World Development最新文献

Three-quarters of the global migrant population have fled fragile contexts, with 64 percent hosted by similarly vulnerable countries. These contexts account for about 75 percent of those living in extreme poverty. Despite the scale of this phenomenon, the extent to which the self-selection of South–South migrants differs from those migrating to more developed countries remains poorly understood. In this paper, I investigate the self-selection of Venezuelan migrants during the 2015–2021 crisis, which led to greater migration to less developed countries such as Colombia and Peru, compared to more developed ones like the United States and Chile. Using individual-level data representative of the Venezuelan population and similar data on Venezuelan migrants in these key destination countries, the study finds that migrants are generally positively selected in terms of education compared to those who remain in Venezuela, with migrants to developed countries being positively sorted with respect to those to developing countries. However, comparing the cumulative distribution functions of pre-migration predicted earnings reveals that migrants to developing countries are negatively selected relative to stayers, while migrants to developed countries are positively selected. This highlights the significant role of unobserved abilities in shaping South–South migration patterns. Furthermore, a discrete choice model shows that women and college graduates face lower migration costs, independent of expected earnings at the destination. Factors such as the distance to the destination country and pre-crisis networks also play a crucial role in shaping migration decisions.

The number of people who have been forcibly displaced has increased steadily over the past decade. The recent Rohingya refugee exodus of an estimated 700,000 individuals surging into Bangladesh from Myanmar is just one example of this growing issue. Refugees generally affect the economic and social conditions and the local environment where they resettle. This study aims to examine the impacts of the Rohingya refugee influx on livelihood choice and income status in the host community as well as local environmental degradation. We conducted a questionnaire survey in all 147 villages of the Teknaf Upazila before and after the Rohingya refugee influx that included 5,769 and 6,825 households respectively. We used land cover maps created from remote sensing images to assess the region’s environmental degradation in a holistic fashion. Inherent regional characteristics may affect livelihood choice and income; therefore, we applied two statistical modeling approaches to mitigate such inherent regional biases—Multilevel Modeling and Multilevel Intrinsic Conditional Autoregressive Modeling. The statistical analyses used a combination of the household survey results and the land cover maps. Our study found significant income decreases between the two study periods, specifically among those engaged in farming and miscellaneous labor work. Furthermore, farmers with small agricultural land were crowded out of farming as a livelihood. The results also revealed the natural resource dependency of the host community and its association with ongoing environmental degradation. We located those who were left behind and did not benefit from relief interventions in the middle-south area and the middle of the west coast—this was likely due to geographical and topographical disadvantages. Our results illuminated the limitations of the current humanitarian system and emphasized the need for a sustainable perspective to be more strongly incorporated into future humanitarian efforts.

What explains prison recidivism? Relying on previously unavailable data on prison inmates in Uruguay, we study how external factors, such as employment dynamics on labor-intensive low-skilled jobs, and internal, such as prison-related factors, affect recidivism. Whereas the literature on recidivism has mostly focused on developed countries, we bring its study to the developing world and find that greater employment opportunities in labor-intensive, low-skill sectors, such as construction and domestic services, reduce recidivism. Consistent with the logic of economic opportunities, we also find heterogeneous effects by type of crime (property vs non-property). Finally, we find that prison-specific factors are also relevant, pointing to the importance of understanding prisons as part of the illegal ecosystem and the crime repression system. This analysis is novel to Latin America, a region besieged by the growing influence of criminal organizations that usually extend their influence and power to prisons.

The recent literature on financial inclusion has demonstrated the importance of several characteristics of the local and national infrastructure, including the physical proximity of local banking services. However, inclusion may also depend on another characteristic of the banking sector: the number of different banks operating in the local area. If more banks are operating in the area, there is likely to be a higher level of competition, lowering costs to customers. Using data from Ethiopia, we show that, conditional on the proximity of a household to banking services, the number of local banks is strongly associated with the probability that the household will have access to those services. Further statistical analysis suggests that this may be a causal effect. Our results indicate that promoting competition in the banking sector is likely to raise the level of financial inclusion.

How do host communities evaluate the fairness of how economic assistance is distributed between themselves and refugees in low- and middle- income countries? I argue that in these contexts, where host communities are often economically vulnerable, they perceive themselves as more deserving of aid than refugees, despite the fact that refugees are often unable to formally work or move about freely. I draw upon original descriptive and experimental survey data in Kenya to illuminate how members of the host community perceive the fairness of the distribution of economic assistance between themselves and refugees as well as how they assess deservingness of aid along a number of dimensions. The descriptive evidence reveals that what hosts consider a fair distribution of aid between themselves and refugees is vastly different from how they perceive the current distribution. A conjoint experiment provides causal evidence that hosts perceive themselves as more deserving of aid than refugees, but that group membership matters less than marital status, age, and ability when determining deservingness. Counter to expectations, assessments of deservingness of refugees and hosts do not vary based on the level of interaction with refugees or income level.

Political parties engage in extortion across the developing world. However, discussion of this phenomenon is largely absent from existing research. Drawing upon hundreds of in-depth interviews with local political party leaders, bureaucrats, journalists, and the police in regions of India and Pakistan, we articulate political parties’ economic and political objectives for extracting rents through extortion. We argue that party institutionalization plays an important role in how parties choose to extort and whether they ally with non-state or state actors. We also introduce an orders of political party extortion typology which explains how variation in competition with other armed actors over informal rights to extort a population has distinct downstream effects. Our study yields two key implications. First, extortion constitutes an entrenched coercive tie between political parties and voters in many developing democracies. Second and relatedly, it violates the rule of law, subverting democratic institutions in the process.

This paper examines the evolution of women’s participation in the labor market from 1960 to 2018, shedding light on the complex factors that influence their labor opportunities. The study emphasizes the significance of the historical context in understanding these factors. This research uncovers nuanced insights using a two-step methodology involving principal component analysis and Time-Varying Effect Modeling (TVEM). The results indicate that the transition from high to low fertility rates significantly influenced female labor participation until the mid-1980s. Educational advancements, economic growth, and changing marital dynamics also played a role in shaping evolving patterns. From 1980 to 1995, factors such as diminishing fertility, declining infant mortality, and varying economic conditions influenced women’s labor involvement. From 1995 to 2010, higher education emerged as a key driver, accompanied by shifting societal norms, and from 2010 to 2018, there were positive contributions from fertility rates, minimum wage, and male labor participation. This study underscores the intricate relationship between education, demographics, social norms, and economics in shaping women’s labor force participation, providing valuable insights for gender-inclusive policies and promoting women’s economic empowerment.

Exposure to crime and violence associated with drug trafficking has been shown to have negative consequences on students’ health, peer relationships, and educational outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted to analyzing the effects of exposure to drug trafficking on students’ truancy behavior, a critical outcome with a high cost at an individual and societal level. This study investigates the connection between exposure to drug trafficking (an increasingly common form of chronic crime and subsequent violence in Latin America) and school truancy in Costa Rica. To do so, we use a unique and comprehensive microdata set that merges detailed information on a specific measure of exposure to drug trafficking (cocaine seizures) and socioeconomic characteristics of Costa Rican districts with student and school data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In total, we obtain a sample of 4,584 students in secondary education attending 195 schools in 147 districts. Using logistic regression, we find that students in districts with higher exposure to drug trafficking (measured by cocaine seizure rate) are more prone to school truancy. This finding suggests that strategies to tackle school truancy should consider a neighborhood context perspective.

Accumulated literature on the social license to operate (SLO) of mining has called attention to procedural fairness, which assumes that fair treatments enhance acceptance from people involved in mining projects. However, what procedural improvement means is theoretically underdeveloped, especially in two critical aspects. First, previous studies on SLO have always modeled procedural fairness separately from its outcomes, such as benefit and cost distribution, and failed to spot the separability in the context of acute socioeconomic needs. Under such unclarity, mining companies are less open to participatory opportunities in fear of inflated social demands. Second, institutional inventions in the last decades that attempt to enhance people’s participation in the decision-making of mining projects, such as popular consultation, free, prior, and informed consent to indigenous peoples, and public hearings in environmental impact assessments, are overlooked in the SLO literature. This paper tests the causal effect of procedural and outcome factors on people’s acceptance with a conjoint experiment that portrays hypothetical mining projects. Participants are recruited by an original household survey in four Peruvian regions where mining is a lively experience. The findings report that procedures are viewed separately from material benefits but not separately from reported environmental risks. Prior consultation with voting increases the acceptability of a mining project to some degree. The result suggests the participatory assessment of environmental risk will benefit all stakeholders, and mining companies have no reason to shy away from listening to and respecting local opinions due to a suspected increase in benefit demands.

Although researchers increasingly recognize the significant impact of institutional dysfunction on emerging economies, there remains a major gap regarding its influence on firms’ upstream and downstream activities in scaling up renewable efforts. Drawing on data from solar photovoltaic (PV) intermediary business owners/entrepreneurs and regulators in Ghana, this paper examines the mechanisms through which these activities interact to facilitate the scaling-up efforts of renewable energy. The study uncovers three unique interactive processes through which institutional dysfunctions shape scaling-up efforts. Phase 1 focuses on unmasking institutional dysfunctions as impeding forces on both upstream and downstream activities. Phase 2 signifies a paradigm shift towards proactively re-engaging and reshaping institutional dysfunctions. This phase entails a range of organizational actions, including strategic interventions, dismantling ineffective practices, and wider concerted efforts geared towards turning dysfunctional institutions into potential sources of opportunity. Phase 3 represents the final stage in the evolution towards scaling up, focusing on deficiencies in the aftermarket support environment, specifically maintenance and repair services after sales. The insights derived from the study offer valuable implications for practitioners, policymakers, and scholars.