rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Can information campaigns spark
            local participation and improve outcomes A study of primary
            education in Uttar Pradesh, India
WPS3967

# **Can Information Campaigns Spark Local Participation and Improve Outcomes?**

**A Study of Primary Education in Uttar Pradesh, India**

Abhijit Banerjee Rukmini Banerji Esther Duflo Rachel Glennerster Stuti Khemani* World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3967, July 2006 _The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._

* Author affiliations: MIT, Pratham, MIT, MIT, World Bank, respectively. _Corresponding Author:_ Stuti Khemani, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, <u>skhemani@worldbank.org, 202-458-1129.</u>

This paper reports first stage results from a study that is being undertaken in collaboration between Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative (Pratham), MIT Poverty Action Lab, and the World Bank, and thus involves the participation of many people from these institutions. We would especially like to thank Dan Keniston, Sanjib Kundu, and Mukesh Prajapati for implementation, Marc Shotland for managing the project, and Dan and Marc for the data analysis. We thank Jishnu Das, Dipak Dasgupta, Shanta Devarajan, Venita Kaul, Priyanka Pandey, Lant Pritchett, Michelle Riboud, V. J. Ravishankar, Shekhar Shah, Venki Sundararaman, Kin Bing Wu, and Salman Zaidi of the World Bank for numerous discussions and comments. We thank the Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (TFESSD) for the funding to undertake the surveys and analysis.
Measuring corruption in Eastern
            Europe and Central Asia : a critique of the cross-country indicators
This paper assesses corruption levels
            and trends among countries in the transition countries of
            Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) based on data from
            several sources that are both widely used and cover most or
            all countries in the region. Data from firm surveys tend to
            show improvement in most types of administrative corruption,
            but little change in "state capture" in the
            region. Broader, subjective corruption indicators tend to
            show somewhat greater improvement in ECA than in non-ECA
            countries on average. A "primer on corruption
            indicators" discusses definitional and methodological
            differences among data sources that may account in large
            part for the apparently conflicting messages they often
            provide. This discussion concludes that depending on
            one's purpose, it may be more appropriate to use data
            from a single source rather than a composite index because
            of the loss of conceptual precision in aggregation. A second
            conclusion is that the gains in statistical precision from
            aggregating sources of corruption data likely are far more
            modest than often claimed because of interdependence among
            data sources. The range of detailed corruption measures
            available in firm surveys are exploited to show that broad,
            perceptions-based corruption assessments appear to measure
            primarily administrative corruption, despite their stated
            criteria placing great weight on "state capture."
            Finally, the paper emphasizes the need for scaling up data
            initiatives to fill significant gaps between our conceptual
            definitions of corruption and the operational definition
            embodied in the existing measures.
Measuring corruption in Eastern
            Europe and Central Asia : a critique of the cross-country indicators
WPS3968

# **Measuring Corruption in Eastern Europe and Central Asia:**

# **A Critique of the Cross-Country Indicators**

## Stephen Knack*

### World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3968, July 2006

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._

*Address correspondence to Stephen Knack, Senior Research Economist, World Bank, 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20433. Email: <u>sknack@worldbank.org. Phone:</u> 202-458-9712. Fax: 202-522-1154.

This paper benefited from enormously valuable suggestions and comments from James Anderson and Cheryl Gray.
Innovation and export portfolios
This paper examines the link between
            sectoral concentration and overall performance in the search
            for on-the-frontier innovations, inside-the-frontier
            innovations, and export booms. It extends the literature by
            increasing country coverage and the types of search
            processes considered, and by focusing on the links with
            overall performance in these search processes. After
            controlling for the necessary relationships as well as fixed
            effects at the country/commodity group level, the paper
            finds a clear negative relationship between the
            concentration of innovation portfolios and performance:
            countries that are the most successful in these search
            processes have their successes spread across a broader range
            of industries than those with poorer performance.
            Furthermore, the search for export booms exhibits the least
            amount of sectoral concentration and path-dependence. These
            findings suggest that public support for these processes
            need not be focused in a narrow range of sectors, and
            modeling of these processes in theoretical work,
            particularly in the search for export booms, should be of a
            stochastic flavor.
University-local industry linkages :
            the case of Tohoku University in the Sendai area of Japan
This paper focuses on Tohoku University
            in Sendai in the nonmetropolitan area of Japan. Both a long
            historical and comparative perspective and a spacial
            perspective are essential to discuss the relevance of
            university-local industry linkages to local regional
            economic development. The conjunction of these linkages and
            economic development has been affected by two evolutionary
            processes: institutional configurations and territorial
            dynamics in the national innovation system. In addition,
            university-local industry linkages have been complicated by
            top-down regionalization and bottom-up regionalism.
University-local industry linkages :
            the case of Tohoku University in the Sendai area of Japan
WPS3991

# : **University-Local Industry Linkages**

## The Case of Tohoku University in the Sendai-Area of Japan<sup>1</sup>

### Juan JIANG

Research Fellow, Management of Science and Technology Department Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University

### Yuko HARAYAMA

Professor, Management of Science and Technology Department Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University

### Shiro ABE

Professor Emeritus, Tohoku University Professor, Tohoku Fukushi University

### Abstract

This paper focuses on Tohoku University in Sendai in the non-metropolitan area of Japan. Both a long historical and comparative perspective and a spacial perspective are essential to discuss the relevance of university-industry linkages to local-regional economic development. The conjunction of these linkages and economic development has been affected by two evolutionary processes: institutional configurations and territorial dynamics in the national innovation system. In addition, university-industry linkages have been complicated by top-down regionalization and bottom-up regionalism.

Key Words: Japan, Sendai, Tohoku University, University-Industry-Linkages, Local-economic-development

### World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3991, August 2006

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._ 1 This paper was originally written for a research project for “Universities as Drivers of Urban Economies in Asia” sponsored by the Social Science Research Council, New York and the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank, Washington, D.C., presented in Washington, D.C. (November 17-18, 2005).

1
Openness and industrial response in
            a Wal-Mart world : a case study of Mexican soaps,
            detergents, and surfactant producers
This paper uses a case study approach to
            explore the effects of NAFTA and GATT membership on
            innovation and trade in the Mexican soaps, detergents, and
            surfactants (SDS) industry. Several basic findings emerge.
            First, the most fundamental effect of the NAFTA and the GATT
            on the SDS industry was to help induce Wal-Mart to enter
            Mexico. Once there, Walmex fundamentally changed the retail
            sector, forcing SDS firms to cut their profit margins and
            innovate. Those unable to respond to this new environment
            tended to lose market share and, in some cases, disappear
            altogether. Second, partly in response to Walmex, many
            Mexican producers logged impressive efficiency gains during
            the previous decade. These gains came both from
            labor-shedding and from innovation, which in turn was fueled
            by innovative input suppliers and by multinationals bringing
            new products and processes from their headquarters to
            Mexico. Finally, although Mexican detergent exports captured
            an increasing share of the U.S. detergent market over the
            past decade, Mexican sales in the U.S. were inhibited by a
            combination of excessive shipping delays at the border and
            artificially high input prices (due to Mexican protection of
            domestic caustic soda suppliers). They were also held back
            by the major re-tooling costs that Mexican producers would
            have had to incur to establish brand recognition among
            non-Latin consumers and to comply with zero phosphate laws
            in many regions of the U.S.
What is effective aid How would
            donors allocate It
There are significant weaknesses in some
            of the traditional justifications for assuming that aid will
            foster development. This paper looks at what the
            cross-country aid effectiveness literature and World Bank
            Operations Evaluation Department reviews have suggested
            about effective aid, first in terms of promoting income
            growth, and then for promoting other goals. This review
            forms the basis for a discussion of recommendations to
            improve aid effectiveness and a discussion of effective aid
            allocation. Given the multiple potential objectives for aid,
            there is no one right answer. However, it appears that there
            are a number of reforms to aid practices and distribution
            that might help to deliver a more significant return to aid
            resources. We should provide aid where institutions are
            already strong, where they can be strengthened with the help
            of donor resources, or where they can be bypassed with
            limited damage to existing institutional capacity. The
            importance of institutions to aid outcomes, as well as the
            fungibility of aid flows, suggests that programmatic aid
            should be expanded in countries with strong institutions,
            while project aid should be supported based on its ability
            to transfer knowledge and test new practices and support
            global public good provision rather than (merely) as a tool
            of financial resource transfer. The importance of
            institutions also suggests that we should be cautious in our
            expectations regarding the results of increased aid flows.
Increasing inequality in transition
            economies : is there more to come
This paper decomposes changes in
            inequality, which has in general been increasing in the
            transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
            Union, both by income source and socio-economic group, with
            a view to understanding the determinants of inequality and
            assessing how it might evolve in the future. The empirical
            analysis relies on a set of inequality statistics that,
            unlike "official data", are consistent and
            comparable across countries and are based on primary records
            from household surveys recently put together for the World
            Bank study "Growth, Poverty and Inequality in Eastern
            Europe and the Former Soviet Union: 1998-2003" [World
            Bank (2005b)]. The increase in inequality in transition, as
            predicted by a number of theoretical models, in practice
            differed substantially across countries, with the size and
            speed of its evolution depending on the relative importance
            of its key determinants, viz., changes in the wage
            distribution, employment, entrepreneurial incomes and social
            safety nets. Its evolution was also influenced by policy.
            This diversity of outcomes is exemplified on the one hand
            for Central Europe by Poland, where the increase in
            inequality has been steady but gradual and reflects, inter
            alia, larger changes in employment and compensating
            adjustments in social safety nets and, on the other for the
            Commonwealth of Independent States by Russia, where an
            explosive overshooting of inequality peaked in the mid-1990s
            before being moderated through the extinguishing of wage
            arrears during its post-1998 recovery. The paper argues that
            the process of transition to a market economy is not
            complete and that further evolution of inequality will
            depend both on (i) transition-related factors, such as the
            evolution of the education premium, a bias in the investment
            climate against new private sector firms which are important
            vehicles of job creation and regional impediments to
            mobility of goods and labor, as well as increasingly (ii)
            other factors, such as technological change and
            globalization. The paper also contrasts key features of
            inequality in Russia in the context of other transition
            economies with trends in inequality observed in China where
            rapid economic growth has been accompanied by a steep
            increase in inequality. It argues that the latter's
            experience is, to a large extent, a developmental, rather
            than a transition-related phenomenon deriving from the
            rural-urban divide and is, therefore, of limited relevance
            for predicting changes in inequality in Russia.
Group versus individual liability :
            a field experiment in the Philippines
Group liability is often portrayed as
            the key innovation that led to the explosion of the
            microcredit movement, which started with the Grameen Bank in
            the 1970s and continues on today with hundreds of
            institutions around the world. Group lending claims to
            improve repayment rates and lower transaction costs when
            lending to the poor by providing incentives for peers to
            screen, monitor, and enforce each other's loans.
            However, some argue that group liability creates excessive
            pressure and discourages good clients from borrowing,
            jeopardizing both growth and sustainability. Therefore, it
            remains unclear whether group liability improves the
            lenders overall profitability and the poor's access to
            financial markets.  The authors worked with a bank in the
            Philippines to conduct a field experiment to examine these
            issues. They randomly assigned half of the 169 pre-existing
            group liability 'centers' of approximately twenty
            women to individual-liability centers (treatment) and kept
            the other half as-is with group liability (control). We find
            that the conversion to individual liability does not affect
            the repayment rate, and leads to higher growth in center
            size by attracting new clients.
Fairtrade and market failures in
            agricultural commodity markets
This paper concerns an NGO intervention
            in agricultural commodity markets known as Fairtrade.
            Fairtrade pays producers a minimum unit price and provides
            capacity building support to member cooperative
            organizations. Fairtrade's organizational capacity
            support targets those factors believed to reduce the
            commodity producer's share of returns. Specifically,
            Fairtrade justifies its intervention in markets like coffee
            by claiming that market power and a lack of capacity in
            producer organizations 'marks down' the prices
            producers receive. As the market share of Fairtrade coffee
            grows in importance, its intervention in commodity markets
            is of increasing interest. Using an original data set
            collected from fieldwork in Costa Rica, this paper assesses
            the role of Fairtrade in overcoming the market factors it
            claims limits producer returns. Features of the Costa Rican
            input market for coffee permit a generalization of the
            results. The empirical results find that market power is a
            limiting factor in the Costa Rican market and that Fairtrade
            does improve the efficiency of cooperatives, thereby
            increasing the returns to producers. These results do not
            depend on the minimum price policy of Fairtrade and
            therefore can inform on its organizational support
            activities. Finally, the results also suggest that producers
            selling to vertically integrated, multinational coffee mills
            face lower producer price 'mark-downs' compared
            with domestically owned non-cooperative mills. This result
            contradicts the popular view that the increasing
            concentration of vertically integrated multinational firms
            accounts for a decline in producers' share of coffee returns.
Regional impacts of Russia's
            accession to the World Trade Organization
In this paper we develop a computable
            general equilibrium model of the regions of Russia to assess
            the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization
            (WTO) on the regions of Russia. We estimate that the average
            gain in welfare as a percentage of consumption for the whole
            country is 7.8 percent (or 4.3 percent of consumption); we
            estimate that three regions will gain considerably more:
            Northwest (11.2 percent), St. Petersburg (10.6 percent) and
            Far East (9.7 percent). We estimate that the Urals will gain
            only 6.2 percent of consumption, considerably less than the
            national average. The principal explanation in our central
            analysis for the differences across regions is the ability
            of the different regions to benefit from a reduction in
            barriers against foreign direct investment. The three
            regions with the largest welfare gains are clearly the
            regions with the estimated largest shares of multinational
            investment. But the Urals has attracted relatively little
            FDI in the service sectors. An additional reason for
            differences across regions is quantified in our sensitivity
            analysis: regions may gain more from WTO accession if they
            can succeed in creating a good investment climate.
Banking sector openness and economic growth
Banking sector openness may directly
            affect growth by improving the access to financial services
            and indirectly by improving the efficiency of financial
            intermediaries, both of which reduce the cost of financing,
            and in turn, stimulate capital accumulation and economic
            growth. The objective of the paper is to empirically
            reinvestigate these direct and indirect links using a more
            advanced econometric technique (GMM dynamic panel
            estimators). An illustrative model is presented to link
            financial market development with investment. The empirical
            results confirm the presence of direct and indirect links,
            and thus provide support for countries planning to open
            their banking sector for international competition.
The demography of youth in
            developing countries and its economic implications
The number of young people is reaching
            unprecedented levels in most developing countries. In many
            countries, especially in East Asia and Latin America, youth
            populations are at or near their peak, and will decline in
            coming decades. In other countries, especially in Africa and
            South Asia, youth populations will continue growing for
            several decades. From an economic perspective, absolute
            numbers may be less important than the growth rate or
            relative size of youth cohorts. Growth rates and the ratio
            of youth to working-age population reached a peak in the
            1970s or 1980s in most developing countries.  The worst
            economic pressures of youth demography may have already
            occurred in many countries, although significant pressure
            will continue in Africa and South Asia.