The objective of the Inga 3 Basse Chute and Mid-Size Hydropower Development Technical Assistance Project for Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is to contribute to the sustainable development of Inga 3 Basse Chute (BC) and selected mid-size hydropower projects.
... Voir la suite There are two components to the project, the first component being Inga 3 BC development support. This component will build on the feasibility study for the development of the Inga site and associated interconnections financed in 2010-13 by the African Development Bank (AfDB). It will finance complementary studies, transaction advice and procurement support, and institutional support and sector strengthening. The scope of activities that will be financed by the TA will be influenced by the fine tuning of the allocation of activities and responsibilities between the public and private sector regarding the design and construction management of the common infrastructures. Finally, the second component is the mid-size hydropower development support. The component aims to develop midsize hydropower projects (with capacity between 10- 100 MW) by selecting potential projects, performing prefeasibility studies, accompanying bidding processes, and evaluating the possibilities for carbon finance. The component will result in feasibility studies and bidding documents, and support to Government of DRC, or GoDRC to select private developers and award concessions for three mid-size hydropower projects.
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Document d’évaluation du projet 77420 MAR 05, 2014
During the past 20 years, Morocco has implemented a wide range of macroeconomic, social, and labor market reforms that have delivered in terms of growth of gross domestic product and household welfare.
... Voir la suite Yet, these positive developments are not reflected by the main labor market indicators, a phenomenon observed elsewhere in developed and developing economies alike and labeled as "jobless growth." For the first time for Morocco, this paper uses quarterly panel data to investigate the question of labor mobility in an effort to determine whether people have moved to better sectors and jobs. The results point to significant labor mobility between labor statuses with quite distinct features across population groups. All groups experience some form of labor market mobility every quarter and women are as mobile as men. However, the transitions that women experience are very different from the transitions than men experience and women's performance is worse than mens performance in almost all aspects of labor mobility.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS6795 MAR 01, 2014
What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immediately preceding the filing of a petition for protection.
... Voir la suite A decomposition methodology allows a comparison of imports from two groups of countries supplying the same product: those that are named in the petition and those that are not. The same decomposition can be applied to products quite similar to the imports in question, but not subject to a petition. The results suggest that industries typically seek protection when faced with a specific pattern of shocks. First, a persistent positive relative supply shock favors imports from named countries. Second, a negative demand shock hits imports from all sources just prior to domestic industries' petition for protection. The relative supply shock is a broad one; it applies both to named commodities and to the comparison product group. The import demand shock, by contrast, is narrow, hitting only named products. The latter shock is also large: import growth over the two-year window is 15 percentage points lower in named products than in reference products, with most of this gap arising in the final two quarters before the petition. The negative import demand shock appears to be a key event in the run-up to the filing of a petition. It has been missed by previous studies using more aggregated data.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS6796 MAR 01, 2014
Financial constraints are widespread in developing countries, where even short-term credit is limited. Finance held by firms as working capital is a substantial proportion of sales revenue, yet the role of working capital is largely neglected by existing models of financial constraints.
... Voir la suite This paper presents a dynamic model of the firm that incorporates working capital by introducing a delay between factor payments and the receipt of revenue. In contrast with previous models, the working capital model predicts that firms under binding constraints will substitute between labor and capital in response to demand shocks, causing investment to be countercyclical. For firms near the margin of being constrained, constraints bind when positive production opportunities arise. Output growth is therefore constrained in response to positive shocks but not to negative shocks. Simulations suggest that models without working capital may understate the predicted effects of financial constraints on production efficiency, firm profit and growth over time. The predictions are tested with the Bangladesh Panel Survey data for manufacturing firms. Consistent with the theory, there is evidence that constraints bind when output price increases, that investment by constrained firms is countercyclical, and that output response to positive shocks is dampened for firms that are sometimes constrained. The results also are important for policy. In order to maximize growth, efforts to relieve credit constraints should be focused on periods when demand shocks are high.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS6797 MAR 01, 2014
This paper uses regression analysis to identify which country context, reform content, process, and project management variables predict the performance of public sector management projects, as measured by the Independent Evaluation Group's project outcome ratings.
... Voir la suite The paper draws on data from a large sample of World Bank public sector management projects that were approved between 1990 and 2013. It contributes to an emerging literature that uses cross-country regressions to analyze public sector management reform patterns. The findings suggest that political context factors have a greater impact on the performance of public sector management projects than on other projects. Specifically, public sector management projects perform better in countries with democratic regimes than autocratic ones. They fare better in the presence of programmatic political parties and in more aid-dependent countries. Project managers' subjective risk assessments predict performance in public sector management operations better than objective risk indicators. These findings suggest that the performance of public sector management projects would benefit from a better alignment of project design with political context and from a more open dialogue about risk between task team leaders and management.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS6798 MAR 01, 2014
Industrial parks are as popular as they are controversial, in India and globally. At their best they align infrastructure provision and agglomeration economies to jolt industrial growth.
... Voir la suite More often, they generate negative spill-overs, provide handouts, sit empty, or simply do not get built. This paper disaggregates how parks are built and how they fail. It contextualizes parks in India, followed by a thick case study of an innovative scheme that appears to buck the trend. This performance is then explained by the way in which the scheme's design and action fit India's political economy. The paper concludes by considering how the analysis and the lessons learned might inform the design and implementation of industrial park programs and other public interventions, in India and elsewhere.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS6799 MAR 01, 2014
The objectives of the Third Shared Growth Grant (SGG-3) Project for Niger are to: (i) improve the business environment for investment and trade; (ii) increase agricultural productivity; and (iii) improve public financial management.
... Voir la suite The proposed SGG-3 supports key reforms in three policy areas. The first policy area aims to establish a competitive and diversified economy to support accelerated and inclusive growth. Reforms under the second policy area continue the reinforce food security and promote sustainable agricultural growth that begun during earlier operations. The third policy area continues the series support to enhance the efficacy of public spending. The proposed SGG-3 completes this program by supporting (i) institutional reforms, including the adoption of a new investment code and measures aimed at strengthening the electricity sector; (ii) reforms that simplify international trade procedures; (iii) expanded labor-market reforms; and (iv) measures to improve transparency in the oil sector.
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This report contains the World Bank Group Boards' calendar for the period February - April 2014, specifying the Boards' engagements, such as meetings and briefings, for the aforementioned time period.
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The development objective of the Additional Financing (AF) for the Emergency Support to Critical Education, Health, and Nutrition Services Project for Madagascar is to preserve critical education, health, and nutrition service delivery in targeted vulnerable areas in the recipient's territory.
... Voir la suite The AF credit will primarily finance the costs associated with a geographical scale-up of activities under the nutrition component three of the project. Financing will support an additional 837 community nutrition sites in the most food insecure areas of the country. The main objective of the nutrition sites is to deliver a package of direct nutrition services to pregnant and lactating women and children under-five years of age. The AF will also support food security interventions at community and household levels which will be implemented in the same areas as the community nutrition sites supported by the parent project. The AF will scale-up activities in four of the same regions as the food security project as well as two districts in a fifth region severely affected by the on-going locust infestation. Two of these regions are already financed under the parent project so these regions will receive incremental financing to implement the package of food security activities.
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The Thai economy has been recovering slowly from the global financial crisis compared to countries like Malaysia and China. Growth in 2013 is projected to be 3 percent with slower than expected performance in all components of gross domestic product (GDP) - consumption, investment, next exports, and government spending.
... Voir la suite Growth is projected to be 4.0 percent in 2014 as the global economy recovers. Exports should accelerate and may well be helped by the tapering of the United States (U.S.) quantitative easing (QE) as the baht depreciates. Taking a longer perspective, there remains visible inequality in public service delivery and human achievement outcomes. Addressing the regional disparities is important for Thailand not only from a social equity perspective, but also from a competitiveness and economic growth perspective. As the population ages, Thailand is seeking to move to a high income economy. Such a transition will require a much broader base of healthy and high skilled citizens. Suggested policy responses include: (a) rebalancing public spending regionally, (b) improving the functioning of local administration by devolving more responsibility to local levels, and (c) supporting greater accountability at the local level. This report is divided into two parts: part one presents macroeconomic developments in 2013 and 2014; and part two deals with equitable public service provision in Thailand.
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The objective of the Emergency Food Security and Social Protection Project for Madagascar is to strengthen the recipient's immediate capacity to respond effectively to the food security and locust crises, by: (i) increasing agricultural production capacity in project areas, while enabling extremely poor households, in the project areas, to access cash transfers and cash for work activities; and (ii) improving the recipient's capacity to respond promptly and efficiently to an eligible crisis or emergency.
... Voir la suite There are four components to the project, the first component being restoring and maintaining essential agricultural productive capacity. The second component is the providing a social safety net for the poor. This component provides a basic safety net to the poorest families in selected project areas through cash-for-work activities or conditional cash transfers. The cash-for-work activities, selected for their potential synergies with the productive activities under component A, will provide selected extremely poor households with temporary employment of up to 45 days per year; households that cannot provide labor (such as female-headed households) will receive temporary cash transfers. The third component is the contingency emergency fund. This component establishes a disaster recovery contingency fund that could be triggered in the event of a natural disaster through formal declaration of a national or regional state of emergency, or upon a formal request from the Government of Madagascar in the wake of a disaster. Finally, the fourth component is the project management.