World Development最新文献

This review article examines the current state of plastic waste and pollution, in particular in the form of marine litter, as it affects the goal of sustainable development and is affected by global North-South dynamics. The rise in plastic waste has had a deleterious effect on local populations and ecosystems, and remains a problem with numerous governance challenges, posing constraints to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This crisis is analyzed under the lens of global North-South dynamics, as the consequences for different nations differ in regard to their capacity to cope with waste, and other inequality issues. China’s decision to stop serving as the world’s central recycling location has pushed plastic waste exports into other Asian countries, and COVID-19 responses have utilized large quantities of plastic products. However, localized initiatives that involve non-governmental actors are making some headway in countries such as Brazil. This review article introduces the problem, examines extant literature linking plastic pollution with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, offers a brief Brazilian case study of a coordinated response, outlines key research gaps and needs, and articulates the concept of plastic justice as a progressive normative design and framework for further analysis.

We study the political economy of government responsiveness in the context of COVID-19 vaccine allocation in Mexico. We first present population-level evidence that the vaccines had positive effects on public health, motivating the plausible electoral value of vaccine distribution. To estimate these effects, we exploit newly collected data on diverse health outcomes and staggered roll-out of vaccines by municipalities and age groups. Our analysis then delves into the electoral predictors and consequences of the vaccination program. Electoral incentives positively correlate with government responsiveness, and vaccine allocation paid off electorally in some locations. Using a difference-in-differences strategy coupled with geographically fine-grained electoral data, which allow us to hold fixed all municipality-level factors that could have mattered for vaccine eligibility, we do not find any evidence that a higher vaccination coverage would have boosted electoral support for the incumbent party, on average. However, there is some evidence of heterogeneous effects. Furthermore, vaccines did increase electoral participation, plausibly by decreasing the perceived cost of voting midst the health crisis.

On current trends, the future of global poverty reduction will be determined by Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Yet, poverty reduction has been relatively slow on the continent, even during periods of strong economic growth. The empirical literature has argued that this is due to the lower growth elasticity of poverty in SSA compared to other regions. This paper contributes to this debate by i) using an up-to-date and expanded sample of 575 successive and comparable growth spells between 1981 and 2021 and 2) unpacking the factors that contribute to the lower growth elasticity of poverty in SSA. First, the analysis confirms previous findings that economic growth (which we measure by growth in GDP per capita) has consistently been less poverty-reducing in SSA, even after controlling for initial differences in poverty, income levels, and inequality (and changes therein). Second, we find that the lower growth elasticity is due to a significantly lower passthrough between growth in GDP per capita and growth in household income or consumption as measured from surveys. GDP growth is particularly ineffective in improving the incomes of the poorest households, whose consumption expenditures in SSA are independent of economic growth, in contrast to low-income households elsewhere. Third, examining the factors that mediate the passthrough between GDP growth and household welfare, we find that limited provision of basic education services and basic infrastructure and the slow process of structural transformation inhibit the passthrough between economic growth and household welfare, as do dependence on natural resources and occurrence of violent conflicts. Overall, variables that strengthen (weaken) the effect of aggregate economic growth on household welfare are scarcer (more abundant) in SSA, which partly explains the weaker effect of economic growth on household welfare.

While a considerable body of literature has studied ethnic inequalities and discrimination in Latin America, it is only in recent years that a growing number of studies examine income inequalities by race, defined as a skin color gradation. Furthermore, most research equates ethnic self-identification with race, leading to confusion on the root of the discrimination. Hardly any studies have addressed ethnicity and race as separate but intertwined characteristics to examine income disparities. It is crucial to address this scarcity to properly comprehend the effect miscegenation narratives have had in the region and the current state of wage inequalities. Hence, in this paper, I employ data from the Americas Barometer to investigate race and ethnicity income gaps in 17 Latin American countries. To do so, I applied non-linear regressions and decomposition methods, which allowed me to (i) separate the observable and non-observable factors of the income gap and (ii) decompose them by race and ethnicity and look at their intersection. In addition to the principal analyses, I conducted a series of robustness checks to evaluate the results’ consistency and perform heterogeneity analysis to examine income inequalities per country. The results show substantial differences in the average income of the different ethnic and racial groups, mainly driven by differences in observable characteristics like years of education and employment status. In addition, the heterogeneity analyses indicate that ethnic and racial disparities vary across Latin America and can be explained partially by unobserved variables like discrimination. Overall, the results suggest that skin color and ethnic self-identification should be accounted for simultaneously when evaluating inequality.

In this paper, we explore the effects of mineral discoveries and productions on intergenerational occupational mobility in Africa. Our study covers approximately 3.4 million individuals across 2690 districts from 27 African countries. We find that mineral discoveries and productions positively affect occupational mobility for both blue- and white-collar jobs in Africa for individuals exposed to the mineral sites and living in districts with discoveries. Specifically, the likelihood of upward blue-collar mobility increases by up to 2.3 percentage points (pp.) when exposed to mineral activities, while the likelihood of downward blue-collar mobility decreases by around 4 pp. Likewise, the likelihood of upward white-collar mobility increases by up to 1.6 pp. when exposed to mining activities, while the likelihood of downward mobility decreases by up to 13.3 pp. These effects are more pronounced for individuals born after the discoveries and the start of production. Our results also reveal some heterogeneous effects based on factors such as the migration status, African regions, the size of mineral discoveries, gender, and the urban–rural divide. In addition, we uncover that the demand for skilled workers (demand-side factor) and education (supply-side factor) are key channels through which mineral discoveries and productions affect occupational mobility.

We investigate the impact of the real exchange rate (RER) on the growth of import-substituting sectors using the quasi-natural experiment of Argentina’s large and lasting RER depreciation following the end of the Convertibility regime. To this end, we developed an episode detection algorithm to identify sectors with substantial import reductions from 2003 to 2008, while controlling for changes in aggregate income. Our analysis examines the theoretical transmission mechanisms through which the RER influences the performance of the tradable sector competing with imports. The results reveal three main findings: First, labor-intensive sectors showed a higher probability of occurrence of import substitution episodes during 2003–2008. This is in line with our expectations and the traditional trade theory, given that the RER should increase profitability in these kinds of sectors more. Second, we find that the higher level of the RER increases the probability of an import substitution episode when the sector shares a higher number of similar capabilities with sectors in which the country is already internationally competitive. Last, we find complementarities between the sectors with import substitution episodes and those that achieved the status of export surge episodes during the same period (2003–2008). In this sense, and in contrast to the traditional consensus view about import substitution policies, we do not observe any tension between developing sectors for the domestic market and the incentive to export growth when the level of the RER is used to promote growth and diversification in the tradable sector.

State intervention has long affected the stability of the global mineral and raw material markets. Global energy transition has continued to boost demand for copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel. It has exacerbated the global prevalence of resource nationalism. Research on resource nationalism has focused on the interaction of economic, political, cultural, and social elements within countries. The lack of understanding of the global economic effects of resource nationalism limits our flexibility in responding to upheavals in the global resource order. We combine time series counterfactual analysis and input–output modeling to advance our understanding of the worldwide supply chain effects of resource nationalism. We analyze the impacts of resource political behavior on global supply chains based on several representative episodes of resource nationalism. While major industrialized countries suffer more absolute welfare losses, formerly developed countries in the Global South face higher price effects. Moreover, nationalist resource shocks are not the only cause of welfare losses in the metals supply chain sector. Still, they are also harming various industries and groups, from food and energy to services. Such differences in price and welfare effects depend on the type of mineral and the resource power of the event-initiating country, on the one hand, and are influenced by the global industrial division of labor, on the other. More losses in developing countries come from the agricultural sector and primary manufacturing than from the severity of the losses suffered by the manufacturing and service sectors in industrial and rich countries. This is a reminder to pay more attention to the unequal distribution of economic pressures across countries and sectors in the global energy transition.

Since the Industrial Revolution, modern economic growth has made the world increasingly (if unevenly) rich. This trajectory led to unprecedented improvements in human wellbeing but, at the same time, produced environmental impacts which threaten material prosperity itself. Against this background, the great challenge of the 21st century is to continue to improve global wellbeing while mitigating environmental impacts. For most international organizations and scholars this can be achieved by decoupling economic growth from its environmental costs (as in green growth proposals). However, other scholars question the feasibility of sustaining growth with a sufficiently large fall in its ecological footprint, arguing instead for decoupling wellbeing from economic growth (as in post-growth strategies). How common were these two forms of decoupling in the past? When and where did societies manage to separate wellbeing improvements from environmental impacts? The answers to these questions can allow us to trace the long-run direction of travel of the global economy and to rethink the historical narrative of the emergence and consolidation of modern economic growth by considering its impacts on human wellbeing and environmental change at the same time. We offer the first long-term analysis of decoupling patterns between an augmented human development index (AHDI) and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe). Moreover, we identify when these patterns were explained by ‘growth decoupling’ (GDP grows faster than GHGe), by ‘wellbeing decoupling’ (AHDI grows faster than GDP per capita), by both, or by neither. Our results show that at low income levels all world regions experienced episodes of wellbeing decoupling; as they became richer, growth decoupling became more common. Nevertheless, we find that such decoupling episodes have proved reversible and that no country in the world has yet managed to achieve very high levels of human wellbeing within planetary boundaries.

Mega-events such as the Olympic Games, the World Cup, the World Expos, and the G20 Summit play important roles in international political economy in the age of globalization. But we know little about how they shape domestic politics and policy processes in their host countries. China has emerged as the leading host of various sports, cultural, economic, and political mega-events in the past decades. Employing an original panel dataset of Chinese cities from 2001 to 2019, we find that cities that host mega-events gain an advantage in bargaining with central bureaucracies for policy resources. Using subway investments as an example, we demonstrate that host cities not only obtained centrally regulated infrastructure investments that directly serve the needs of the events, but also achieve development that they otherwise could not. The result is robust with two-way fixed effects models and after accounting for various alternative explanations. We show that host cities gain advantage because the events capture the attention of national leaders. National leaders have power over central bureaucrats’ careers and thus steer their decisions, and they see the success of mega-events as an opportunity to project national strengths. Our findings highlight the domestic policy consequences of international events in the age of China’s rapid rise and integration with the world.

In low- and middle-income countries, the absence of formal health insurance often forces households to resort to credit for covering healthcare expenses and stabilising consumption. Traditional microcredit offerings frequently impede swift access to funds, limiting households’ ability to mitigate unforeseen health costs. Through a cluster-randomised controlled trial across 24 microfinance branches in northern Bangladesh, we investigated how modifying the features of an existing health credit scheme and reducing transaction costs could enhance credit accessibility. Our findings indicate that relaxing specific scheme features led to increased credit accessibility. This heightened access, triggered by health shocks, corresponded with a rise in utilising formal healthcare services. While we observed an overall uptick in out-of-pocket expenditures, this remained unchanged when excluding the borrowed amount. Our study suggests health credit initiatives promote formal healthcare-seeking behaviours and stimulate higher health-related spending. Immediate access to financial resources alleviates liquidity constraints, enabling increased health spending, facilitating consumption smoothing, and potentially enhancing welfare, particularly where efficient and equitable healthcare financing options are limited.