We investigate how foreign media influenced political mobilization during the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Focusing on two prominent transnational networks, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, we use Arab Barometer survey data to track political mobilization and media use indicators in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories. To address potential endogeneity, we use the frequency of lightning strikes and submarine cable seaquake shocks as instrumental variables, which help isolate exogenous variation in access to foreign media. Our results show that access to foreign media has a positive and statistically significant effect on political mobilization. A one-standard-deviation increase corresponds to a rise in the likelihood of participating in protests of approximately 6.5 percentage points, a gain of approximately 39% at the sample mean. We argue that this effect is primarily driven by the informational dimension of foreign media, rather than its ideological content.
{"title":"The impact of foreign media on political mobilization during the Arab Spring","authors":"Laura Angelini , Luisito Bertinelli , Rana Cömertpay , Jean-François Maystadt","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107218","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107218","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate how foreign media influenced political mobilization during the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Focusing on two prominent transnational networks, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, we use Arab Barometer survey data to track political mobilization and media use indicators in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories. To address potential endogeneity, we use the frequency of lightning strikes and submarine cable seaquake shocks as instrumental variables, which help isolate exogenous variation in access to foreign media. Our results show that access to foreign media has a positive and statistically significant effect on political mobilization. A one-standard-deviation increase corresponds to a rise in the likelihood of participating in protests of approximately 6.5 percentage points, a gain of approximately 39% at the sample mean. We argue that this effect is primarily driven by the informational dimension of foreign media, rather than its ideological content.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107218"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521260","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}
Increasing land tenure security has been advocated as a critical policy to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable development in the developing world. We evaluate the extent to which rural properties with secure land tenure are less prone to deforestation and more likely to comply with environmental rules in the Brazilian Amazon. We use a unique dataset with property-level information for the entire population of private rural properties registered in the state of Acre, Brazil. Our proxy for land tenure security is the absence of overlapping claims to property rights when a landowner registers their land in the federal Environmental Rural Registry. We evaluate the impacts of secure land rights on (i) the property’s share of the deforested area, and (ii) the likelihood that farmers comply with the Brazilian Forest Code, which defines a limit of 20% of deforested area in each property. The non-randomness between the treatment (land tenure security) and control (land tenure insecurity) groups is controlled by using various empirical strategies, including within-landholder fixed effects and matching strategies. Our results demonstrate that land tenure security significantly reduces deforestation and increases compliance with the Forest Code. We also show that even legally titled properties exhibit higher deforestation rates when land tenure rights are not effectively supported by land governance mechanisms.
{"title":"Does land tenure security reduce deforestation? Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon","authors":"Joao Paulo Santos Mastrangelo , Alexandre Gori Maia , Stella Zucchetti Schons","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107233","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107233","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Increasing land tenure security has been advocated as a critical policy to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable development in the developing world. We evaluate the extent to which rural properties with secure land tenure are less prone to deforestation and more likely to comply with environmental rules in the Brazilian Amazon. We use a unique dataset with property-level information for the entire population of private rural properties registered in the state of Acre, Brazil. Our proxy for land tenure security is the absence of overlapping claims to property rights when a landowner registers their land in the federal Environmental Rural Registry. We evaluate the impacts of secure land rights on (i) the property’s share of the deforested area, and (ii) the likelihood that farmers comply with the Brazilian Forest Code, which defines a limit of 20% of deforested area in each property. The non-randomness between the treatment (land tenure security) and control (land tenure insecurity) groups is controlled by using various empirical strategies, including within-landholder fixed effects and matching strategies. Our results demonstrate that land tenure security significantly reduces deforestation and increases compliance with the Forest Code. We also show that even legally titled properties exhibit higher deforestation rates when land tenure rights are not effectively supported by land governance mechanisms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107233"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521244","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}
Pub Date : 2025-11-14DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107228
Joan Martínez-Alier , Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos
Poverty is multidimensional. Economic growth often implies environmental impoverishment and hence diminished options to choose valuable lives. People who are deprived of access to land, clean water and air because of extractive industries or as victims of waste disposal, often complain accordingly. They have lost freedom of choice regardless possible income increases, if they get them at all. We illustrate this with examples of ecological distribution conflicts collected in the EJAtlas. If you get some extra money but lose access to land, water and clean air because extractive industries grab your place and pollute your family, you are poorer in some dimensions than before, and poverty estimates need to take this into account.
{"title":"Development as multidimensional environmental impoverishment","authors":"Joan Martínez-Alier , Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107228","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107228","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Poverty is multidimensional. Economic growth often implies environmental impoverishment and hence diminished options to choose valuable lives. People who are deprived of access to land, clean water and air because of extractive industries or as victims of waste disposal, often complain accordingly. They have lost freedom of choice regardless possible income increases, if they get them at all. We illustrate this with examples of ecological distribution conflicts collected in the EJAtlas. If you get some extra money but lose access to land, water and clean air because extractive industries grab your place and pollute your family, you are poorer in some dimensions than before, and poverty estimates need to take this into account.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107228"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521258","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}
A large body of research has illustrated how inequalities in educational achievements globally are rooted in a range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. However, the sources of educational disadvantages are too often considered in isolation, without addressing how they interplay with one another. Building upon the intersectionality and multiple jeopardy frameworks, in this paper we employ a sequential mixed-methods approach to analyse the role played by economic status, gender and race in shaping education attainment in Brazilian high-stakes secondary education exams. Our specific focus is on how economic status, conceptualised as comprising an absolute and a relative facet, interplays with gender and race. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the two components of economic status interplay symmetrically with gender but asymmetrically with race. Gender attainment gaps shrink with higher absolute and relative status. Race attainment gaps also shrink with higher absolute status, but they expand with higher relative status. We use the insights obtained from the literature as well as from our qualitative interviews to situate and explain these findings. Our work improves the understanding of the multifaceted disadvantage experienced by students from underprivileged households in Brazil, highlighting how economic inequality and discrimination hinder educational attainment and jeopardise social mobility.
{"title":"Gender, race and their interplay with economic status: intersectionality and asymmetric jeopardies in Brazilian education","authors":"Sunil Mitra Kumar , Lucio Esposito , Adrián Villaseñor , Sandra Macedo","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107232","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107232","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A large body of research has illustrated how inequalities in educational achievements globally are rooted in a range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. However, the sources of educational disadvantages are too often considered in isolation, without addressing how they interplay with one another. Building upon the intersectionality and multiple jeopardy frameworks, in this paper we employ a sequential mixed-methods approach to analyse the role played by economic status, gender and race in shaping education attainment in Brazilian high-stakes secondary education exams. Our specific focus is on how economic status, conceptualised as comprising an absolute and a relative facet, interplays with gender and race. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the two components of economic status interplay symmetrically with gender but asymmetrically with race. Gender attainment gaps shrink with higher absolute and relative status. Race attainment gaps also shrink with higher absolute status, but they expand with higher relative status. We use the insights obtained from the literature as well as from our qualitative interviews to situate and explain these findings. Our work improves the understanding of the multifaceted disadvantage experienced by students from underprivileged households in Brazil, highlighting how economic inequality and discrimination hinder educational attainment and jeopardise social mobility.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107232"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521257","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}
Pub Date : 2025-11-13DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107239
Joseph A Kilgallen , Alexander M Ishungisa , Pius Charles , Theresia Marco Chizi , Anuarite John , Israel Nicholaus , Ernest Sebarua , Mark Urassa , David W Lawson
Achieving gender equality requires the support of all genders, but efforts to engage men in women’s empowerment initiatives have been fraught with resistance. Existing research demonstrates that men often anticipate negative consequences for opposing patriarchal norms but has less frequently addressed variability in such perceptions within communities and their modification by socioecological change. Here, we examine the ramifications men face when deemed supportive of women’s empowerment with regard to their social status and prospects for marriage and reproduction, and how these ramifications are shifting with urbanization. Data come from a Tanzanian community, selected because it combines patriarchal norms, with shifting gender roles accompanying urbanization, offering a relevant case for understanding gender norm change in similar low and middle-income settings. Focus groups and in-depth interviews with community members (young men, young women, and elders) confirm severe social costs for men who support women’s empowerment, primarily in the form of reputational damage and social ostracism. Both men and women also frequently question the sexuality, desirability, and reproductive prospects of men engaging in gender atypical behaviors that support women. However, these costs are giving way to emerging incentives for a subset of supportive men who gain social prestige, at least among relatively well-educated peers, via their association with ‘modern’ values, attractiveness to women, access to novel employment opportunities, and adaptability to urban life. Through identifying entrenched costs for supportive men and emerging incentives accompanying urbanization, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the barriers and pathways to effectively engaging men in women’s empowerment.
{"title":"“A snake with no teeth”: Urbanization shifts perceptions of men who support women’s empowerment in Northwestern Tanzania","authors":"Joseph A Kilgallen , Alexander M Ishungisa , Pius Charles , Theresia Marco Chizi , Anuarite John , Israel Nicholaus , Ernest Sebarua , Mark Urassa , David W Lawson","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107239","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107239","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Achieving gender equality requires the support of all genders, but efforts to engage men in women’s empowerment initiatives have been fraught with resistance. Existing research demonstrates that men often anticipate negative consequences for opposing patriarchal norms but has less frequently addressed variability in such perceptions within communities and their modification by socioecological change. Here, we examine the ramifications men face when deemed supportive of women’s empowerment with regard to their social status and prospects for marriage and reproduction, and how these ramifications are shifting with urbanization. Data come from a Tanzanian community, selected because it combines patriarchal norms, with shifting gender roles accompanying urbanization, offering a relevant case for understanding gender norm change in similar low and middle-income settings. Focus groups and in-depth interviews with community members (young men, young women, and elders) confirm severe social costs for men who support women’s empowerment, primarily in the form of reputational damage and social ostracism. Both men and women also frequently question the sexuality, desirability, and reproductive prospects of men engaging in gender atypical behaviors that support women. However, these costs are giving way to emerging incentives for a subset of supportive men who gain social prestige, at least among relatively well-educated peers, via their association with ‘modern’ values, attractiveness to women, access to novel employment opportunities, and adaptability to urban life. Through identifying entrenched costs for supportive men and emerging incentives accompanying urbanization, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the barriers and pathways to effectively engaging men in women’s empowerment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107239"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521259","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}
Pub Date : 2025-11-13DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107229
Luca Raineri
The role of natural parks and protected areas in fostering peace or exacerbating conflict has gained increasing attention. While early scholarship emphasized their potential in post-conflict peacebuilding, political ecology has highlighted how the securitization of environmental concerns may clash with local resource management, fuelling hidden resistance or overt violence. Specific outcomes arguably depend on contextual features and eschew generalised answers, yet French-speaking West Africa remains underexplored in this debate. This article addresses that gap by focusing on the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) transboundary park complex across Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin. Noting the expansion of jihadist groups in this area, this case selection further helps bridge the divide between conflict studies and political ecology literatures, including conservation amidst counterinsurgency.
The article explores three hypotheses to understand why jihadist groups have expanded in the WAP area: (H1) leveraging local grievances over environmental governance and restricted resource access to mobilize local populations against the states; (H2) exploitation of conflict economies like trafficking, poaching, and gold mining for greed and economic gain; and (H3) capitalize on the military potential of forested areas to provide safe havens.
Qualitative evidence – including interviews and surveys with local stakeholders and park rangers – is mobilized to assess the purchase of these hypotheses. Findings suggest that, contrary to earlier claims, the politicization of environmental grievances plays a limited role. Instead, jihadist presence in the WAP complex is more convincingly explained by economic motivations linked to illicit activities and, most critically, by military considerations, with protected forest areas offering strategic advantages.
{"title":"Grievances, greed or tactics? The political ecology of jihadist expansion in West Africa’s WAP complex","authors":"Luca Raineri","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107229","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107229","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The role of natural parks and protected areas in fostering peace or exacerbating conflict has gained increasing attention. While early scholarship emphasized their potential in post-conflict peacebuilding, political ecology has highlighted how the securitization of environmental concerns may clash with local resource management, fuelling hidden resistance or overt violence. Specific outcomes arguably depend on contextual features and eschew generalised answers, yet French-speaking West Africa remains underexplored in this debate. This article addresses that gap by focusing on the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) transboundary park complex across Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin. Noting the expansion of jihadist groups in this area, this case selection further helps bridge the divide between conflict studies and political ecology literatures, including conservation amidst counterinsurgency.</div><div>The article explores three hypotheses to understand why jihadist groups have expanded in the WAP area: (H1) leveraging local grievances over environmental governance and restricted resource access to mobilize local populations against the states; (H2) exploitation of conflict economies like trafficking, poaching, and gold mining for greed and economic gain; and (H3) capitalize on the military potential of forested areas to provide safe havens.</div><div>Qualitative evidence – including interviews and surveys with local stakeholders and park rangers – is mobilized to assess the purchase of these hypotheses. Findings suggest that, contrary to earlier claims, the politicization of environmental grievances plays a limited role. Instead, jihadist presence in the WAP complex is more convincingly explained by economic motivations linked to illicit activities and, most critically, by military considerations, with protected forest areas offering strategic advantages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107229"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521261","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}
Pub Date : 2025-11-12DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107247
Gwen-Jirō Clochard , Guillaume Hollard , Omar Sene
The contact hypothesis posits that interaction with outgroup members can reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations. While the overall effects of contact have been found to be positive, some studies have found null or even negative effects. We aim to contribute to the understanding of the scope conditions of contact interventions, by singling out the effects of a common component of all existing contact interventions, namely bilateral discussions. Our brief contact is found to be effective in increasing interethnic trust toward the individuals met during the intervention, in line with previous results from longer interventions. However, the results do not generalize to the collective level. Our heterogeneity analyses fail to find evidence of heterogeneity in the treatment effect.
{"title":"Bringing contact interventions to the lab: Effects of brief bilateral discussions on interethnic trust in Senegal","authors":"Gwen-Jirō Clochard , Guillaume Hollard , Omar Sene","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107247","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107247","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The contact hypothesis posits that interaction with outgroup members can reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations. While the overall effects of contact have been found to be positive, some studies have found null or even negative effects. We aim to contribute to the understanding of the scope conditions of contact interventions, by singling out the effects of a common component of all existing contact interventions, namely bilateral discussions. Our brief contact is found to be effective in increasing interethnic trust toward the individuals met during the intervention, in line with previous results from longer interventions. However, the results do not generalize to the collective level. Our heterogeneity analyses fail to find evidence of heterogeneity in the treatment effect.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107247"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521243","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}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107226
Yixin Chen , Bingyang Lyu , Mengqi Niu
Fiscal decentralization is widely acknowledged as a pivotal contributor to China’s economic growth. However, there is a paucity of literature examining the underlying drivers of fiscal decentralization in China. This paper examines the drivers of intergovernmental fiscal relations in China: fostering economic development and mitigating regional disparities. After reviewing the evolution of the fiscal system since the Reform and Opening Up, we build a theoretical model to shed light on the objectives of fiscal decentralization and derive two theoretical propositions. By using panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2016 and incorporating a newly developed fiscal decentralization indicator, we empirically test the theoretical propositions. The empirical analysis shows that the degree of fiscal decentralization decreases with an increase in GDP growth goals or larger fiscal disparities of subordinate county-level governments. This paper not only shows that balancing efficiency and equity in determining fiscal decentralization, but also offers insights for developing countries on how to build a more effective fiscal decentralization system.
{"title":"Balancing efficiency and equity in fiscal decentralization: theory and evidence from China","authors":"Yixin Chen , Bingyang Lyu , Mengqi Niu","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107226","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107226","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Fiscal decentralization is widely acknowledged as a pivotal contributor to China’s economic growth. However, there is a paucity of literature examining the underlying drivers of fiscal decentralization in China. This paper examines the drivers of intergovernmental fiscal relations in China: fostering economic development and mitigating regional disparities. After reviewing the evolution of the fiscal system since the <em>Reform and Opening Up,</em> we build a theoretical model to shed light on the objectives of fiscal decentralization and derive two theoretical propositions. By using panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2004 to 2016 and incorporating a newly developed fiscal decentralization indicator, we empirically test the theoretical propositions. The empirical analysis shows that the degree of fiscal decentralization decreases with an increase in GDP growth goals or larger fiscal disparities of subordinate county-level governments. This paper not only shows that balancing efficiency and equity in determining fiscal decentralization, but also offers insights for developing countries on how to build a more effective fiscal decentralization system.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107226"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145479131","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}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107211
Leoni Mendler-Krakau, Michael Frenkel
China has emerged as an internationally leading creditor of development finance and is now competing with traditional Western donors and lenders. Between 2000 and 2021, Chinese public sector institutions committed more than USD 1.3 trillion to low- and middle-income countries. The flagship Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, has enabled unprecedented infrastructure investment in about 150 countries. Western criticism of a lack of transparency has prompted speculation about the environmental impact of Chinese lending abroad. We examine whether Chinese official finance to Africa between 2000 and 2021 is associated with “greener” electricity generation—which can serve as the backbone for a sustainable energy transition on the continent—and whether it has contributed to emission reduction. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we employ an instrumental variable approach that relies on the exogenous variation in the availability of Chinese official finance over time. Our findings suggest that Chinese official finance has increased the adoption of renewable energy for electricity generation, although the impact differs between development-oriented and commercial finance and changes over time. Furthermore, while Chinese official finance has contributed to reducing emissions and improving electricity access, commercial projects appear to offset some of the emission reductions.
{"title":"How green is China’s development finance? Power generation and air pollution in Africa","authors":"Leoni Mendler-Krakau, Michael Frenkel","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107211","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107211","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>China has emerged as an internationally leading creditor of development finance and is now competing with traditional Western donors and lenders. Between 2000 and 2021, Chinese public sector institutions committed more than USD 1.3 trillion to low- and middle-income countries. The flagship Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, has enabled unprecedented infrastructure investment in about 150 countries. Western criticism of a lack of transparency has prompted speculation about the environmental impact of Chinese lending abroad. We examine whether Chinese official finance to Africa between 2000 and 2021 is associated with “greener” electricity generation—which can serve as the backbone for a sustainable energy transition on the continent—and whether it has contributed to emission reduction. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we employ an instrumental variable approach that relies on the exogenous variation in the availability of Chinese official finance over time. Our findings suggest that Chinese official finance has increased the adoption of renewable energy for electricity generation, although the impact differs between development-oriented and commercial finance and changes over time. Furthermore, while Chinese official finance has contributed to reducing emissions and improving electricity access, commercial projects appear to offset some of the emission reductions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107211"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145479132","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}
Pub Date : 2025-11-10DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107234
Caroline Perrin , Marie Hyland
This paper documents the relationship between legal gender equality and the use of financial services, using individual-level data from 148 developed and developing economies. The analysis, which combines data from the Global Findex and Women, Business and the Law databases, highlights the existence of a significant and positive correlation between gender equality in the law and women’s access to financial products. The results show that greater legal equality alleviates women’s involuntary financial exclusion. The findings also suggest that prevailing adverse social norms can nullify the beneficial effects of legal equality, and that better implementation of the law can facilitate a stronger relationship between legal frameworks and women’s financial inclusion.
{"title":"Gendered laws and Women’s financial inclusion","authors":"Caroline Perrin , Marie Hyland","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107234","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107234","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper documents the relationship between legal gender equality and the use of financial services, using individual-level data from 148 developed and developing economies. The analysis, which combines data from the Global Findex and <em>Women, Business and the Law</em> databases, highlights the existence of a significant and positive correlation between gender equality in the law and women’s access to financial products. The results show that greater legal equality alleviates women’s involuntary financial exclusion. The findings also suggest that prevailing adverse social norms can nullify the beneficial effects of legal equality, and that better implementation of the law can facilitate a stronger relationship between legal frameworks and women’s financial inclusion.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"199 ","pages":"Article 107234"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145479130","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}
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