individualizationof ownership, and in many areas possession has always been individual.Even in areas where communal ownership has been imposed, cultivationand possession remain with individual households and an increasingrange of rights to land are appropriated by the individual household.Existing and indigenous systems are not inherently equitable.Land sales and mortgaging by individuals are observed frequentlyin many areas where such transactions are not recognized underthe formal legal system. The lesson from others parts of the world is that efficiencyultimately requires formal recognition of individual land rights.That stage has not been reached yet in many parts of Sub-SaharanAfrica, but in many other parts the justification for a changein land rights arrangements already exists. The practical problemin such cases is the careful analysis of benefits and costs,including equity considerations.      

What Works in Fighting Diarrheal Diseases in Developing Countries? A Critical Review

The Millennium Development Goals call for reducing by half theproportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinkingwater. This goal was adopted in large part because clean waterwas seen as critical to fighting diarrheal disease, which kills2 million children annually. There is compelling evidence thatprovision of piped water and sanitation can substantially reducechild mortality. However, in dispersed rural settlements, providingcomplete piped water and sanitation infrastructure to householdsis expensive. Many poor countries have therefore focused insteadon providing community-level water infrastructure, such as wells.Various traditional child health interventions have been shownto be effective in fighting diarrhea. Among environmental interventions,handwashing and point-of-use water treatment both reduce diarrhea,although more needs to be learned about ways to encourage householdsto take up these behavior changes. In contrast, there is littleevidence that providing community-level rural water infrastructuresubstantially reduces diarrheal disease or that this infrastructurecan be effectively maintained. Investments in communal waterinfrastructure short of piped water may serve other needs, andmay reduce diarrhea in particular circumstances, but the casefor prioritizing communal infrastructure provision needs tobe made rather than assumed. JEL codes: Q56, Q52, O22     

MACROECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT AND POVERTY IN AFRICA: AN EMERGING PICTURE

The view that macroeconomic adjustment disproportionately hurtsthe poor in Africa has become commonplace. The popular mediaand the nongovernmental aid community frequently express thisview in critiques of Bankfunded economic reform programs. Yetthe evidence on which the claim has been based is flimsy andanecdotal. The emergence of more convincing data, from detailedhousehold surveys in Africa, provides an opportunity to setthe record straight. The evidence from six African countries reviewed in this articledemonstrates that poverty was more likely to decline in thosethat improved their macroeconomic balances than in those thatdid not. The critical factor is economic growth: the economygrew more rapidly and poverty declined faster in countries thatimproved macroeconomic balances, depreciating the real effectiveexchange rate. Changes in the real exchange rate also immediatelyand favorably affected rural incomes, benefiting the poor bothdirectly and indirectly. But the findings also highlighted threecauses for policy concern. First, many African governments haveyet to display a real commitment to macroeconomic reform; second,the poorest of the poor have not benefited from recent growthin some countries; and, third, the prospects for the poor arenot rosy unless there is more investment in human capital andbetter targeting of social spending.      

Why OECD Countries Should Reform Rules of Origin

With preferential trade agreements on the rise worldwide rulesof origin—which are necessary to prevent trade deflection—areattracting increasing attention. At the same time, preferenceerosion for Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) recipientsis increasing resistance to further multilateral negotiations.Drawing on different approaches, this article shows that thecurrent system of rules of origin that is used by the EuropeanUnion and the United States in preferential trade agreements(including the GSP) and that is similar to systems used by otherOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countriesshould be drastically simplified if developed economies reallywant to help developing economies integrate into the world tradingsystem. In addition to diverting resources for administrativetasks, current rules of origin carry significant compliancecosts. More fundamentally, it is becoming increasingly clearthat they are often been designed to force developing economiesto buy inefficient intermediate products from developed economiesto "pay for" preferential access for the final product. Theevidence also suggests that a significant share of the rentsassociated with market access (net of rules of origin compliancecosts) is captured by developed economies. Finally, the restrictivenessof rules of origin is found to be beyond the levels that wouldbe justified to prevent trade deflection, suggesting a captureby special interest groups. The article outlines some alternativepaths to reforms. JEL codes: F13, F15     

Walking up the Down Escalator: Public Investment and Fiscal Stability

When growth-promoting spending is cut so much that the presentvalue of future government revenues falls by more than the immediateimprovement in the cash deficit, fiscal adjustment becomes likewalking up the down escalator. Although short-term cash flowsmatter, too tight a focus on them encourages governments toinvest too little. Cash-flow targets also encourage governmentsto shift investment spending off budget by seeking private investmentin public projects, irrespective of its real fiscal or economicbenefits. To deal with this problem, some observers have suggestedexcluding certain investments (such as those undertaken by publicenterprises deemed commercial or financed by multilaterals)from cash-flow targets. These stopgap remedies may help protectsome investments, but they do not provide a satisfactory solutionto the underlying problem. Governments can more effectivelyreduce the biases created by the focus on short-term cash flowsby developing indicators of the long-term fiscal effects oftheir decisions, including accounting and economic measuresof net worth, and, where appropriate, including such measuresin fiscal targets or even fiscal rules. JEL codes: O23, E62, H60, H54     

SOCIAL SECURITY AND THE POOR: Choices for Developing Countries

There is an urgent need to provide an effective safety net forthe poorest in societies ranging from socialist countries undergoingreform to Sub-Saharan African economies. This article examinessocial security systems in industrial countries and explorestheir relevance to developing countries. The objective of socialsecurity is defined broadly as public action, including thatby communities, to protect the poor and vulnerable from adversechanges in living standards. Relevant instruments include employmentand income guarantees, and also such formal policy instrumentsas assistance, social insurance, and family allowances. Thearticle highlights issues that arise in providing social securityin developing countries, particularly its effectiveness in protectingthe target groups.      

Comment on "Evaluating Recipes for Development Success": The Policy Usefulness of Institutional and Political Analyses of Development

In "Evaluating Recipes for Development Success" Avinash Dixitcriticizes recent efforts to identify the "fundamental" causesof development and to distill policy recommendations from theseefforts. This comment focuses on the strand of that literaturerelated to institutions and development. Two arguments are important:that the rule of law and the security of property rights areimportant for growth and that they are the product of politicalinstitutions. Professor Dixit argues that identification andother concerns undermine the second argument and inhibit theformulation of policy recommendations. While these concernsare valid, research has begun to disaggregate broad politicalinstitutions (democracy and autocracy) and to look at the detailsof political competition, such as voter information and politiciancredibility, which are both more robust determinants of politicaldecision-making and more susceptible to policy interventions. JEL codes: O43, O17, O20, P30, P48     

Evaluation in the Practice of Development

Standard methods of impact evaluation often leave significantgaps between what we know about development effectiveness andwhat we want to know—gaps that stem from distortions inthe market for knowledge. The author discusses how evaluationsmight better address these knowledge gaps and so be more relevantto the needs of practitioners. It is argued that more attentionneeds to be given to identifying policy-relevant questions (includingthe case for intervention), that a broader approach should betaken to the problems of internal validity (including heterogeneityand spillover effects), and that the problems of external validity(including scaling up) merit more attention by researchers. JEL codes: H43, O22     

Addressing Gender-Based Violence: A Critical Review of Interventions

This article highlights the progress in building a knowledgebase on effective ways to increase access to justice for womenwho have experienced gender-based violence, offer quality servicesto survivors, and reduce levels of gender-based violence. Whilerecognizing the limited number of high-quality studies on programeffectiveness, this review of the literature highlights emerginggood practices. Much progress has recently been made in measuringgender-based violence, most notably through a World Health Organizationmulticountry study and Demographic and Health Surveys. Evenso, country coverage is still limited, and much of the informationfrom other data sources cannot be meaningfully compared becauseof differences in how intimate partner violence is measuredand reported. The dearth of high-quality evaluations means thatpolicy recommendations in the short run must be based on emergingevidence in developing economies (process evaluations, qualitativeevaluations, and imperfectly designed impact evaluations) andon more rigorous impact evaluations from developed countries. JEL codes: J16, K42, I18     

Globalization and Inequality, Past and Present

The late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries shared morethan globalization and economic convergence. The trend towardglobalization in both centuries was accompanied by changes inthe distribution of income as inequality rose in rich countriesand fell in poor ones. Between one-third and one-half of therise in inequality since the 1970s in the United States andother member countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperationand Development (OECD) has been attributed to global economicforces, about the same as a century earlier. It appears thatthe inequality produced by global economic forces before WorldWar I was responsible in part for the retreat from globalizationafter the war. What does this retreat imply for the future?Will the world economy once again retreat from globalizationas the rich OECD countries come under political pressure tocushion the side effects of rising inequality?      

Governance Indicators: Where Are We, Where Should We Be Going?

Progress in measuring governance is assessed using a simpleframework that distinguishes between indicators that measureformal rules and indicators that measure the practical applicationor outcomes of these rules. The analysis calls attention tothe strengths and weaknesses of both types of indicators aswell as the complementarities between them. It distinguishesbetween the views of experts and the results of surveys andassesses the merits of aggregate as opposed to individual governanceindicators. Some simple principles are identified to guide theuse and refinement of existing governance indicators and thedevelopment of future indicators. These include transparentlydisclosing and accounting for the margins of error in all indicators,drawing from a diversity of indicators and exploiting complementaritiesamong them, submitting all indicators to rigorous public andacademic scrutiny, and being realistic in expectations of futureindicators. JEL codes: H1, O17     

From Government to Regulatory Governance: Privatization and the Residual Role of the State

This article reviews the state of thinking on the governancerole of public ownership and control. Optimal governance systemsdepend on the path of institutional development. Nevertheless,the transfer of operational control over productive assets tothe private sector often yields a desirable governance system,because it may be more difficult for citizens to constrain politicalabuse than for governments to regulate private activity. Inweak institutional environments, however, the process needsto be structured to avoid capture of the regulatory process.The speed of transfer should be matched to progress in developinga strong regulatory governance system, to which certain residualrights of intervention must be vested. After all, "institutions"are simply governance mechanisms with some degree of autonomyfrom both political and private interests. The gradual creationof institutions partially shielded from political power mustbecome central to the development of an optimal mode of regulatorygovernance. The article presents suggestions for establishingaccountability in regulatory governance, in particular by creatingan internal control system based on a rotating board with representativesof users, producers, and civil society, in a process involvingfrequent reporting and disclosure. JEL codes: G38, L33, L51