scholarly journals Bureaucrat Allocation in the Public Sector: Evidence from the World Bank*

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Limodio
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Task Assignment ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Assortative Matching ◽  
High Performing ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Task Features ◽  
The Universe

Abstract The allocation of bureaucrats across tasks constitutes a pivotal instrument for achieving an organization’s objectives. In this paper, I measure the performance of World Bank bureaucrats by combining the universe of task assignment with an evaluation of task outcome and a hand-collected dataset of bureaucrat CVs. I introduce two novel stylized facts. First, bureaucrat performance correlates with task features and individual characteristics. Second, there exists a negative assortative matching between high-performing bureaucrats and low-performing countries. In the aftermath of natural disasters, which may weaken countries’ performance even further, I observe that low-performing countries receive an additional allocation of high-performing bureaucrats. I discuss various interpretations of these findings.

Society and Market in the Era of Globalization

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-355
Author(s):  
Dušan Pokorný
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
The Imf

AbstractThis chapter considers the meaning of the terms "society" and "market," and the need for markets to be institutionalized and legitimated. Obligatory norms and recommendatory guidelines today come from many sources: from states, from groupings of states, and from worldwide bodies such as the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank. But when markets create profound inequalities both within and between societies, how do we determine what limits ought to be placed on markets? Since economic institutions are inseparable from culture, this is the "site" where the public will have to decide what is "society," what is the "market," and what will be the relation between them.

A Comparative Analysis of the Nigerian Public Procurement Act Against International Best Practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sope Williams-Elegbe
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
State Level ◽  
Assessment Report ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

AbstractPrior to 2007, Nigerian public procurement was not formally regulated, in the sense that there was no law governing procurement at the federal or state level. This changed with the enactment in 2007 of the Public Procurement Act. This act was passed on the recommendation of the World Bank, which had conducted a country procurement assessment report on Nigeria in 1999. This article seeks to determine whether the Public Procurement Act meets the requirements of international best practice. The article examines what may be regarded as international best practice in the public procurement context and analyses whether the Nigerian Public Procurement Act contains provisions which accord with this practice. It also considers what factors are limiting the adoption of international best practice in the Nigerian context.

Infrastructure quality and firm productivity in Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Bbaale
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Firm Productivity ◽  
Power Outages ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

Purpose The World Bank (2017) ranks poor infrastructure, particularly electricity, as the second topmost obstacle (after access to finance) affecting enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of infrastructure quality on firm productivity in Africa. Design/methodology/approach The author used the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) for 26 African countries and employed both descriptive and ordinary least squares techniques during the analysis. The author circumvents the endogeneity of infrastructure in the productivity model by using firm-level measures of infrastructure quality rather than the stock of infrastructural capital. Findings On an average, 80 percent of manufacturing firms in Africa reported having experienced electricity outages in the financial year preceding the survey. Power outages are negatively associated with the productivity of small, medium, young, domestically owned firms and non-exporters. On the other hand, the author observes a substitution effect of generators for the unreliable power from the public grid and this effect positively influences the productivity of large, old, foreign-owned and exporting firms. Practical implications The author argues that in addition to infrastructure capital at an aggregate level, dealing with quality issues at firm level is required to enhance productivity. More attention needs to be put to the elimination of power outages so as to improve the productivity of all firms particularly those that cannot afford to use generators in the place of electricity from the public grid. Originality/value The author notes that there exists scanty empirical literature on the effect of infrastructure quality on productivity for the case of Africa despite the existence of WBES for at least two waves for both developed and developing countries. The uniqueness of this paper in comparison to the previous literature is that the author undertakes the analysis according to some important firm categories: size, age, ownership and export status. Additionally, the author uses the infrastructure quality to understand its effect on firm-level efficiency levels rather than the stock of infrastructural capital. The use of aggregate indicators of infrastructure introduces an endogeneity problem which the author circumvents in this study.

The World Bank: Why It Is Still Needed and Why It Still Disappoints

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ravallion
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Global Public Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

Does the World Bank still have an important role to play? How might it fulfill that role? The paper begins with a brief account of how the Bank works. It then argues that, while the Bank is no longer the primary conduit for capital from high-income to low-income countries, it still has an important role in supplying the public good of development knowledge—a role that is no less pressing today than ever. This argument is not a new one. In 1996, the Bank’s President at the time, James D. Wolfensohn, laid out a vision for the “knowledge bank,” an implicit counterpoint to what can be called the “lending bank.” The paper argues that the past rhetoric of the “knowledge bank” has not matched the reality. An institution such as the World Bank—explicitly committed to global poverty reduction—should be more heavily invested in knowing what is needed in its client countries as well as in international coordination. It should be consistently arguing for well-informed pro-poor policies in its member countries, tailored to the needs of each country, even when such policies are unpopular with the powers-that-be. It should also be using its financial weight, combined with its analytic and convening powers, to support global public goods. In all this, there is a continuing role for lending, but it must be driven by knowledge—both in terms of what gets done and how it is geared to learning. The paper argues that the Bank disappoints in these tasks but that it could perform better.

scholarly journals Arbitration Award of ICSID on the Investment Disputes of Churchill Mining PLC v. Republic of Indonesia

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Yordan Gunawan
Keyword(s):  
Coal Mining ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Bilateral Investment Treaties ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

The research is aimed at analyzing the ICSID (International Centre Settlement Investment Dispute) decision in solving a dispute between Churchill Mining PLC and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia. The case brought to the public attention, because mining license owned by PT. Ridlatama which acquired from Churchill Mining PLC had been revocated. Churchill Mining PLC holds 75% share of PT. Ridlatama and it suffered losses caused by the revocation of its mining license. Churchill Mining PLC filed the case to the local court but it failed. Churchill Mining PLC then sought ruling from International arbitration or ICSID. On December 6, 2016, ICSID issued a decision that clearly threw out Churchill Mining PLC claim. ICSID, the World Bank court, ordered the firm to pay a total of US$.9.446.528 in cost to the Government of the Republic of Indonesia. It is based on the evidences that the UK-Australia company did the fraud and had document forgery of coal mining permit in East Kutai, Indonesia. So the firm has violated the Bilateral Investment Treaties between Indonesia-UK and Indonesia-Australia.

Potentialities in Applying Foucault’s Discourse Analysis to World Bank Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Sarah Moritz
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
World Bank ◽  
It Services ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
International Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
External Actors ◽  
The Relationship

Applying the discourse analysis methods of Michel Foucault to reports researched and published by the World Bank may reveal certain kinds of thinking embedded in the work of the institution, and this may serve as an important resource or vehicle for understanding the relationship between the World Bank and the societies it services. Such insight is important because it acts as an international authority on the alleviation of poverty and inequality, and as an informative resource for other institutions and the public. For this reason, it is necessary to ensure its research does not cause unnecessary harm to the societies in which it operates, which are often vulnerable to external actors.

Is World Bank “Good Governance” Good for the Poor? Central American Experiences

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Horton
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Central America ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Central American ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World

Abstract This paper explores the World Bank’s concept of “good governance” as applied in rural Central America. It argues that World Bank good governance seeks to constrain unequal accumulation and privilege in the public sector, but leaves largely unaddressed structural inequalities in the private sector and the conflation of economic and political power in the public sector. This paper suggests that the World Bank analysis does not adequately consider more embedded state/civil society relations linked to national and sub-national political cultures. In contexts in which nation-building projects have promoted forms citizenship linked to more activist “leveling” and paternalistic states, good governance is likely to be ideologically contested. World Bank good governance under these circumstances is unlikely to quell discontent or naturalize the neoliberal state.

scholarly journals Financial Corrections on Public Procurement as a Corrective Mechanism for Protection of Public Budget Expenditure

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 121-137
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Public Expenditures ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Public Budget ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Budget Expenditure

The article aims to analyze financial corrections in public procurement as one of the main corrective mechanisms for protection of public budget expenditures. To achieve this goal, three tasks have been performed: 1) Preventive and corrective mechanisms for protection of public expenditures are presented; 2) The organization of the control mechanisms regarding the public procurements and the imposition of financial corrections in Bulgaria is revealed and 3) the contribution of two international organizations to the topic is outlined - the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Bank. The research methods used are historical-logical analysis and content analysis. The result of the research is a critical analysis and summary, which complement the Bulgarian analytical literature in the field.

Business Creation in Portugal: A Viewpoint on Data Comparison

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (01) ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Elsa De Morais Sarmento ◽  
Alcina Nunes
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
World Bank Group ◽  
Data Comparison ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Business Creation ◽  
The World ◽  
Bank Group ◽  
The Universe

Portugal has some of the highest business entry rates when compared to other countries, according to Eurostat, Statistics Portugal and the OECD Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme. We look at business creation in Portugal, from 2000 to 2007, by approaching two other complementary data sources, the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey, based on official Portuguese business register's and the universe of active employer enterprises, obtained by applying to the dataset Quadros de Pessoal, the methodology and definitions of the Eurostat/OECD's "Manual on Business Demography Statistics". This allows us to address entrepreneurship indicators comparability issues and exploit complementarities to support entrepreneurship patterns and trends previously identified by other national and international sources. We highlight the importance of considering information other than business registries, in particular when calculating business entry rates. Datasets where economically active units can be identified provide a better proxy for the true level of business creation and activity in Portugal.

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