World Development最新文献

{"title":"Armed conflict, community-based cash transfers, and social cohesion: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Ethiopia","authors":"Halefom Yigzaw Nigus ,&nbsp;Kibrom A. Abay ,&nbsp;Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107249","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107249","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Amid a surge in armed conflicts in Africa, the impact of armed conflicts on social cohesion and potential avenues to rebuild social cohesion in conflict-affected settings remain active areas of inquiry. Most importantly, identifying instruments and interventions that can effectively strengthen social cohesion in conflict-affected settings can inform and facilitate peace-building efforts. We examine whether community-based cash transfer and social protection programs can strengthen social cohesion in settings grappling with the adverse effects of armed conflict. We answer this question using the 2020 civil war in Ethiopia and combining this with a randomized community-based cash transfer program rolled out after the conflict. Exploiting temporal variation in the spread of large-scale armed conflicts (battles) across a two-wave panel survey, we show that battles are associated with a deterioration in social cohesion. Reassuringly, we demonstrate that a modestly sized community-based cash transfer can rebuild and restore social cohesion in communities grappling with armed conflict and deterioration in social cohesion. Heterogeneity analysis shows that households who belong to a minority ethnic group in each community reported a higher loss in social capital associated with their exposure to armed conflict and that the community-based cash transfer appears to be more effective in rebuilding social cohesion among these households.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107249"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Effect of women’s inclusion on conservation and management practices of Water User Associations","authors":"Ariana Montoya-Lozano,&nbsp;Tara Grillos","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107255","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107255","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Water scarcity remains a pressing challenge in rural areas of developing countries, making it essential to adopt more effective water governance. This study explores whether women’s inclusion in the executive committees of Water User Associations (WUAs) may enhance both management and conservation activities meant to improve rural water governance. Focusing on rural areas in Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Bolivia, we analyze over 4,000 survey observations from the Rural Water and Sanitation Information System (SIASAR). We use cardinality matching to compare activities by WUAs with more women on the executive committee to statistically comparable WUAs with fewer women on the committee. Our study finds that the presence of women on WUA boards is significantly associated with increased conservation activities, such as protection of water sources, and recommended management practices, such as the formal legalization of the association. These improvements help strengthen both ecological and social systems against environmental degradation. Our findings suggest that promoting women’s inclusion in water governance could improve the effectiveness and sustainability of water management in rural Latin America. These results contribute to the ongoing discourse on gender, water governance, and environmental protection.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107255"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who on earth is using Generative AI?","authors":"Yan Liu,&nbsp;He Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107260","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107260","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper offers the first comprehensive, global analysis of generative AI adoption by individuals, using novel data sources including website traffic and Google Trends. The paper also examines country-level factors driving the uptake and early impacts of generative artificial intelligence on online activities. As of March 2024, the top 40 generative artificial intelligence tools attract nearly 3 billion visits per month from hundreds of millions of users. ChatGPT alone commands over 80 percent of the traffic, yet its reach remains less than two percent of Google’s. Generative artificial intelligence users skew young, highly educated, and male, particularly for video generation tools, with usage patterns strongly indicating productivity-related activities. Generative artificial intelligence has achieved unprecedentedly rapid global diffusion, reaching almost all economies worldwide within 16 months of ChatGPT’s release. Strikingly, middle-income economies account for over half of global generative AI traffic, a disproportionately high share relative to their economic size, while low-income economies contribute less than 1 percent. Country level adoption intensity is strongly correlated with the share of youth population, digital infrastructure, English fluency, foreign direct investment inflows, services’ share of GDP, and human capital. Finally, the paper also documents disruptions in online traffic patterns and emphasizes the need for targeted investments in digital infrastructure and skills development to fully realize the potential of artificial intelligence.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107260"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Do corruption experiences promote emigration? Observational and experimental evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"John Maara ,&nbsp;Barry Maydom","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107262","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107262","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How does corruption influence emigration decisions? Previous research has focused on the relationship between individuals’ <em>perceptions</em> of corruption and their desire to emigrate internationally. In this paper, we argue that personal <em>experiences</em> of corruption influence the desire to emigrate even more strongly than perceptions in order to escape from extortion and demands for bribes. To explore the relationship between corruption experiences and emigration, we analyse survey data from Afrobarometer alongside an original survey experiment. We use Afrobarometer to model the relationship between different types of corruption experiences on both intentions and specific plans to emigrate. We conduct a vignette experiment in Kenya in which respondents rate the desirability of emigration for a hypothetical countryman with varying experiences of corruption. We find that personal experiences of corruption are a strong push factor for migration, and that this relationship does not vary with education levels. Our study extends the literature by focussing on how personal experiences of corruption shape migration.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107262"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Friends or foes? The insurgent’s dilemma of seeking legitimacy while keeping secrets","authors":"Enrique Escalante","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107258","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107258","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Why do some rebel groups seek legitimacy more than others? This article develops a theory to explain that the variation among insurgencies will depend on a trade-off insurgents confront between the interest to obtain legitimacy and the exposure to vulnerability. Inclusive insurgencies disclose information to seek legitimacy, allowing rebels to gain popular support, secure resources, and broader collaboration with non-combatants, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. In contrast, exclusive insurgencies, often emerging from radical factions, emphasize secrecy to protect the insurgency from existential threats, as their leaders are more easily targeted, leaks are relatively costlier, and disclosure increases the risk of detection. Faced with this trade-off and constrained by the likelihood of splintering, insurgencies unleash violent and non-violent actions. The theory is supported by an analysis of Peru’s 1980–2000 insurgencies: the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107258"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gendering the safety net: Social protection policy and the limits to Decent Work in Cambodia’s garment sector","authors":"Sabina Lawreniuk ,&nbsp;Katherine Brickell ,&nbsp;Theavy Chhom ,&nbsp;Lauren McCarthy ,&nbsp;Mony Reach ,&nbsp;Hengvotey So","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107251","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107251","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The adoption of the Social Protection Floors Recommendation (SPFR) by the International Labour Conference in 2012 is widely recognised as an “historic” (Deacon 2013) and “radical” (Cichon 2013) reorientation of social protection, promising a new “universal and comprehensive” approach. Despite the SPFR’s bold ambitions, however, the implementation of social protection floors at global- and national-level has proven uneven. In practice, the social protection floors initiative has generally been “subordinate” (<span><span>Seekings, 2019</span></span>) to the Decent Work agenda. Particularly in many lower-income settings in the global South, for instance, vertical expansion of benefits to waged workers through social insurance has taken precedence over the SPFR’s more radical promise to horizontally expand the frontiers of social assistance. In Cambodia, for example, entrenched norms of fiscal and social conservativism have focused policy attention on expanding benefits provided to the 700,000 workers in the country’s largest formal industry – the garment sector – rather than expanding the scope of social protection to include the yet more numerous informal or agricultural sector workforce. In this paper, we examine the consequences of this lopsided social protection strategy for its apparent beneficiaries: women working within the garment industry. We argue that the focus on extending support for formal workers, at the exclusion of informal workers is, in fact, detrimental to both groups. To illustrate these arguments, we draw on original data from the GCRF-funded ReFashion project, a longitudinal study tracing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on a cohort of 200 garment workers in Cambodia over 24 months. We use this rich and grounded data to develop an emic perspective on social protection programming that shows how, in the absence of a robust social protection floor, gendered norms in Cambodia compel women to fill the gaps in social protection programming by the state. Women workers in the garment sector effectively fund a social safety net for family members through remittance transfers. However, garment sector salaries alone are insufficient for this task, leading to a “debtfare” (Soederberg 2014) model, in which workers finance these costs through increasing resort to personal debt. The result is a crisis of over-indebtedness among workers in the garment industry that undermines the achievement of Decent Work in the sector. We suggest that Covid-19 offers a moment for reflection, like that which followed the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and inspired the SPRF itself, to learn from the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic and recentre a radical vision of social protection that delivers for all.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107251"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“I have already died in this PLACE:” livelihood impact pathways of conservation and land use change among highland Indigenous groups in northern Thailand","authors":"Marco J Haenssgen,&nbsp;Prasit Leepreecha,&nbsp;Mukdawan Sakboon,&nbsp;Ta-Wei Chu","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107257","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107257","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>International conservation frameworks and targets have increasingly recognised the central role of Indigenous peoples in managing and preserving natural resources. However, a clearer understanding of the land use and conservation policy experiences, and the resulting livelihood impacts, of Indigenous peoples is essential to devise conservation policies that are not only more inclusive but also potentially more effective. This article argues that livelihood impact pathways analysis, operationalised through the activity space framework, can help unravel overlapping, counter-acting, and often invisible pathways of multi-dimensional livelihood that tend to remain fragmented or disconnected in prevailing livelihood research. We employed this approach in four Indigenous communities in northern Thailand, drawing on participatory qualitative research conducted from 07/2019 to 06/2021. The analysis identified five distinct yet interconnected pathways through which land use change and conservation policies interact with the relational systems linking communities, state actors, and local ecosystems. Spanning multi-dimensional livelihood impacts on inter- and intra-community relationships, meaning making, forest degradation, and state-community conflicts, these pathways were also shaped by contextual forces such as rural development processes and international legal developments. We recommend that consultative processes with stakeholders from affected communities and the sectors of policy, development, civil society, and academia employ the activity space framework as a systems mapping tool to identify and prioritise behavioural intervention options along direct and indirect impact pathways on livelihoods and related outcomes of forest health.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107257"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Economic convergence, intragenerational economic mobility, and inequality in a native Amazonian small-scale society of Indigenous People in Bolivia","authors":"Ricardo Godoy ,&nbsp;Jonathan Bauchet ,&nbsp;Victoria Reyes-García ,&nbsp;Eduardo A. Undurraga","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107237","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107237","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Adult intragenerational mobility reflects society’s ability to reward effort and tame society-wide inequality. In developed economies, mobility is modest and correlates negatively with economic inequality. Little is known quantitatively from direct observations about long-term intragenerational mobility in small-scale societies of the Global South. To assess the external validity of findings about patterns of intragenerational mobility from developed economies, we use a yearly survey panel dataset (2002–2010) of adults from a society of native Amazonians (Tsimane’) in Bolivia practicing farming, fishing, hunting, and plant gathering. We estimate (a) convergence rates (or the speed of catch up) of adults in the bottom quintile to the rest of the population sample, (b) mobility defined as the change in quintile rank in economic outcomes between 2002 and 2010, and (c) the associations of economic mobility in rank between 2002 and 2010 with society-wide economic inequality in 2010, measured with the Gini coefficient. Outcomes included flows (income, barter) and wealth measured with the value of livestock, locally produced goods, and commercial goods. We found unambiguous evidence of convergence (those at the bottom were fast approaching the rest) and considerable evidence of both upward and downward mobility among women and men across all outcomes. Mobility and economic inequality correlated negatively. We did not observe the modest economic mobility typical of developed economies, but we found pockets of immobility at the top and an inverse relation between upward mobility and inequality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107237"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fabricated justice: How due process reform enables evidence manipulation","authors":"Beatriz Magaloni ,&nbsp;Esteban Salmón","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107222","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107222","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines how due process reforms enable evidence manipulation. During the past two decades, most Latin American countries have radically reformed their criminal justice systems, with the aim of strengthening rights protections and curbing abuses. Focusing on Mexico, we uncover a paradox of these institutional reforms: confronted with social pressures to punish crimes, police officers and prosecutors with limited investigation capacities fabricate criminal cases that pretend to conform with stricter judicial standards. Using difference-in-differences designs with a representative prison survey and ethnographic fieldwork among criminal prosecutors, we document a decline in torture and a parallel rise in convictions grounded in fabricated evidence, most commonly planted drugs and weapons. This shift toward what we call “fabricated justice” has fueled an increase in drug trafficking convictions. This recent increase in planted evidence suggests that when rule of law reforms are implemented without corresponding investments in state capacity, they can generate new and unexpected forms of abuse.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107222"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145570204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wealth inequality and economic growth: Evidence from the World Inequality Database","authors":"Rachel Steenbrink ,&nbsp;Ahmed Skali","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107250","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107250","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although it is often argued that wealth inequality matters more for economic growth than income inequality, this relationship has rarely been studied empirically, with a few exceptions covering a very restricted country sample or short timeframe. Leveraging hitherto unexploited wealth inequality data from the World Inequality Database, covering a panel of 165 countries between 1995 and 2019, we document a negative and statistically significant relationship between wealth inequality and economic growth. A one standard deviation increase in the wealth Gini coefficient within countries is associated with a 0.34 percentage points decline in growth rates. Instrumental variables support a causal interpretation of the results. The results survive a large battery of robustness checks, and we find no evidence to suggest a heterogeneous relationship.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107250"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145615700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}